Digital Past 2016: Digital Interpretation - Good, Bad, Indifferent

Andrew Lloyd Hughes is a digital tourism expert who has become a familiar face on the conference circuit over the years and specialises in the digital delivery of tourism related content.

At Digital Past 2016, Andrew will be sharing some best practice observed throughout the world from his travels, and will be discussing some of the techniques and channels that are available at low cost to distribute heritage related information to visitors on location. He will outline some recent trends in digital information, discuss the needs of contemporary consumers, and suggest how we can capitalise on a number of opportunities that exist for the curation and distribution of content.

However, this talk will not only focus on the positive, it will also explore the drawbacks of digital, and how these techniques must sit alongside traditional interpretive methods and be part of a carefully devised and well thought out interpretive strategy for it to be successful.

Andrew currently works for the renowned international tourism consultancy TEAM Tourism, and continues to advise the Oman Ministry of Tourism on the digital interpretation of some of their heritage assets, and how it can be put to maximum effect to educate and inform their desired audiences. Some of the key inferences from this interesting and relevant piece of work will undoubtedly be shared during his talk at this year’s Digital Past.

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Digital Past 2016: Digital Marketing Strategies for Heritage Tourism

Visit Wales is in the business of destination and place marketing. Promoting and selling places is a content led business and, if you think about it, they have a whole country creating, curating and sharing some great content about Wales.

But how do you leverage what is potentially a hugely powerful content ecosystem to help achieve specific marketing objectives?

Jon Monroe, Head of Digital Leadership at Visit Wales, brings experience and expertise from the competitive world of travel and tourism, and also from heading up the Visit Wales digital team. Using interesting case studies he will outline their approach to content led digital marketing, demonstrate the results of those efforts, discuss some of the practical lessons learnt and outline how this might be applied to heritage sites and heritage tourism.

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Digital Past 2016: High-Tech Drones and Immersive Displays – Exploiting New Technologies for Digital Heritage

The statement that Virtual Reality (VR), Augmented Reality (AR) and unmanned system (UxV) technologies such as drones, are today more widely available than ever before to industry, researchers and hobbyists alike, will come as no surprise. There are those who believe that the proliferation of high-tech products such as these pose a threat to society on many levels. However, from a digital or virtual heritage standpoint and in the right hands, they also offer exciting and increasingly affordable possibilities in both the development and delivery of rich, interactive, educational experiences to a wide range of end users and audiences.

In this presentation, Professor Bob Stone, Director of the Human Interface Technologies Team at the
University of Birmingham, will describe a number of (predominantly, but not exclusively) maritime heritage case studies developed during 2014 and 2015 where VR, AR and drone technologies have been used to excellent effect in surveying and digitally reconstructing remote, often inaccessible sites, and then presenting the results to a wide range of communities and ages. Included within the case study portfolio are the wreck sites of the SS James Eagan Layne (Whitsand Bay, 1945); HM Submarine A7 (Whitsand Bay, 1914); the Maria (Firestone Bay, Plymouth, 1774) – host vessel to the first ever submariner fatality; the Hooe Lake wrecks in Plymouth; the UK’s first subsea habitat – the GLAUCUS (1965) – now just a rusting hulk off the Breakwater Fort in Plymouth; and the Anne (1690) shipwreck project, which featured the first ever digital resurrection of an historic vessel using Augmented Reality techniques from a quadcopter in flight over the ship’s final resting place on Pett Level Beach near Hastings.

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Digital Past 2016: Registration closes on the 5 February!

The Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Wales invites you to attend:

Digital Past 2016: New technologies in heritage, interpretation and outreach.

10 and 11 February 2016
St George’s Hotel, Llandudno

Organised by the Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Wales, Digital Past is an annual two-day conference which showcases innovative digital technologies and techniques for data capture, interpretation and dissemination of the heritage of Wales, the UK and beyond. Bringing together individuals from the commercial, public, academic, third sector and voluntary sectors, the conference aims to promote learning, discussion and debate around a range of digital technologies in current use, or in development, to record and understand the historic environment.

Delegates will be offered a combination of presentations, seminar sessions and hands-on workshops and demonstrations in a friendly and informal atmosphere that aim to promote the exchange of ideas and facilitate networking. Unconference sessions will be provided on the first afternoon, giving the opportunity for delegates not on the formal timetable to give presentations on projects, research, ideas or issues within or outside the strict themes of this year’s event. Exhibition stands provide an opportunity for displays and the demonstration of projects or products, and the chance to talk to heritage organisations, societies, universities, product developers and retailers.

The themes for 2016 will be ‘Digital Survey: An Integrated Approach’ and ‘Digital Heritage Tourism’.

Digital Past 2016 is being held in the Victorian seaside town of Llandudno, the “Queen of Welsh Resorts”. Located on the north Wales coast, Llandudno is easily accessible by road and rail and has good connections to Liverpool and Manchester airports. The conference will be held in the award winning St George’s Hotel, originally built in 1854 and still one of the resort’s finest hotels.

For information on speakers and the programme, please go to: http://digitalpast2016.blogspot.co.uk
and follow #digitalpast2016

Registration cost for the two days is £89, including lunch and refreshments on both days. To register please go to: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk

Limited places are available and early registration is advised.

We look forward to welcoming you to Digital Past in 2016.

The Digital Past Team


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Vote for Wales’ Pontcysyllte Aqueduct, nominated as Heritage Site of the Year for BBC Countryfile Awards 2015-16

View of the magnificent Pontcysyllte Aqueduct with a narrow boat crossing, NPRN: 34410   DI2010_1390.

Forming the majestic centrepiece of a UNESCO World Heritage Site, Pontcysyllte Aqueduct along with 11 miles of its canal and associated structures, is a worthy candidate for Heritage Site of the Year in this year’s BBC Countryfile Awards 2015-16. Designed by two of the outstanding figures in the history of civil engineering, William Jessop and Thomas Telford, the aqueduct was built between 1795 and 1805, at a cost of £47,018 to carry the Llangollen (Ellesmere) Canal across the River Dee to the south of Trefor Basin.

With the application of the new technologies of cast iron, Pontcyscyllte Aqueduct was a highly innovative monumental structure and its enduring legacy is due to the brilliance of Jessop and Telford’s design. Eighteen tapering stone piers carry a narrow trough of iron plates for a distance of 307m. There is only 25mm between the water inside and the thin air outside the metal plates. It is 38.4m from the water level of the canal to the river below. Pontcysyllte remained the tallest navigable aqueduct in the world for 200 years. It was only superseded in the twenty-first century by aqueducts for boat lifts in Belgium and China.

An aerial view of the breath-taking central spans of Pontcysyllte Aqueduct, NPRN: 34410   AP_2006_0914.

The aqueduct was awarded UNESCO World Heritage status in 2009 putting it alongside iconic sites like the Grand Canyon, the Pyramids, the Great Wall of China and the Tower of London.  The story of the aqueduct is told by the former Secretary of the Royal Commission, in our recent joint publication, Pontcysyllte Aqueduct and Canal: World Heritage Site, available from the Royal Commission for only £9.95, plus free p&p.

The closing date for votes is 31 January 2016:
http://www.countryfile.com/awards2015-16





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Digital Past 2016: Quantifying the Sublime: A Real-time Dynamic Biometric Approach to the Appreciation of Landscape

From the 1780s to the 1820s, writers and artists codified a particular set of ‘sublime’ emotional responses to the Welsh landscape. Enthused by sublime art and poetry and guided by accounts of travels through vertiginous scenery, Romantic-era tourists made their way to spots that – it was promised – would “please while they astonish the beholder” (J. Evans, Letters Written During a Tour of South Wales During the Year 1803 (1804).

Richard Marggraf Turley, Professor of Engagement with the Public Imagination at Aberystwyth university, will discuss a proposed research project which will use biometric equipment to measure modern visitors’ responses to spatial aspects of culture at such sites. Richard will discuss how such techniques might:

1. Test Romantic claims of heightened emotional responses in ‘sublime’ sites in Wales.
2.  Assess how biometric information can enrich visitor experience at these heritage tourism sites – and draw more people to them.
3.  Use the results of 1) and 2) to inform strategies of heritage management and marketing.
4. Assess whether increased knowledge about a site’s historical, cultural and geographical context leads to different emotional responses.
5. Use biometrical information generated in the project to create a quantified guide to eight key Romantic sites – The Quantified Life Guide to Wales.

Quantifying the Sublime brings together Romantic scholarship, geography, mapping, visualisation and computer science, developing a composite methodology that draws from innovations and leading-edge research in these areas.


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