Meredith Steinfels, Assistant Director, Digital Platforms, Media and Archives, Hood Museum of Art
Alison Palizzolo, Digital Content Manager, Hood Museum of Art

Abstract:

Meredith and Alison will present on capturing virtual 3D exhibitions using Matterport equipment and software. The discussion will begin with project conception and ideation and conclude with current best practices we learned through trial and error. Meredith will discuss why the Hood Museum chose to employ this intervention, why we chose to use the Matterport equipment and software, and how we decide whether an exhibition is right for the intervention. Alison will then discuss the process of scanning, content gathering, and best practices in accessibility, as well as the challenges of working with “canned” software. The talk will conclude with attendees able to experience the tours in VR headsets.

Meredith joined the Hood Museum of Art in January 2018. Her numerous roles at the museum include: digital strategist, archivist, and subject matter expert in the use of museum digital platforms and digital infrastructure. Meredith was first trained as an archivist and then a registrar, before stepping into the world of museum technology. Her practice is rooted in empathy and user empowerment, acknowledging the imperfect and sometimes harmful nature of databases and data management. She received a Bachelor's in art history from Goucher College, and she earned her MLIS with a focus in archives, preservation, and records management from the University of Pittsburgh.

Alison began working at the Hood Museum of Art in summer 2007 as an intern while attending Keene State College in Keene, New Hampshire. During her internship, she was mentored by Bart Thurber, then-curator of European art, and Sharon Reed, then-public relations coordinator. After the internship, she continued to volunteer at the museum on a monthly basis. Alison graduated cum laude from Keene State College in 2009 with an individualized major in art history and a minor in studio art. In February 2010, Alison accepted the renewable term position of public relations assistant. In May 2016, she was promoted to Public Relations Coordinator, and in August 2020 she was promoted to Digital Content Manager.

Dr. Brinker Ferguson, Lecturer in Anthropology

Abstract:

Over the past century, the overall mean temperature of Earth has risen by 1.9 degrees and the resulting precipitation patterns have led to wetter, more intense hurricane activity off the Atlantic coast. Left unchecked, these changes are expected to intensify throughout the present century, accelerating their damage to cultural heritage sites and monuments along the coast. This project presents a methodology for assessing and documenting the impact of intensified hurricane activity on bronze monuments, focusing on the coastal town of Portsmouth, New Hampshire. This scale of inquiry enables us to better understand emerging risks in the context of concrete, localized responses and decision-making frameworks. The presentation is intended as a small step toward knowledge sharing among the various disciplines affected by and working in heritage protection and climate change.

Dr. Brinker Ferguson is a lecturer on “Oceanic Cultural Studies” in the Anthropology Department at Dartmouth College. Previously, she worked as the manager of the Digital Humanities and Social Engagement (DHSE) department and was a post-doc fellow through the Neukom Institute for Computational Science. Her research focuses on cultural heritage conservation, computational photography and indigenous agency.

Dr. Nicola Camerlenghi, Associate Professor of Architectural History
Dr. Mikhail Gronas, Associate Professor of Russian

Co-lead by Mikhail Gronas and Nicola Camerlenghi, Augmendo is an application that deploys detailed written, audio, and visual commentaries to augment artefacts in the real world. Developed at Dartmouth, where it is known as Augmented Dartmouth, users point to a mural, tombstone, painting, or statue (soon buildings!) to trigger touchable augmented reality “hotspots” that are visually connected to the on-screen work. In addition to hotspots assigned to designated locations on a real-world artefact, the application can display interactive quizzes, video, 3D animations, and audio content. The aim is to expand our proof of concept to the world of private collectors, auction houses, galleries, museums, heritage sites, and other university campuses.

Professor Camerlenghi's interests include early Christian and medieval architecture with a particular focus on the city of Rome; the diffusion and cultural significance of domes in the area around the medieval Mediterranean; the interplay between nature and architecture. He is particularly invested in approaching these topics through digital tools, such as Virtual Reality, Augmented Reality, GIS Mapping, 3D Modeling, Photogrammetry and Laser Scanning.

Prof. Mikhail Gronas specializes in Russian 19th and 20th century literature, cognitive poetics, and computational analysis of literary and historical texts. As a digital humanist, he has published on such topics as conceptual networks in historical editions of Encyclopedia Britannica, digital history of the Library of Congress Catalog, and narrative propagation in social networks. He has also worked on developing gamified augmented reality applications for political science and language pedagogy.

Dr. Caroline Robertson, Assistant Professor of Psychological and Brain Sciences

To fluidly engage with the world, our brains must simultaneously represent both both the scene in front of us and our memory of the immediate surrounding environment (i.e., local visuospatial context). How does the brain’s functional architecture enable sensory and mnemonic representations to closely interface, while also avoiding sensory-mnemonic interference? Here, we asked this question using first-person, head-mounted virtual reality (VR) and fMRI. First, using VR, human participants learned a set of immersive, real-world visuospatial environments in which we systematically manipulated the extent of visuospatial context associated with a scene image in memory across three learning conditions, spanning from a single field-of-view to a city street. Then, we used fine-grained individual subject fMRI to determine which brain areas support memory of the visuospatial context associated with a scene during recall (Exp. 1) and perception (Exp. 2). Across the whole brain, activity in three patches of cortex scaled with the amount of known visuospatial context, each located immediately anterior to one of the three scene perception areas of high-level visual cortex. Individual subject analyses revealed that these anterior patches corresponded to three functionally-defined place memory areas, which selectively respond when visually recalling personally familiar places. In addition to showing activity levels that scaled with the amount of visuospatial context, multivariate analyses showed that these anterior areas represented the identity of the specific environment being recalled. Together, these results suggest a convergence zone for scene perception and memory of the local visuospatial context at the anterior edge of high-level visual cortex.

Caroline is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences at Dartmouth College. Her research uses cognitive neuroscience approaches to understand memory, perception, and neurodiversity. Caroline received her BA from Columbia University, where she studied neuroscience and philosophy. She received her PhD from the University of Cambridge, as a Gates-Cambridge Scholar and NIH-Cambridge Fellow under the mentorship of Dr. Chris Baker (National Institutes of Health) and Dr. Simon Baron-Cohen (Cambridge). She performed her postdoctoral research at the McGovern Institute for Brain Research at MIT with Dr. Nancy Kanwisher. In 2013, Caroline was elected to the Harvard Society of Fellows as a Junior Fellow. Caroline has been named a fellow of the American Academy of Achievement (2014), a NARSAD Young Investigator of the Brain and Behavior Foundation (2015), a Kavli Fellow of the National Academy of Sciences (2016), and a National Science Foundation CAREER Award (2022).

Dr. Jonathan W. Chipman, Department of Geography,

Lidar terrain data are an effective source for visualization and interpretation of landscape features, but their use is constrained by data volume, software, access, knowledge, and other limitations. To eliminate these barriers, we are developing a browser-based, open-source platform for rapid, dynamic visualization of high-resolution lidar terrain data. This platform provides seamless coverage at full resolution across state boundaries, dynamic exploration of visualization methods, integration with complementary datasets (e.g., geology, hydrology), and other benefits. Beta versions of this platform are being adopted for education and research use.

Dr Chipman serves as director of the Citrin Family GIS/Applied Spatial Analysis lab at Dartmouth College, with appointments in Geography, Earth Sciences, and Quantitative Social Sciences. He has over three decades of research experience in the spatial sciences, remote sensing, and geographic data visualization, and is coauthor of the textbook "Remote Sensing and Image Interpretation".

Zachary Silvia, Madeleine McLeester, Jon Alperstein, Carolin Ferwerda, and Jesse Casana. The Spatial Archaeometry Lab (SPARCL, Department of Anthropology)

The Spatial Archaeometry Lab at Dartmouth College (SPARC) answers archaeological questions through applied remote sensing and geophysical methods. From LiDAR and thermal imaging, to ground penetrating radar, and even declassified spy imagery, we utilize a broad range of satellite, aerial, and ground-based technologies to document and digitally reconstruct past landscapes. At present, our lab is developing methods hitherto unexplored in archaeological research with the application of UAV-mounted short-wave infrared sensors for hyperspectral imaging. This talk will give an overview of past SPARC projects and exciting new directions in geospatial archaeometry at Dartmouth.

Karolina Kawiaka, AIA, Senior Lecturer in Studio Art (Architecture)

Washington DC’s Federal Triangle faces imminent catastrophic interior flooding from heavy 4-6” rain events that are forecasted. The least expensive, greenest approach to protect our national treasures, including the Smithsonian Museums of History, Natural History and the National Archives, is restoring the path of Tiber Creek and Washington City Canal (which were filled in in the 1860’s) as a bioswale along Constitution Avenue that will allow water to naturally flow away from the buildings. This project uses interactive VR to help legislators and planners visualize this solution and how it might work with different storm levels.

Karolina Kawiaka is an architect and Senior Lecturer at Dartmouth and teachers architectural design, digital design and fabrication, and sustainability courses, and uses 3D computer modeling to investigate architectural design challenges and questions.

Matt Maclay and Marisa Palucis (Earth Sciences)
Jesse Casana and Carolin Ferwerda (Anthropology)
Brian Fowler (Old Man of the Mountain Legacy Fund)

Understanding how climate – specifically rock temperature - affects the rate of rock breakdown, or weathering, is critical for modeling landscape evolution, carbon cycling, and erosional hazards (like rock fall). Cannon Cliff in Franconia Notch, NH, provides a unique environment conducive to several forms of weathering and is undergoing high rockfall rates, including the loss of The Old Man of the Mountain. To determine the type and magnitude of weathering processes at Cannon, we are using a variety of remote sensing techniques, including lidar, UAV-based thermographic imaging, and UAV-based photogrammetry, in conjunction with in-situ and field observations. We will present initial findings from this work.

Matt Maclay is a graduate student and Marisa Palucis is an assistant professor in the EARS department. Jesse Casana is a professor in Anthropology and Carolin Ferwerda manages his DASL/SPARCL labs. Brian Fowler is the president of the Old Man of the Mountain Legacy Fund and was a state geologist for NH.