Digital Documentation and Representation of Cultural Heritage
This summer 2008 Learn, plan and create the public interpretation of the san francisco bay area past
A UC Berkeley Summer Sessions residential course held in the Presidio of San Francisco
The idea of this field-school has developed as a result of both the design charrette held in August 2007 by the archaeologists of the Presidio Trust to plan their research and public programs of the El Presidio (Spanish and Mexican) fort and the Presidio Trust's new plan for the Main Post including the Anza Esplanade. Ruth Tringham is a consultant on this project. In addition the UCB Dept of Anthropology is currently administering and sponsoring a large private grant (Shaw Foundation), which includes funding for the new Coordinator of Public Programs for the El Presidio (Levantar) project at the SF Presidio.
The course is on "New Media and Cultural Heritage" and focuses on the real world challenge of creating interpretive walks and other installations for the public that involve wireless technology, digital geomapping, storytelling etc, globally and, specifically, at the El Presidio Spanish and Mexican Colonial fort and the areas to its southeast leading towards the Mission de San Francisco (the Levantar Project). This is the current focus of research of the Archaeology Group at the Presidio of San Francisco. The course involves the design, field trial, and documentation of these different formats of representation of cultural heritage places. The aim is to seek alternatives to permanent markers of information about places, leveraging different forms of digital media. The course will take advantage of the many specialists in these technologies in the Bay Area with whom we have contact and who have offered to contribute their help to the course (CyArk, Cultural Heritage Imaging and others). It will also build on our own research in the Remediated Places project at Catalhöyük and the SF Presidio.
