[Patina] Re: next meeting

Tue Feb 8 17:12:33 GMT 2011

Hello.

Thanks Graeme for sharing your thoughts.

I like the idea you describe about haptic feedback related to the
roughness of the bones. I especially like the idea of
> not simply replicating a real interaction but is using touch to interact with patina - the breadth of data and potentially interpretations of a group of objects.
It makes me think of research in the area of "sonification" -- where
different signals are converted to audio with the aim of making patterns
in them easier to distinguish by humans. (doing a prototype with audio
may be a lot easier than with haptic actuators, at least in first instance)
However, I have the impression that this goes more in the direction of
translating physical artefacts to digital, rather than augmenting them.
Is this within the scope of PATINA?
(in any case, I'd be interested in discussing this further, if
appropriate, even outside PATINA)

I started to think again about the library scenario, which was discussed
at the Brighton meeting, and I realized that the most library-like
aspect of the labs we visited is probably the reference collection in
the osteology lab. Could it make sense to focus on that (the reference
collection) rather than on the specific bone under study? I guess
(please tell me if this is not the case) that individual bone finds are
studied and manipulated by a smaller number of people than those who use
the reference collection.  You also mentioned that Southampton has the
best fish bone reference collection in Europe, and that people come to
visit it to use it. So it may be easier to foster collaboration around
the collection rather than around individual bones.

Could it be interesting, then, to instrument the reference, for example
the boxes, to keep track of who uses them? So for example if I am
looking for a specific type of bone, I may realize that someone else in
the department has looked at something similar recently, and I may go
and ask them about it, or perhaps that someone looked at this long ago,
so I may want to go and see if they published about it. One could also
look at aggregated data, and see if there are patterns.

I then realized that I saw this somewhere else:
http://alumni.media.mit.edu/~yarin/touchcounters/
..still, applying this to archaeology may be enough of a difference, not
to mention differences in implementation..

I think this fits quite well with what Graeme wrote:
> there may well be value in recording repeated processes as a means for enhancing practice in the lab i.e. walking in the footsteps of yourself, in addition to your predecessors. Whilst an individual object may not have 'patina' in this sense there will be a build up of 'patina' on classes of object and classes of information about those objects.

However, would this be too much of an instrumentation of the
environment, therefore out of PATINA scope?

I see potential big privacy / tracking / big-brother issues around this..
Another issue is that opening the box is just one thin slice of the
process. Do we need to track what people do before and after opening the
boxes? Probably so. How do we do that? I don't know.
>From this point of view, tracking the use of smart-phones scanning
markers/tags could be very easy, but how do we ad that to the existing
work flow without causing too much disruption?

Please do not take this as a finished idea, I just wanted to share some
thoughts as the crossed my mind, and hopefully trigger reactions.

Enrico

On 07/02/2011 18:37, Earl G.P. wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> I am teaching all afternoon Thursday and on Friday morning. I suggest that you all meet and then I catch up via Angeliki or Tom afterwards. I have been deep in thought since we met and am trying to articulate my thoughts at present. I felt like we reached a particular low after the visit to archaeology, and in particular Enrico made me appreciate the need for clarity. However, I have spent the whole time since then thinking about what we have to gain from the archaeology scenario and I do keep coming back to the physical nature of archaeological research. Whilst some components of archaeological analysis are indeed mechanical, for example the identification of species, others involve a whole combination of analytical and interpretative tasks and end up with an assessment that is characterised by 'greyness' i.e. uncertainty.
>
> The fieldwork scenario is I think still perfectly suited to a deployment focussed on collaboration. Having spoken to some other colleagues I do think Tom needs to spend time in another unit as well as Wessex and we think Cambridge would be very good. Wessex is well known for being compartmentalised (and as a consequence very efficient) in its workflows but other places do have more of an integrated approach. One of the directors at Cambridge is particularly renowned for encouraging a more egalitarian spirit on site with the explicit reasoning that this improves the quality of the archaeology undertaken. So, to summarise I think there is lots of potential in the area of collaboration that Tom and I have concentrated on so far. The issue of dealing with uncertainty is also important here, and the opportunity to replay research activities on a site. Portus will provide a good potential focus for this.
>
> Personally I have had considerable doubts since last week about the lab deployment however. Again having spoken to a number of colleagues we believe that whilst making staff in the field aware of lab activity and results could be very valuable in many cases the lab activity happens when the excavation is completed - a deliberate disarticulation of processes designed to ensure that the stratigraphy, drawing etc. is defined first. However, there are still times when post-ex might be happening together with the excavation so it is a valid approach. What I am less convinced by is the benefit to the person working in the lab of being aware of what others in the lab are doing. The idea of collaboration here is not necessarily bidirectional. However, there may well be value in recording repeated processes as a means for enhancing practice in the lab i.e. walking in the footsteps of yourself, in addition to your predecessors. Whilst an individual object may not have 'patina' in this sense there will be a build up of 'patina' on classes of object and classes of information about those objects.
>
> For example, as I recorded the specific femoral adaptations for a project when I was a student (the process that I discussed when we visited the human osteology lab) I developed a growing understanding that would then be brought to bear on any future work. It would have been very helpful to retrieve information about what I had worked on before. For example, if we ignore the visual, an entirely haptic feedback of the roughness of the trochanteric spicules I recorded on the human femurs could deliver a relative sense of roughness to that of the object I was currently working on. Were I to design an intervention on this basis I would want to have a device that provided a sense of roughness to my finger that corresponded to some dataset e.g. a scan or even a greyscale photograph of the bone morphology. I could then switch between the device and the real object to develop a purely haptic comparison. The data could also be transformed to represent an average rather than a specific example. Using a z-buffer camera I could very simply create new datasets as I worked on new bones. The beauty of the haptic basis is that it fits perfectly with physical practice, and also that it is not simply replicating a real interaction but is using touch to interact with patina - the breadth of data and potentially interpretations of a group of objects.
>
> This may be completely off track but let me know what you think.
>
> G
>
>
>
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: patina-bounces at ecs.soton.ac.uk [mailto:patina-bounces at ecs.soton.ac.uk] On Behalf Of Chrysanthi A.
> Sent: 07 February 2011 16:11
> To: Southampton-specific mailing list for PATINA project
> Subject: [Patina] Re: next meeting
>
> Same as Mike!
> Cheers,
> Angeliki
>
> Angeliki Chrysanthi
> PhD candidate
> Archaeological Computing Research Group
> University of Southampton
> Avenue Campus
> SO17 1BF
> ________________________________________
> From: patina-bounces at ecs.soton.ac.uk [patina-bounces at ecs.soton.ac.uk] On Behalf Of Michael Jewell [mjewell at gmail.com]
> Sent: Monday, February 07, 2011 2:27 PM
> To: Southampton-specific mailing list for PATINA project
> Subject: [Patina] Re: next meeting
>
> Hi!
>
> Both Thurs and Fri are fine with me!
>
> Cheers,
> Mike
>
> On Mon, Feb 7, 2011 at 9:29 AM, Frankland T. <tf4e10 at soton.ac.uk> wrote:
>> Hi,
>>
>> I'd prefer Thursday after 3pm as well if possible.
>>
>> Cheers,
>>
>> Tom.
>>
>> Sent from my iPhone
>>
>> On 7 Feb 2011, at 08:59, "Enrico Costanza" <ec at ecs.soton.ac.uk> wrote:
>>
>>> On 07/02/2011 08:48, Luc Moreau wrote:
>>>> The first draft of our intervention is due in a week's time ...
>>>> so it would be good to meet again.
>>>>
>>>> What about:
>>>> - Thursday 2.30pm onwards
>>>> - Friday morning
>>>>
>>>> Enrico told me he preferred Thursday.
>>> I still do, but after 3pm.
>>>
>>> Friday is also possible (eve though not preferred).
>>>
>>> Thanks,
>>> Enrico
>>>
>>>> Cheers,
>>>> Luc
>>>>
>>>
>>> --
>>> Dr Enrico Costanza
>>> Lecturer, Intelligence, Agents, Multimedia Group School of 
>>> Electronics and Computer Science University of Southampton, UK, SO17 
>>> 1BJ
>>>
>>> http://users.ecs.soton.ac.uk/ec
>>> http://d-touch.org
>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> Patina mailing list
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>>> http://mailman.ecs.soton.ac.uk/mailman/listinfo/patina
>> _______________________________________________
>> Patina mailing list
>> Patina at ecs.soton.ac.uk
>> http://mailman.ecs.soton.ac.uk/mailman/listinfo/patina
>>
>
>
> --
> Dr Michael O. Jewell
> ECS, University of Southampton
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-- 
Dr Enrico Costanza
Lecturer, Intelligence, Agents, Multimedia Group
School of Electronics and Computer Science
University of Southampton, UK, SO17 1BJ

http://users.ecs.soton.ac.uk/ec
http://d-touch.org