PhD Project - The River Shotton circa 10,000 Years Ago - Eugene Ch'ng (2003 to 2007) скачать в хорошем качестве

PhD Project - The River Shotton circa 10,000 Years Ago - Eugene Ch'ng (2003 to 2007)

Eugene’s project focused on bringing alive a particular historical setting, today inaccessible due to the limitations imposed by time and space, namely the Shotton River Valley. The river was named after a famous British geologist, Frederick Shotton, a Staff Officer of the Royal Engineers in WW2 and part of the team responsible for mapping the French beaches, pinpointing the most suitable D-Day invasion areas. Seismic data from a previous Petroleum Geoservices survey of the Southern North Sea revealed a large (28km) river valley from an ancient landscape dating back 10,000 to 7,000 years. The significance of this finding related to the migration of ancient “hunter-gatherer” populations from mainland Europe before the flooding of the North Sea that drove settlements away and wiped out living organisms. Very briefly, Eugene’s project was not only to visualise the Mesolithic landscape with vegetation positioned according to expert opinions from geologists, archaeologists and environmentalists, but also to develop a software-based Artificial Life (ALife) system (the “SeederEngine”). This was done in the hope that, by simulating localised and dispersed growth patterns, reproduction, adaptation and competition, it may be possible to obtain a credible interpretation of the landscape in order to determine settlement patterns of the ancient inhabitants. You can read more in Ch’ng & Stone, “Enhancing Virtual Reality with Artificial Life: Reconstructing a Flooded European Mesolithic Landscape” (with Ch’ng); Presence (Special Virtual Heritage Edition); June, 2006; 15(3); pp.341-352.