Thursday, July 06, 2006
letter to peter cook
dear peter,
firstly i have to apologise for not getting back to you sooner with some of our thoughts since visiting kupalwarnamyo earlier this year and thank all concerned for the hospitality we recieved during that visit.
the experience has greatly aided our research and i hope that the following can be of assistance.
it was made fairly clear from our talks at the time that a series of ‘read only’ multimedia objects should be made at various stages at kupulwarnamyo.
this is due to the the importance of having type of database which can display media resources (ie photos, maps, fire sites/ transitions, videos and texts) in a useful way, and a way that local bininj people could work with easily in order to see what type of new documentation would be needed for successive versions.
in order for this to be made easy to achieve and therefore plausable in the current situation we have been considering the following option for at least a part of the kupilwarnamyo media resources.
the majority of photographs, video and some audio and text items will often have relationship to place, and that maps are being used to observe fire changes etc, we have been looking into both open source software and proprietry software that will allow people at the site to development a map interface with place names or references as one of the opening pages for some sort of multimedia presentation, ultimately on DVD which would be playable on any standard DVD player.
the easiest way to do this is to use a program like photoshop or illustrator (looking into a freeware one called gimp) to locate the various places and areas being documented. having the full range of tools like scrollability, zoom tools, opaic paintbrushes for drawing shapes or lines over country etc, hundreds of colour options for coding things seems to be useful in ways maybe not yet thought of.
previously we had been talking about using programs which were capable of combining the resources at the time of locating placenames such as fugawi or arc explorer, however the limitations of these peograms and that their features are ultimately designed for other purposes than what is desired in this circumstance means we should leave aside these options for the moment.
-the suggested procedure would be as follows
-we decide upon the co-ordinates or map reference numbers that cover the area being worked in/ around/ through as well as the fire map site information that is used.
- we will make up a jpeg images combining satellite images, topographic maps and fire maps which cover this area and can be loaded into gimp/ photoshop; each map type as a separate layer and we will either record the gis coordinates of the corners for future reference or embed the ecw information into them. (map sizes will be around 50Megabyte/ ecw stands for ERmapper compress wavelets and is a file type for embedding georeferencing information ie navigational coordinates)
-this can then be either sent up to you or taken up there by someone and some time spent marking locations (areas/ placenames) on a separate layer. having the three map versions behind each other on different layer should make it pretty easy to locate things. (using 1;50 000 topos and the 50m per pixel resolution satellite images we can make)
- then some organising of the other resources in terms of location needs to be done, ie place name files can be made in i-photo and organised accordingly, as well as in i-tunes for audio content, including some notes in the comments sections of these programs about other related documents.
- things that aren’t practically able to be classified by place names, such as presentations etc might like to be classified using authors/ speakers names as a second level interface later on, ie when you click on the campsite location, individuals folders might come up as well as the location one.
this will provide us or whoever is involved with the resources organised into the basic constituents of a ‘director’ type multimedia disk using the map as one of several ‘contents pages’
the DVD can be constructed to maximise the text free searchability- ie thumbnails of images, audio samples and thumbnail video, however some sort of text search function could be wired in as well.
-either once this map document is made and other items of documentation are organised a bit, or in order to help with this, someone from our team could spend a few weeks in kupilwarnamyo and create the first simple collection as a multimedia disk, and make a backup of the resources in in a copyable format on a separate partition of the same disk.
-from then on it should become relatively easy for someone to work there with whoever wishes to learn how to do it in order to create an updated version every six months or so.
-this type of process would benefit our research by allowing time for other yet unconsidered ways of storing things to rear their lovely heads in the process and be able to be incorporated into future versions as well as our database models.
i have instigated a similar process in a place called djuranalpi on elcho island working with a woman called wulumdhuna and so far it’s going well.
for example, she will put a place name on the rock that is part of a turtle story, and then have a folder which contains things like photos of the rock, turtle photos, photos of plants which relate through various narratives in i-photo, and then a video of someone talking about the place and maybe a relative painting will be labelled in such a way that it will relate to one of these folders.
the key feature of this process is that the organisation of the various resource types are kept separate and simple which then allows the more complicated process of their integration to relatively pain free.
the advantage of using things like i-photo and -i-tunes at the start is that particular photos etc can be referenced multiple times and be relevant to any number of places, and that these are the programs you are already using and familier with at kupilwarnamyo.
(also might be of interest to work on a animation putting together all the fire maps for the last few years)
firstly i have to apologise for not getting back to you sooner with some of our thoughts since visiting kupalwarnamyo earlier this year and thank all concerned for the hospitality we recieved during that visit.
the experience has greatly aided our research and i hope that the following can be of assistance.
it was made fairly clear from our talks at the time that a series of ‘read only’ multimedia objects should be made at various stages at kupulwarnamyo.
this is due to the the importance of having type of database which can display media resources (ie photos, maps, fire sites/ transitions, videos and texts) in a useful way, and a way that local bininj people could work with easily in order to see what type of new documentation would be needed for successive versions.
in order for this to be made easy to achieve and therefore plausable in the current situation we have been considering the following option for at least a part of the kupilwarnamyo media resources.
the majority of photographs, video and some audio and text items will often have relationship to place, and that maps are being used to observe fire changes etc, we have been looking into both open source software and proprietry software that will allow people at the site to development a map interface with place names or references as one of the opening pages for some sort of multimedia presentation, ultimately on DVD which would be playable on any standard DVD player.
the easiest way to do this is to use a program like photoshop or illustrator (looking into a freeware one called gimp) to locate the various places and areas being documented. having the full range of tools like scrollability, zoom tools, opaic paintbrushes for drawing shapes or lines over country etc, hundreds of colour options for coding things seems to be useful in ways maybe not yet thought of.
previously we had been talking about using programs which were capable of combining the resources at the time of locating placenames such as fugawi or arc explorer, however the limitations of these peograms and that their features are ultimately designed for other purposes than what is desired in this circumstance means we should leave aside these options for the moment.
-the suggested procedure would be as follows
-we decide upon the co-ordinates or map reference numbers that cover the area being worked in/ around/ through as well as the fire map site information that is used.
- we will make up a jpeg images combining satellite images, topographic maps and fire maps which cover this area and can be loaded into gimp/ photoshop; each map type as a separate layer and we will either record the gis coordinates of the corners for future reference or embed the ecw information into them. (map sizes will be around 50Megabyte/ ecw stands for ERmapper compress wavelets and is a file type for embedding georeferencing information ie navigational coordinates)
-this can then be either sent up to you or taken up there by someone and some time spent marking locations (areas/ placenames) on a separate layer. having the three map versions behind each other on different layer should make it pretty easy to locate things. (using 1;50 000 topos and the 50m per pixel resolution satellite images we can make)
- then some organising of the other resources in terms of location needs to be done, ie place name files can be made in i-photo and organised accordingly, as well as in i-tunes for audio content, including some notes in the comments sections of these programs about other related documents.
- things that aren’t practically able to be classified by place names, such as presentations etc might like to be classified using authors/ speakers names as a second level interface later on, ie when you click on the campsite location, individuals folders might come up as well as the location one.
this will provide us or whoever is involved with the resources organised into the basic constituents of a ‘director’ type multimedia disk using the map as one of several ‘contents pages’
the DVD can be constructed to maximise the text free searchability- ie thumbnails of images, audio samples and thumbnail video, however some sort of text search function could be wired in as well.
-either once this map document is made and other items of documentation are organised a bit, or in order to help with this, someone from our team could spend a few weeks in kupilwarnamyo and create the first simple collection as a multimedia disk, and make a backup of the resources in in a copyable format on a separate partition of the same disk.
-from then on it should become relatively easy for someone to work there with whoever wishes to learn how to do it in order to create an updated version every six months or so.
-this type of process would benefit our research by allowing time for other yet unconsidered ways of storing things to rear their lovely heads in the process and be able to be incorporated into future versions as well as our database models.
i have instigated a similar process in a place called djuranalpi on elcho island working with a woman called wulumdhuna and so far it’s going well.
for example, she will put a place name on the rock that is part of a turtle story, and then have a folder which contains things like photos of the rock, turtle photos, photos of plants which relate through various narratives in i-photo, and then a video of someone talking about the place and maybe a relative painting will be labelled in such a way that it will relate to one of these folders.
the key feature of this process is that the organisation of the various resource types are kept separate and simple which then allows the more complicated process of their integration to relatively pain free.
the advantage of using things like i-photo and -i-tunes at the start is that particular photos etc can be referenced multiple times and be relevant to any number of places, and that these are the programs you are already using and familier with at kupilwarnamyo.
(also might be of interest to work on a animation putting together all the fire maps for the last few years)
# posted by banbins @ 10:06 AM 
