Projects in focus
University researchers have been exceptionally successful in attracting a large number of ARC grants recently. There is no doubt that all of them will utilise digital technology in some way, and that many will develop innovative digital approaches during the research process. Some projects, however, are based on the innovative use of technology from the inception. The DIU is showcasing a couple of these digital projects:
- The digital restoration of the Dublin Kephalaia codex and its importance for the history of religions
- Comprehensive support for collaborative writing: Visualising argument, text and process structures
On the other end of the grant cycle is the third project in focus. Paul Thom, philosophy Professor at the University of Sydney, has recently finished his computer game, which allows exploration of different ways of representing theories of categories in an online environment. The Categories game (featured below) is a research output of a project, which was funded until the end of 2008.
The digital restoration of the Dublin Kephalaia codex and its importance for the history of religions
CI Iain Gardner, APD Paul Dilley, PI Jason BeDuhn
Funding: $360,000
The Dublin Kephalaia codex is the third largest papyrus book ever recovered from antiquity. Its unique contents will dispel the myth of a cultural divide between the Mediterranean world and South and Central Asia prior to the rise of Islam, for it records debates at the early Sassanian court of the third century AD between Mani, founder of the world religion of Manichaeism, and many religious sages of that era from East and West.� The researchers� will utilise the latest developments in image processing and digital enhancement to maximise the reading of this otherwise unreadable ancient Coptic manuscript, which holds the key to the pre-Islamic religious history of Iran.
Comprehensive support for collaborative writing: Visualising argument, text and process structures
CIs P. Reimann, R.A. Calvo, K. Yacef
Funding: $270,000
This project aims to develop a comprehensive support system for computer-mediated collaborative writing (CW) and to assess the impact of three kinds of scaffolds and feedback on the process and outcomes of CW. Feedback will be assessed on the argument structure, features of the text, and on the process of writing. Software tools to provide the scaffolding, and algorithms to calculate the respective information will be tested and integrated into a web-based writing platform. Visualisations will be developed to convey feedback to the users. Empirical studies will assess the effect of the scaffolds and visualisations on the writing process, the writing outcome (document quality), and team parameters such as satisfaction with the team process.
The project continues the previous work to build the software application Glosser.
See a video and research papers from
Categories Game
Written by Paul Thom
As a small part of a Discovery Project on the reception of Aristotle’s Categories in medieval Greek, Latin and Arabic traditions, I have been exploring ways of representing theories of categories in an online environment. The Categories Game is one of these representations.
The game’s primary purpose is as an aid for teaching the ontological theories of different thinkers working within a generally Aristotelian framework. It invites players to select a well-known ontological theory, or to compose their own theory by combining theoretical assumptions from a list of options. A world complying with this theory then appears. Players make initial assumptions about what populates this world by pressing buttons on the screen. The game then animates a world complying with the chosen theory and the initial assumptions. In the game, cats and their accoutrements stand metaphorically for the entities that the theory postulates. As the world builds up, the game reminds players to implement the logical consequences of their initial assumptions. When all the consequences are followed through, the game ends with a statement of the theory chosen, the initial assumptions, and the consequences that flowed.
The game differs from other existing philosophical games (as e.g. represented on the website The Philosophers’ Magazine), through its primary use of visual metaphor rather than literal statements of philosophical propositions. It does not adopt the Socratic tactic of putting players on the defensive, under the threat of falling into self-contradiction, but emphasizes the player’s creativity.
Future developments may include representations of non-Aristotelian ontologies, such as trope theory.
