Working on a collaborative paper on remote digital collaboration in the cultural and creative context within the UHI, presented initial thoughts incorporating elements of archaeocaoustics

HARC: Thoughts on Remote Digital Collaboration: Archaeoacoustics, Digital Heritage and Acoustic Ecology
With the increasingly cost effectiveness of digital processing and distribution protocols, the concept of remote digital collaboration throughout the Highlands and Islands becomes a real possibility. Within an arts and humanities sphere creative exploration of place and how we interpret it can be more widely explored, shared, contributed to and expanded. A multi-disciplinary approach to creative interpretation can help our students and fellow researchers to explore facets of culture, space and time that otherwise might be left undiscovered. These digital distribution protocols make the prospect of collaborating with an artist on Benbecula, archaeologists based in Orkney and a musician in Perth a reality.
An exciting emerging field of research is by it’s very nature multi-disciplinary, that of archaeoacoustics and acoustic ecology. Drawing on evidence un-earthed by archaeologists, historians, ethnomusicologists, anthropologists, sound designers and musicians to name but a few, archaeoacoustics can give voice to our rich and culturally diverse heritage. Through the use of impulse response recordings, reverberation and resonant characteristics from heritage and archaeological sites can be accurately recreated using accessible hardware and software. Digital field recordings can be used in music and sound design compositions, some of our incredible Neolithic and Bronze Age sites might inspire live composition and collaboration in the field. The scope for digital media output that reflects the Highlands and Islands diverse heritage and culture becomes a truly exciting prospect. This coupled with exciting advances in 3D audio and VR technology can bring remote locations and notions of place into a virtual reality!