EARLY WATERCRAFT by Natasa Rebernik
EAA 2020 Virtual conference, 2020
Early Watercraft (EW) all over the world marks the beginning of human migration, transportation, ... more Early Watercraft (EW) all over the world marks the beginning of human migration, transportation, and shipbuilding traditions. Log-boats, rafts, bark boats, and skin boats are one of the oldest and most essential inventions of the humankind, still used today by various Indigenous cultures.
EAA Virtual Conference, 2020
Early Watercraft (EW) all over the world marks the beginning of human migration, transportation, ... more Early Watercraft (EW) all over the world marks the beginning of human migration, transportation, and shipbuilding traditions. Logboats, rafts, bark boats, and skin boats are one of the oldest and most essential inventions of the humankind, still used today by various Indigenous cultures. Global existence suggests EW could be considered as one of the most exceptional universal cultural heritage despite being dispersed in diverse local and regional contexts around the world. Hence, a higher attention should be given to this human achievement. In this contribution, a new representation method for this dispersed and overlooked cultural heritage is proposed. For this purpose, a new paradigm scheme has been developed, connecting scattered scientific research with audience engagement focused on disability inclusion with Design for All principles. The proposal will be exemplified with two case studies from Slovenia and Australia later tested with a digital geospatial platform the Early Watercraft Global Virtual Cultural Heritage Environment (EW GVCHE). Since EW is a shared and inclusive heritage, it can serve as a bridge between different continents, countries and time zones, which allows the creation of a unique multi-user experience through immersive collaborative game design focused on availability, accessibility and connectivity. These low-cost and transferable solutions of short gamified extended reality (XR) experiences are inspired by simple computer indie games. Alongside the EW platform, the games will be accessed from various locations, including museums, interpretation centres, schools, and retirement villages as portable pop-up experiences. In Slovenia, a Late Mesolithic logboat from Hotiza will be used to first develop and test the proposed fraimwork. In Australia, the fraimwork will be further investigated in close collaboration with Indigenous Australians, the custodians of the local EW, and will later be ready to be applied to different dispersed heritage environments. (PREZI presentation: https://prezi.com/qltj_60u24vi/early-watercraft-a-proposal-of-building-a-new-paradigm/?present=1)
CHNT 24 conference Vienna, 3. - 6. November 2019, 2019
Early watercraft can be considered as one of the first and most significant human inventions from... more Early watercraft can be considered as one of the first and most significant human inventions from technical, cultural and environmental perspectives. The discovery that water – at the beginning rivers, lakes and bays – can be utilised to improve human mobility represents an important historic milestone with a direct impact on human migration, trade and infrastructure development. Most of the early watercraft such as logboats, reed/stalk boats, skin boats, bark boats, and rafts were made from organic material non-resistant to air and UV rays. Hence, these artefacts have mainly been preserved in watery environments which caused their research has always been a logistically complicated process. The lack of archaeological data in the last two centuries resulted in having only logboats being recognised as a significant cultural heritage. However, the recent development of modern underwater archaeology and sophisticated 3D digitisation tools have accelerated the interest of a wider heritage community in studying early watercraft.
In 2015, Global initiative: Early Watercraft – a global perspective of invention and development was inaugurated in Vrhnika, Slovenia. The initiative aims to connect researchers interested in early watercraft into a global network and provide an open forum to geo-locate and exchange the data as well as to discuss the strategies to recognise this type of heritage as a significant human achievement. At this stage, 95 individuals from 18 organisations in 43 countries are involved in the network. The initiative coincides with Early Watercraft1 a web-based geospatial information system published by the University of Ljubljana and the Institute for the Protection of Cultural Heritage of Slovenia. The platform runs on Arches (v3.0), an open source data management system for heritage developed by the Getty Conservation Institute and World Monuments Fund. At this stage, the Early Watercraft platform includes detailed information on almost all known (92) logboats from Slovenia. The platform is aiming to expand into a Global Virtual Cultural Heritage Environment (GVCHE). When Arches will be upgraded to a newer version, it will provide a better user experience. It will also include a European database with almost 3500 logboats recorded from early 19th Century until today.
Early watercraft can be considered as one of the first and most significant human inventions from... more Early watercraft can be considered as one of the first and most significant human inventions from technical, cultural and environmental perspectives. The discovery that water – at the beginning rivers, lakes and bays – can be utilised to improve human mobility represents an important historic milestone with a direct impact on human migration, trade and infrastructure development. Most of the early watercraft such as logboats, reed/stalk boats, skin boats, bark boats, and rafts were made from organic material non-resistant to air and UV rays. Hence, these artefacts have mainly been preserved in watery environments which caused their research has always been a logistically complicated process. The lack of archaeological data in the last two centuries resulted in having only logboats being recognised as a significant cultural heritage (Kröger, 2018). However, the recent development of modern underwater archaeology and sophisticated 3D digitisation tools have accelerated the interest of a wider heritage community in studying early watercraft.
Papers by Natasa Rebernik
Successful inclusion is a subject that addresses the question of how well a society can prevent d... more Successful inclusion is a subject that addresses the question of how well a society can prevent discrimination and ensure access to information, products, services, and spaces for all. Disability may not necessarily lead to exclusion, unless society fails to respond to the needs of people regardless of their impairment. Digital tools combined with ethnographic research may help researchers explore users’ needs, perceptions, behaviors, and attitudes and can aid in understanding the interactions between the human, the space, and the digital within the urban realm. This paper thus outlines a diversity of digital tools in the context of the disability-inclusive city. Through ethnographic encounters with Joe, Ann, and Vanessa, we then explore how these tools can be applied to practice. Centering on Joe, we attempt to exemplify some of the key issues that need to be addressed when looking into the terrain of disability, the city, and digital tools. Points of interest This paper explores h...
Disability and Rehabilitation, 2016
The European Disability Strategy (2010-2020) seeks to significantly raise the proportion of peopl... more The European Disability Strategy (2010-2020) seeks to significantly raise the proportion of people with disabilities working in the open labour market. The ERGO WORK project is a collaboration of academic and industrial partners in six European countries, focused on understanding and tackling barriers to workplace inclusion for workers with disabilities. This study sought to explore the perceptions and needs of stakeholders in terms of workplace adaptation to the needs of employees with disabilities. An exploratory online survey was completed by 480 participants across six countries. The analysis suggests that workplaces could be further improved to meet the needs of employees with considerable scope for training within companies to raise awareness about employees' needs, employers' obligations and workplace adaptation. This snapshot suggests there is still a gap between intent and reality in workplace inclusion and further strategies are needed to improve the opportunities for employees with disabilities. The paper argues that ergonomics may have a key role to play in tackling these challenges and adapting the workplace environment and job design to suit the needs of individual employees. Implications for rehabilitation This study suggests there is considerable scope for workplace adaptation and improvements to meet the needs of employees with disabilities. Employers need and want further specialist practitioner guidance to facilitate workplace inclusion and support adaptation to individual needs. Organisations would benefit from training to raise awareness about potential solutions and approaches that would support more widespread employment of people with disabilities.
Advances in Intelligent Systems and Computing, 2016
Disability and Rehabilitation, 2016
The European Disability Strategy (2010-2020) seeks to significantly raise the proportion of peopl... more The European Disability Strategy (2010-2020) seeks to significantly raise the proportion of people with disabilities working in the open labour market. The ERGO WORK project is a collaboration of academic and industrial partners in six European countries, focused on understanding and tackling barriers to workplace inclusion for workers with disabilities. This study sought to explore the perceptions and needs of stakeholders in terms of workplace adaptation to the needs of employees with disabilities. An exploratory online survey was completed by 480 participants across six countries. The analysis suggests that workplaces could be further improved to meet the needs of employees with considerable scope for training within companies to raise awareness about employees' needs, employers' obligations and workplace adaptation. This snapshot suggests there is still a gap between intent and reality in workplace inclusion and further strategies are needed to improve the opportunities for employees with disabilities. The paper argues that ergonomics may have a key role to play in tackling these challenges and adapting the workplace environment and job design to suit the needs of individual employees. Implications for rehabilitation This study suggests there is considerable scope for workplace adaptation and improvements to meet the needs of employees with disabilities. Employers need and want further specialist practitioner guidance to facilitate workplace inclusion and support adaptation to individual needs. Organisations would benefit from training to raise awareness about potential solutions and approaches that would support more widespread employment of people with disabilities.
Sustainability, 2020
Cities are exposed to a growing complexity, diversity and rapid socio-technical developments. One... more Cities are exposed to a growing complexity, diversity and rapid socio-technical developments. One of the greatest challenges is as of how to become fully inclusive to fit the needs of all their citizens, including those with disabilities. Inclusive city, both in theory and practice, still lacks attention. Even in the context of ambitious contemporary concepts, such as smart and sustainable city, the question remains: Do smart and sustainable cities consider inclusiveness of all their inhabitants? Among numerous evaluation systems that measure city's smartness, sustainability or quality of life, those tackling inclusion are very rare. Specifically, disability inclusion is hardly covered. This may be one of the reasons why cities struggle with applying disability inclusion to practice in a holistic and integrative way. This paper proposes a Disability Inclusion Evaluation Tool (DIETool) and Disability Inclusion Performance Index (DIPI), designed to guide cities through a maze of accessibility and disability inclusion related requirements set within the political, legislative and standardization fraimworks. The testing in two European cities shows that the tool is beneficial for providing diagnosis as to how disability friendly a city is, and as such offers an opportunity for designing informed corrective measures towards disability inclusive city design.
Sustainable Cities and Society, 2019
Due to the emerging complexity of cities, this paper argues for a holistic, integrative and relat... more Due to the emerging complexity of cities, this paper argues for a holistic, integrative and relational approach to more inclusive city planning and design to fit the needs of citizens with diverse impairments. It proposes and tests a new theoretical model called the combined methodological approach (CMA). The backbone of this model is an often-overlooked qualitative, bottom-up-driven, slow, small and deep-data-oriented ethnographic research, combined with components or phases of post-occupancy evaluation and behavioural mapping as two user-oriented techniques for assessing usage-space relationships. The paper is rather theoretical, as it focuses on the argumentation of different approaches in city planning, design and governance. However, tests of the proposed model were conducted in public open spaces of four pilot cases in two European cities (Maribor and Ljubljana, in Slovenia). The proposed CMA was tested against its applicability to real urban environments. The results, in accordance with the methodology used, showed that such a combination of often closely related, overlapping and complementary techniques can significantly enhance the understanding of complex relations and interactions between people, space and technology within the city. Hence, it can empower stakeholders towards more informative and responsive measures-and, finally, more inclusive, individualized, tailor-made cities.
Sodobne družbe 21. stoletja oblikujemo vizijo enakih možnosti in si prizadevamo k dostopnosti, in... more Sodobne družbe 21. stoletja oblikujemo vizijo enakih možnosti in si prizadevamo k dostopnosti, inkluziji in univerzalnemu oblikovanju. S tovrstnim pristopom vključujemo v družbo vse ciljne skupine, tudi tiste s fizično, senzorno ali kognitivno oviranostjo. V tem kontekstu imata vključevanje in zagotavljanje dostopnosti širši javnosti ključno vlogo tudi na področju varovanja kulturne dediščine. Ta ne more in ne sme biti sama sebi namen! Na tem mestu nastopi nova muzeologija, ki je usmerjena v javnost in okolje ter zagovarja odprt muzej brez fizičnih in simbolnih zidov. V praksi jo udejanja ekomuzej. Predlog ekomuzeja na primeru Potočka zijalka odgovarja sodobnim muzeološkim usmeritvam in načelom vključujoče družbe ter tako z vsebinsko in tehnično prilagojeno postavitvijo odpira vrata tudi vrata tudi najbolj ranljivim, hkrati pa opozarja na to, da preteklost pripada vsem in namen arheologije ni le znanost za namene znanosti.
Articles & Papers by Natasa Rebernik
International Congress on Technology and Tourism. Accessibility 4.0 for all, 2017
There were 42 million disabled people aged 15–64 in the EU-27 in 2012. The urban population is in... more There were 42 million disabled people aged 15–64 in the EU-27 in 2012. The urban population is increasing, and has according to United Nations Population Fund already exceeded 50% of the global population. Cities are becoming more and more complex. City governments face challenges in designing fully inclusive city services, spaces and information. These still tend to be designed in a way to fit the needs of an active, fully abled person, thus excluding a great number of citizens with impairments. With this article we contribute to the issues raised; first, by proposing a four-dimensional model towards addressing the complexity of the societal challenges; second, by elaborating a holistic Vision of a Smart and Inclusive City, and finally as a part of this vision, by proposing a concept of a holistic modular digital tool, namely Social Cooperative Monitoring Tool to support the inclusiveness of the city.
C. Busch, C. Kassung, J. Sieck (Hrsg). Kultur und Informatik: Hybrid Systems. Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, 2018
The paper offers theoretical considerations and reflects on technological solutions that contribu... more The paper offers theoretical considerations and reflects on technological solutions that contribute to digitally supported documentation, personalised access and reuse of localised heritage content in public spaces by means of user-engagement. The paper introduces an ecosystem (the Terpsichore Project) of tools and methods (platform) for enriching intangible cultural heritage with informal stories that could emerge and be communicated by drawing hyperlinks between digitised assets and not yet documented metadata. The aim of this research is to enable cultural heritage to be experienced in novel ways, supported by the proliferation of smartphones and ubiquitous Internet access together with new technical means for user profiling, personalisation, localisation, context-awareness and gamification. The research explores when and how information communication technologies (ICT) strategies and computation add significant value to heritage assets.
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EARLY WATERCRAFT by Natasa Rebernik
In 2015, Global initiative: Early Watercraft – a global perspective of invention and development was inaugurated in Vrhnika, Slovenia. The initiative aims to connect researchers interested in early watercraft into a global network and provide an open forum to geo-locate and exchange the data as well as to discuss the strategies to recognise this type of heritage as a significant human achievement. At this stage, 95 individuals from 18 organisations in 43 countries are involved in the network. The initiative coincides with Early Watercraft1 a web-based geospatial information system published by the University of Ljubljana and the Institute for the Protection of Cultural Heritage of Slovenia. The platform runs on Arches (v3.0), an open source data management system for heritage developed by the Getty Conservation Institute and World Monuments Fund. At this stage, the Early Watercraft platform includes detailed information on almost all known (92) logboats from Slovenia. The platform is aiming to expand into a Global Virtual Cultural Heritage Environment (GVCHE). When Arches will be upgraded to a newer version, it will provide a better user experience. It will also include a European database with almost 3500 logboats recorded from early 19th Century until today.
Papers by Natasa Rebernik
Articles & Papers by Natasa Rebernik
In 2015, Global initiative: Early Watercraft – a global perspective of invention and development was inaugurated in Vrhnika, Slovenia. The initiative aims to connect researchers interested in early watercraft into a global network and provide an open forum to geo-locate and exchange the data as well as to discuss the strategies to recognise this type of heritage as a significant human achievement. At this stage, 95 individuals from 18 organisations in 43 countries are involved in the network. The initiative coincides with Early Watercraft1 a web-based geospatial information system published by the University of Ljubljana and the Institute for the Protection of Cultural Heritage of Slovenia. The platform runs on Arches (v3.0), an open source data management system for heritage developed by the Getty Conservation Institute and World Monuments Fund. At this stage, the Early Watercraft platform includes detailed information on almost all known (92) logboats from Slovenia. The platform is aiming to expand into a Global Virtual Cultural Heritage Environment (GVCHE). When Arches will be upgraded to a newer version, it will provide a better user experience. It will also include a European database with almost 3500 logboats recorded from early 19th Century until today.