Authentic Artifacts Research Articles

Beyond the Acronym: Intersections of STEAM, Cybernetics, and Leadership Nurturing

The theoretical model presented in this study explores the transformational potential of a digital Community of Practice (dCoP) within higher education, focusing on Science, Technology, Engineering, Art, and Mathematics (STEAM) education. A dCoP serves as a virtual space for educators to exchange knowledge, foster interdisciplinary collaboration, and construct meaning through discourse. Through the use of digital artifacts, a dCoP provides tangible exemplars for intersecting abstract concepts to real-world applications, thus strengthening educational experiences and outcomes. This study emphasizes the cognitive, social, and emotional skills developed through STEAM education, projecting future career growth for learners in these areas. Establishing a dCoP for teachers in higher education facilitates the transfer of interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary skills to students, supporting STEAM learning and future career opportunities. Additionally, this study employs portraiture and autoethnography methodology for storytelling and cybernetic learning. The incorporation of a cybernetic mindset, presented through a theoretical Cybernetic Three-Realm Model, enriches a dCoP by addressing (1) a Canvas for Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL), (2) an Artist’s Palette for Authentic Artifacts, and (3) The Paints of Modalities for Learning. This theoretical construct affords a tangible framework for fostering STEAM skills and nurturing leadership development for pervasive learning within higher education dCoPs.

Historizing remediation: how games represent history through media

ABSTRACT Historical game studies have been almost exclusively preoccupied with the topic of historical narration and simulation in games, often undermining the role of other media forms at play. The article refocuses the approach and explores how board and digital games use media from the past to distinguish themselves as trustworthy articulations of the past. I name the phenomenon in question as ‘historizing remediation’, basing my theory on discourses on media remediation and historical articulation. When talking about remediation, I am not interested in similarities and differences between media from the past and contemporary forms of entertainment, such as cinema or new media. The article draws attention to ‘media as historical facts’, a category that encompasses media from the past used by historical discourse as credible evidence of past events. This means that historizing remediation is concerned with such artefacts as archival photographs, letters, navigation devices, maps and others. I explain how graphical user interfaces remediate aesthetics that have become associated with the portrayal of history. I inspect simulations that allow players to reenact different functions of media from the past. Both of these processes attribute the games to historical articulation. Still, remediation itself is not a narrative practice; it represents and simulates media, but does not provide a causal explanation of historical events. That is why it is often accompanied by paratextual materials that contextualise the remediated media by referring players to scientific forms and institutions. I find that historizing remediation operates on two opposite but complementary levels. Remediated media function as historical facts (authentic artefacts from the past) and contemporary historical devices used in historical discourse for the representation of the past. Historizing remediation is as much about the experience of the past as it is about the experience of contemporary historical mediation.

Aquae Calidae - New Museum Exposition Based on Various Digitalization Methods

This paper aims to present a comprehensive overview of the new interactive exposition centre at Aquae Calidae, Burgas, Bulgaria, which was opened in 2022. Innovative technologies for digitalization and presentation of cultural heritage have been incorporated into the centre to provide visitors with a captivating journey through time and immersive experiences. The focus is on the utilization of the famous historical place into a modern tourist complex with a replica of a Roman bath with hot mineral water and an interactive museum with room featuring 3D mapping to transport visitors to different historical eras, 3D glasses for virtual reality (VR) displaying the digitalized objects and representation of the ancient baths interior, interactive floor games utilizing authentic artifacts, and a photo challenge that captures the visitors in four time periods. By exploring the implementation and impact of these technologies, this paper seeks to highlight the significance of such interactive experiences in promoting cultural appreciation, education and tourism.

Social Role of Cultural Heritage and Objectives of Monument Studies

The purpose of the article to establish a connection between the tasks of memorials as scientific discipline and the special characteristics inherent to objects of cultural heritage as monuments of archaeology, history and culture.
 The scientific novelty consists in the discovery and research of the axiological (value) information inherent in an authentic artifact – a monument of archaeology, history and culture – that has an emotional impact on an individual in order to determine his own coordinates in the spatio-temporal and socio-historical continuum, thus contributing, its socialization, and therefore to determine the methods and means of increasing the efficiency of the specified process.
 Conclusions. A person due to the establishment of social ties both with the present and with the past (i.e. socialization), perceives himself as an integral part of a certain whole in social and historical aspects. As for modernity, it is provided by all existing culture, but the past in its materiality reaches us due to our cultural heritage – artifacts preserved in their authenticity. Being placed in the modern cultural context, the latter contribute to a kind of “immersion” of the individual in the past, establishing a personal emotional connection with it. At the same time, authentic artifacts play the role of monuments of archaeology, history, and monuments of culture for us depending on the historical or cultural context. This process for the purpose of study, use and improvement is the main subject of monument studies as a scientific discipline, which distinguishes the latter from other scientific disciplines, at the same time establishing a connection with them, which also investigate artifacts of the past (archaeology, source studies, etc.) however, they use the latter mainly for its study.

Simulating analogue film damage to analyse and improve artefact restoration on high‐resolution scans

AbstractDigital scans of analogue photographic film typically contain artefacts such as dust and scratches. Automated removal of these is an important part of preservation and dissemination of photographs of historical and cultural importance. While state‐of‐the‐art deep learning models have shown impressive results in general image inpainting and denoising, film artefact removal is an understudied problem. It has particularly challenging requirements, due to the complex nature of analogue damage, the high resolution of film scans, and potential ambiguities in the restoration. There are no publicly available high‐quality datasets of real‐world analogue film damage for training and evaluation, making quantitative studies impossible. We address the lack of ground‐truth data for evaluation by collecting a dataset of 4K damaged analogue film scans paired with manually‐restored versions produced by a human expert, allowing quantitative evaluation of restoration performance. We have made the dataset available at https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.21803304. We construct a larger synthetic dataset of damaged images with paired clean versions using a statistical model of artefact shape and occurrence learnt from real, heavily‐damaged images. We carefully validate the realism of the simulated damage via a human perceptual study, showing that even expert users find our synthetic damage indistinguishable from real. In addition, we demonstrate that training with our synthetically damaged dataset leads to improved artefact segmentation performance when compared to previously proposed synthetic analogue damage overlays. The synthetically damaged dataset can be found at https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.21815844, and the annotated authentic artefacts along with the resulting statistical damage model at https://github.com/daniela997/FilmDamageSimulator. Finally, we use these datasets to train and analyse the performance of eight state‐of‐the‐art image restoration methods on high‐resolution scans. We compare both methods which directly perform the restoration task on scans with artefacts, and methods which require a damage mask to be provided for the inpainting of artefacts. We modify the methods to process the inputs in a patch‐wise fashion to operate on original high resolution film scans.

Authentication of a Stradivarius “Petite Violin” Type from 1723

By correlating the structural–functional dimensional data with a series of archaeometric and chemometric characteristics determined by dendrochronological analysis and by three instrumental techniques (Scanning Electronic Microscopy, coupled with Energy Dispersive X-ray, µ-FTIR Spectroscopy and Thermal Analysis in Dynamic Mode), a Stradivarius violin was authenticated as having been made by one of the two Stradivari sons (Francesco or Omobono) in 1723. It should be noted that the “petite” type violin, which comes from a private collection and was recently purchased on the open market, has the original label and is in a poor preservation state. There is only one revarnishing intervention on the violin, and it is older than 80 years. There have been several attempts at sampling (all of which are under 30 years old) for the wooden support and varnish (from the top cover of the resonance box), but the existence of some analysis results is unknown. The dimensional characteristics of the structural–functional components place the violin in “petite violins”, and it is one of the more than 40 still preserved as an authentic artifact.

Audio deepfakes: A survey.

A deepfake is content or material that is synthetically generated or manipulated using artificial intelligence (AI) methods, to be passed off as real and can include audio, video, image, and text synthesis. The key difference between manual editing and deepfakes is that deepfakes are AI generated or AI manipulated and closely resemble authentic artifacts. In some cases, deepfakes can be fabricated using AI-generated content in its entirety. Deepfakes have started to have a major impact on society with more generation mechanisms emerging everyday. This article makes a contribution in understanding the landscape of deepfakes, and their detection and generation methods. We evaluate various categories of deepfakes especially in audio. The purpose of this survey is to provide readers with a deeper understanding of (1) different deepfake categories; (2) how they could be created and detected; (3) more specifically, how audio deepfakes are created and detected in more detail, which is the main focus of this paper. We found that generative adversarial networks (GANs), convolutional neural networks (CNNs), and deep neural networks (DNNs) are common ways of creating and detecting deepfakes. In our evaluation of over 150 methods, we found that the majority of the focus is on video deepfakes, and, in particular, the generation of video deepfakes. We found that for text deepfakes, there are more generation methods but very few robust methods for detection, including fake news detection, which has become a controversial area of research because of the potential heavy overlaps with human generation of fake content. Our study reveals a clear need to research audio deepfakes and particularly detection of audio deepfakes. This survey has been conducted with a different perspective, compared to existing survey papers that mostly focus on just video and image deepfakes. This survey mainly focuses on audio deepfakes that are overlooked in most of the existing surveys. This article's most important contribution is to critically analyze and provide a unique source of audio deepfake research, mostly ranging from 2016 to 2021. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first survey focusing on audio deepfakes generation and detection in English.

Culturally Relevant Model for Digital Language and Literacy Instruction

Overwhelming instructional technology options leave teachers searching for efficient approaches to foster differentiated instruction. This study examined an iterative, design-based research approach of one teacher’s 10-week digital literacy and language-guided small-group instructional intervention with second-grade unidentified language learners. Students explored 15 language and literacy apps, engaged in personalized reading experiences, and created authentic artifacts reflective of their culture. Findings led to the Culturally Relevant Model for Digital Language and Literacy Instruction, a roadmap for teachers and teacher educators to plan tailored instruction to better meet the needs of identified and unidentified students’ language and literacy skills.

Learning with fossils: the interplay of boundary objects and museum educators’ talk in knowledge brokering

ABSTRACT Museums house and display many authentic artifacts and objects. These objects not only draw visitors but can act as boundary objects that bridge between the worlds of scientists and the public. We observed how museum educators leveraged boundary objects in service of knowledge brokering as part of leading four educational programs at a paleontology museum. Specifically, we examined how museum educators used different forms of talk (conceptual, connecting, perceptual) with different types of boundary objects (authentic, educational, disciplinary) in knowledge brokering. The findings show how different patterns and combinations of talk and objects could support knowledge brokering or occasionally lead to failed knowledge brokering. We also discuss how museum educators must often engage in re-brokering as new discoveries are made and disciplinary knowledge evolves.

Emerging materiality through dynamic digital conservation

In the neuralgic field of restoration of delicate sculptural artworks, the contribution of high-precision, contactless three-dimensional (3D) recording in the documentation of their current condition and their further digital investigation are proven valuable. However, the incredible possibilities of the digital sphere oppose the limitations of the matter, raising case-specific ethical and practical issues that highlight the complexity of the restoration process. The nature of the construction material(s) of any cultural artifact determines not only their aging and deterioration ratio in relation to their exposure to environmental conditions but also the ethically acceptable and practically feasible degree of intervention for their conservation. So far, the digital conservation approaches concern artifacts made of rigid materials, such as ceramic and stone. Their very nature determines their conservation treatment in the real world and dictates their digital approach, which orbits around the repositioning of their detached fragments, the supplementation or reconstruction of their lost parts, the design of support structures for display or storage, etc.The singularity of the ‘Xenophanes’ figurine lies in its strong plasticity and the malleable contemporary construction materials (wax and plasticine), which require specialized conservation interventions to be preserved. Over time, the inclination of the figurine has changed significantly, posing stability and deformation issues; its head and stick are detached, and both hands are lost. The timeline of the weathering of this particular artwork is documented at two points in time, in 2005 and 1994.This paper presents the first stage of an ongoing investigation. It includes the documentation of the artworks with both active and passive recording methods, their post-processing methodology offering the opportunity to combine their strengths and integrate them in the resulting 3D model. This final model was subsequently used to accomplish the digital restoration of the figurine to its earlier state(s). The workflow of 3D keyframe animation facilitated the restoration of our non-rigid figurine in digital time. The complexity of the decision-making process for the digital restoration of flexible artworks is highlighted by a series of ethical and applied considerations that arise during the procedure, along with the desire for a digital 3D object that corresponds to the singularity of the authentic artwork in order to evaluate the restoration possibility of the latter. The nature and needs of the figurine studied here allow a dynamic digital post-processing conservation approach that moves beyond reassembly, and within the limits of the tolerances of its construction materials for its reformation, in order to study the restoration steps to earlier states as well as the simulation of a possible physical approach to the object. In such an approach, where the materiality and plasticity of the authentic artifact are interwoven with the protocol for the digital conservation approach, the knowledge and experience of an Information and Communication Technology (ICT) skilled conservator was instrumental.

Monte Carlo Simulations of ED-XRF Spectra as an Authentication Tool for Nuragic Bronzes

The high artistic and cultural relevance of particular objects, in this case from the Nuragic civilization, have stimulated the growth of a forgery industry, replicating small bronze boats (navicelle), statues (bronzetti), and other objects. It is often the case where the forgeries are of such quality that it becomes difficult to distinguish them from authentic artifacts without a proper chemical analysis. In this research, a Monte Carlo simulation algorithm for X-ray interactions with matter is used to obtain the chemical composition from the bulk of each object from a set of five. The method employed has the advantage of being completely nondestructive and relatively fast. The objects’ chemical composition and morphology were compared with the data available from authentic artifacts so their authenticity could be inferred. Four of the five objects are likely to be authentic, where two of them could be associated with a Sardinian origin.

Routes to Forming an Affiliative Postmemory about Difficult Pages in History (Based on the Example of the Era of Political Repression)

This article discusses the mechanism behind the formation in adolescents (representatives of the 4th generation) of an affiliative postmemory about one of the most controversial and complex subjects in Russian history – the era of political repression from the 1930s to the1950s. The first part of the article is devoted to questions of methodology and necessity, and to the possibilities of using an authentic space and an authentic artifact as mediators between past and present in memory practices. The basic ideas are the concepts of “postmemory” by Marianne Hirsch, “grief” by Alexander Etkind, and “affective management of history” by Sergey Oushakin. Additionally, there are the ideas of Varvara Sklez, Veronica Dorman, Olga Strelova, and Alexander Kotlomanov in relations to that very authentic space and/or artifact which helps to provoke and form the memory of complex pages of history, not from within, but from without, enabling the creation of a kind of “sensory laboratory” for the period. Thanks to this “feeling”, dry information is experienced and appropriated by a person through the strong emotions provoked, and the level of individual affiliative memory of the era of political repression is built up. The second part of the article describes two experiments which allowed me to analyse the effects of an authentic space (an immersive drama performance) and an authentic artifact (an archived investigation casefile) on adolescents.

The Valediction of Moses: New Evidence on the Shapira Deuteronomy Fragments

Abstract Wilhelm Moses Shapira’s infamous Deuteronomy fragments have long been deemed forgeries, with Shapira himself serving as the obvious suspect. I provide new evidence that Shapira did not forge the fragments and was himself convinced of their authenticity. Indeed, the evidence for forgery is illusory. In a companion monograph, I show that the Shapira fragments are not only authentic ancient artifacts but are unprecedented in their significance: They preserve a pre-canonical antecedent of the Book of Deuteronomy.

Using information literacy to teach medical entrepreneurship and health care economics.

ObjectiveEntrepreneurship and innovative product design in health care requires expertise in finding and evaluating diverse types of information from a multitude of sources to accomplish a number of tasks, such as securing regulatory approval, developing a reimbursement strategy, and navigating intellectual property. The authors sought to determine whether an intensive, specialized information literacy training program that introduced undergraduate biomedical engineering students to these concepts would improve the quality of the students’ design projects. We also sought to test whether information literacy training that included active learning exercises would offer increased benefits over training delivered via lectures and if this specialized information literacy training would increase the extent of students’ information use.MethodsA three-arm cohort study was conducted with a control group and two experimental groups. Mixed methods assessment, including a rubric and citation analysis, was used to evaluate program outcomes by examining authentic artifacts of student learning.ResultsStudent design teams that received information literacy training on topics related to medical entrepreneurship and health care economics showed significantly improved performance on aspects of project performance relevant to health care economics over student design teams that did not receive this training. There were no significant differences between teams that engaged in active learning exercises and those that only received training via lectures. Also, there were no significant differences in citation patterns between student teams that did or did not receive specialized information literacy training.ConclusionsInformation literacy training can be used as a method for introducing undergraduate health sciences students to the health care economics aspects of the medical entrepreneurship life cycle, including the US Food and Drug Administration regulatory environment, intellectual property, and medical billing and reimbursement structures.

Tinkering with Logo in an Elementary Mathematics Methods Course

With an increased push to integrate coding and computational literacy in K–12 learning environments, teacher educators will need to consider ways they might support preservice teachers (PSTs). This paper details a tinkering approach used to engage PSTs in thinking computationally as they worked with geometric concepts they will be expected to teach in K–5. Experiences programming in Logo to construct authentic artifacts in the form of two-dimensional geometric graphics not only supported PSTs’ understanding of core geometric and spatial concepts, but also helped them to make connections between mathematics and computational literacy. Artifacts and discourse are discussed as they relate to three core considerations: engaging learners to construct authentic artifacts, supporting a communitarian ethos, and supporting various types of rapid feedback.

Abuse of Natural Sciences in (Pseudo)Archaeology

In pseudo-archaeological writings, both the ones originating from marginal sources, but as well from the grey zone inside the discipline itself, a tendency can be identified to invoke various analyses and methods from the realm of natural sciences, aimed at justifying authors’ ideas. The aim of this strategy is dislocation of argumentation from the field of archaeology and verifiable archaeological data into the more slippery field of false complexity and presumed interdisciplinarity. Archaeological epistemology presupposes that every interpretation of the past requires a clear and explicit theoretical framework and verifiable data, as well as their dynamic relationship of reciprocity through research design. On the other hand, as a rule pseudo-scientific claims do not comply to any theoretical or methodological framework, and the very data base used spans from simple forgeries to random interpretations of authentic artefacts. In order to compensate for weak or even non-existent archaeological grounds of these interpretations, argumentation is transferred into the area supposed to be less accessible to archaeological public, so that false and unsubstantiated claims can be made.

Can You Tell Me How to Get to the Warsaw Ghetto?

Can You Tell Me How to Get to the Warsaw Ghetto? Benjamin Paloff (bio) "An enormous cap of dark grey smoke above the Extinct City in the Capital maintains, with the weight of its material, the reality of the fiction that is the emptiness: the City in the City, the City that no longer is." —Stanisław Śreniowski, a Jewish historian living in hiding on the "Aryan" side, recalling the Ghetto Uprising1 In the courtyard behind the apartment building at 55 Sienna Street, one can still visit a rare fragment of the wall that, for a brief period between November 1940 and October 1941, marked the southern boundary of the Warsaw Ghetto. Though situated just northwest of the Central Train Station, in the heart of the Polish capital's downtown, it is remarkably hard to find. To approach its east side, you have to be buzzed through a gate by a guard who, though unseen, is apparently keeping watch for visitors, who are invariably checking a map or guidebook against the addresses on the adjacent buildings, certain that if they were in the right place there would be a sign to direct them to a site of such importance. There is not. The momentary puzzlement is interrupted by the rattle of the electric lock and the reflexive desire to push the gate. Against an otherwise unremarkable red brick wall, a dusky plaque shows the contours of the Ghetto and locates this modest section of wall (fig. 1). It turns out that we are still outside the Ghetto. The approach from the western side is more interesting, but more challenging. You have to be lucky enough to find one of the apartment entryways open in order to pass through to the inner Click for larger view View full resolution Figs 1–2. left to right. One of the last surviving fragments of the wall around the Warsaw Ghetto, east side and west side. Photographs by the author. courtyard, the perspective from inside the Ghetto. Should you do so, you will also see a space where two bricks have been removed (fig. 2). A small hexagonal plaque, dated August 1989, informs the visitor in Polish and English: "A casting and two original bricks of this wall erected by the Nazis to enclose the Warsaw Ghetto were taken to the United States Holocaust Memorial and Museum in Washington to give authentic power to its permanent collection." An empty space once occupied by the missing bricks stares out from the middle of the wall. However we relate individually to such material anchors of collective memory, it is clear from this example that even the most undistinguished object can attain tremendous signifying power under the right circumstances. In this case, those circumstances are not limited to the historical catastrophe of the Ghetto's brief and tragic life, which saw nearly half a million civilians crammed into an urban zone of about 1.3 square miles—roughly four times the population density of the most overcrowded cities in the world today—before the first, utterly hopeless armed rebellion of Jews against the Nazis in April and May 1943.2 More important from our contemporary vantage point is that the story of the Ghetto also encompasses the near-total annihilation of architectural traces of its ever having existed. "The place where the Ghetto used to be is empty," Barbara Engelking and Jacek Leociak write in their epilogue to the most comprehensive collation of information about the Ghetto published to date: "The place survived, but was somehow hollowed out, deprived of contents, an interior. The Ghetto that was here was exterminated, but the 'here' remains. … The framework remains within which a different reality is located; a topographical point remains, a cartographical abstraction."3 In this regard, the outline of space around the missing bricks may be more emblematic of the Ghetto as we now experience it than the modest section of wall itself. It suggests an economy of presence and absence, of authentic artifact and simulated space, that is central to the modern experience of the past in population centers, where we witness most readily the conflict between architectural preservation, with its roots in nineteenth-century industrialization...

Cross-cultural Communication in Russian Advertising

The processes of globalization/glocalization in contemporary world give rise to s cross-cultural communication across the cultures (Gudykunst, 2003) where a crucial role is played by advertising. The current investigation is dedicated to cross-cultural aspects of Russian advertising and deals with the adverts created for Russian and foreign companies working in Moscow in late 2000s to mid 2010s. The study aims to highlight not so much economical or political components of cross-cultural advertising communications as their cultural constituents. The analysis of textual and visual content of the adverts based on the semiological approach (Barthes, 2013) showed that cross-cultural communication in advertising in Russia mostly involves “global symbols” (Urri, 2002), well-known touristic referents of concrete cultures. Symbols from the sign systems of different cultures are not only translated by advertising by means of semantic codes alien to them, but the signs and their referents are re-encoded in a substantial way. The postmodern cross-cultural game in advertising constructs the culture’s external and internal self-representations on the basis of its external ethnic images which have developed in foreign cultures. Cross-cultural communication in Russian advertising creates a multi-layered blend of cultures and imparts new cultural meanings into authentic artifacts and images and the semiosphere of the intercommunicating cultures in general. DOI: 10.5901/mjss.2015.v6n6s5p250

Exploring the relationships between teaching, approaches to learning and critical thinking in a problem-based learning foundation nursing course

Undergraduate nursing programmes are responsible for providing teaching and learning that develops students' knowledge, skills and attitudes in alignment with contemporary nursing standards and healthcare demands. Problem-based learning (PBL) as a pedagogy uses authentic artefacts reflecting real-world situations for students to practice problem-solving skills through collaboration with their peers. PBL was introduced in a foundation nursing course delivered in a regional university in Queensland, Australia. This paper presents the findings of a study exploring the relationships between nursing students' individual characteristics and perceptions of learning environments, teaching in PBL mode, approaches to learning, and critical thinking skill readiness. The study was guided by an ecological perspective designed to examine nursing students' ecological environments and the influences of those environments on their approaches to learning, and on critical thinking skill readiness. The results, through hierarchical linear modelling, revealed that aspects of the PBL approach to teaching influenced the approaches to learning students adopt, and thus their critical thinking skill readiness. Implications for teaching in undergraduate nursing programmes are discussed.

Tips to Help Women Leaders Succeed in a Male Environment

Tips to Help Women Leaders Succeed in a Male Environment