The Embodied GIS. Using Mixed Reality to Explore Multi-sensory Archaeological Landscapes
Channel: Recording Archaeology
Date: 2016-04-08

We are at a turning point in development and thought about multi-sensorial engagement using digital mediation. From Oculus Rift VR googles, Google Cardboard, noise-reducing headphones, vibrating-haptic simulating gloves, smell generators and virtual treadmills, every week a new technology or software emerges that can be used to virtualise, augment or diminish our reality, across all of our senses. Digital archaeologists have always been at the fore-front of using these new technologies and one glance at past proceedings of the CAA conferences show how enthusiastic and competent archaeologists are at deploying them in heritage applications. Addressing the themes of the conference, and looking towards the future of GIS, this paper explores a number of ways that these new multi-sensory developments can be harnessed and linked to a traditional GIS database using Mixed Reality. I will demonstrate the implementation of an embodied GIS – allowing a multi- sensorial experience of archaeological data, in-situ, and enabling archaeologists to explore data in new ways, encouraging new interpretations by thinking and working through the body.

Stuart Eve