mbira: a platform to build, serve, and manage mobile public heritage experiences
Author(s): Ethan Watrall
Year: 2015
Summary
The spaces we inhabit and interact with on a daily basis are made up of layers of cultural activity that are, quite literally, built up over time. While museum exhibits, archaeological narratives, and public archaeology programs communicate this heritage, they do not generally allow for interactive, place-based, and individually driven exploration by the public. In recent years, mobile and augmented reality applications have offered both platforms and models for mobile heritage experiences that partially address these issue. Unfortunately, the bar for developing mobile heritage applications is getting increasingly more difficult to reach for many heritage institutions and projects. Quite simply, building robust mobile applications is too technically complicated and specialized for many in the heritage community.
It is within this context that this paper will introduce and explore mbira. Currently being developed at Michigan State University, mbira is an open source platform that empowers cultural heritage institutions, archaeological projects, and heritage landscapes to create, serve, manage, and sustain engaging mobile heritage experiences. Special attention will be paid to the design metaphor of "space and place as museum" that is woven into the fabric of mbira. In addition the paper will explore mbira’s features that support multivocality and public discourse.
SAA 2015 abstracts made available in tDAR courtesy of the Society for American Archaeology and Center for Digital Antiquity Collaborative Program to improve digital data in archaeology. If you are the author of this presentation you may upload your paper, poster, presentation, or associated data (up to 3 files/30MB) for free. Please visit http://www.tdar.org/SAA2015 for instructions and more information.
Cite this Record
mbira: a platform to build, serve, and manage mobile public heritage experiences. Ethan Watrall. Presented at The 80th Annual Meeting of the Society for American Archaeology, San Francisco, California. 2015 ( tDAR id: 396264)
This Resource is Part of the Following Collections