Bringing cultural heritage knowledge to life

[itscolossal]

Mesmerizing Paper Sculptures and Animations by Zai Divecha Convey the Subtlety of Change

[headspace-hotel]

Y'ALL I FOUND A GOOD PLANT WEBSITE

[headspace-hotel]

Oh my god how have I not found this before. It lets you toggle between photos of the flowers, leaves, fruits and seeds. It shows a map of where the plant is native. It gives you links to like 12 websites with more info about the plant. Amazing

[headspace-hotel]

This website was made by this one guy who is a nerd about flowers

[headspace-hotel]

I've only tried to look in the USA so it may not have other areas but this is one of the best resources I've found

[headspace-hotel]

(there are a LOT of photographers, biologists and botanists who have contributed to it)

[headspace-hotel]

One of the guys that works on it made this website which has aN EXHAUSTIVE LIST OF SOUTHEASTERN USA PLANTS

[immersive-heritage]

Looking for resources to make game worlds feel more like the integrated ecosystems they should be can be difficult, but using reality as a launching point is easier when you can refer to labors of love like this site.

[niuniente]

Traditional European Christmas time monsters, photographer across the Europe by Charles Fréger.

[murin-cryptique]

From Wilder Mann:

“For two years in 2010 and 2011, Charles Fréger criss-crossed Europe from north to south, from Finland to Portugal, passing through Romania, Germany and Slovenia, in search of the figure of the savage as it survives in local popular traditions.

These images, like archetypes, half-man half-beast, animal or vegetable, resurface from the depths of time on the occasion of ritualistic, pagan or religious festivals, celebrating the cycle of the seasons, the fat days, carnival or the eve of Easter. In the common fund of the European rural societies, these characters or emblematic animals represented protective figures or symbols of fertility. Today they evoke an imaginary, impulsive and physical world where everyone perceives an ancestral relationship with nature where the springs of our animality and sometimes the regressive desire inherent in some of our behaviors emerge. […]”

Source

[anneapocalypse]

Tactical Camera in Dragon Age

Full video: https://youtu.be/zSBW3BqJfxo

So, Dragon Age: Origins, obviously, on PC, known for its tactical camera. Dragon Age: Origins on consoles didn't actually have tac cam, and Dragon Age 2 didn't have tac cam at all, so tac cam remains this interesting feature in the Dragon Age franchise where some players feel like it is a key part of the DNA, and other people never use it whatsoever.

What we found in Dragon Age: Inquisition was it was a feature that was not used very much, and even those people who did use it often used it simply to survey the battlefield before doing most of the combat in the third-person over-the-shoulder camera. Because it's such a radically different camera angle, tac-cam requires a significant amount of additional level design and especially level art work to allow it to coexist with that over-the-shoulder camera.

- Mark Darrah, former Dragon Age Executive Producer

[immersive-heritage]

It's always interesting to see how these design decisions pan out - are users doing what devs expected? Are features being used wildly differently from their purpose? Something like the tac cam is a great case study in that users can actually give feedback on what scenarios they found it most desirable and meaningful, and how it added to their gameplay quality

[iamanathemadevice-deactivated20]

Tom Lehrer puts all his songs into the public domain

Apparently also his website will shut down “at some date in the not too distant future” so now’s a good time to download directly.

“In short, I no longer retain any rights to any of my songs. So help yourselves, and don’t send me any money.”

https://tomlehrersongs.com/

Source.

It’s only the lyrics, but you can find the musical tunes on Youtube etc.

If you don’t know Tom Lehrer, you really, really should, no matter how old you are! Here’s one of my favourites - Werner von Braun:

[tzikeh]

It is not just the lyrics. He has put the bulk of his music up as audio files, as well as a lot of sheet music, PLUS the lyrics.

Gotta love a power move at 94 years old.

(Sources say the site will go down in 2024, so you still have time!)

[immersive-heritage]

Knowing that artists, musicians, designers and storytellers have shared their creativity so openly gives us all great opportunities for recombining and reinterpreting our own cultural landscape - these are our cultural heritage as well, and public domain works are great material for game assets too

[vuutarros]

The world's oldest story? Astronomers say global myths about 'seven sisters' stars may reach back 100,000 years https://phys.org/news/2020-12-world-oldest-story-astronomers-global.html

The world's oldest story? Astronomers say global myths about 'seven sisters' stars may reach back 100,000 years

In the northern sky in December is a beautiful cluster of stars known as the Pleiades, or the "seven sisters." Look carefully and you will p

Holy shit, this is cool!

So many cultures call the Pleiades some variation of the "seven sisters" despite only having six visible stars. There only appear to be six because two of the stars are so close together as to appear as one.

The myths also mention one sister leaving or hiding to explain why there's only six. And based off observations and measurements, those two that are so close together used to be visibly separate. One literally has moved to hide.

And based off the similarities between the more commonly known Greek myth and the Aboriginal Australian myth, plus some other stuff, this myth could possibly even date back to when humanity still all resided in Africa!

[immersive-heritage]

The world of our own mythologies are so complex and fascinating - seeing this at the heart of a game could give depth and meaning to a player's experiences

[itscolossal]

Join Us for A Colossal Workshop on Playful Character Drawings with Mattias Adolfsson

Got a pen and paper? Join artist Mattias Adolfsson and Colossal on March 11 for a virtual workshop on small character illustrations.

In this one-hour session, Adolfsson will teach students how to draw a few of his signature quirky characters in ink and color and how to keep sketching. Register now!

[tgcnews]

Ludology Game Design Checklist

The Ludology podcast has a Game Design Checklist and we think this is a helpful tool for board game designers. It's hosted by our friends at Cardboard Edison, which is another great resource for game designers.

[immersive-heritage]

Really nice resource getting down to the core of the design process - Answering these brings a fun idea up to the point of a plausible game.

[immersive-heritage]

We're talking a lot about digitizing heritage these days, but what does that actually mean? The games industry has a lot to offer on this front, but what is working well and what isn't?

On 19 February our very own Caroline Jeffra will be talking about what Immersive Heritage does in this field and what games can achieve as we seek to keep our heritage accessible in the future.

Registration is free and all are welcome, just follow the link in our bio to join in!

[immersive-heritage]

What if heritage games were open world?

Open world games are my favorites - I'm a chronic sidequest accumulator - and the idea of interpreting archaeological sites through open world games was one of the starting points for Immersive Heritage. But what about the drawbacks of open worlds?

spoiler alert: they feel like games are open world for the sake of it, rather than because it benefits the game.

There's the obvious problem of how to create quality open worlds which successfully interpret and communicate those archaeological and historical facts that were the starting point. There's also the issue of the tremendous weight of what we don't know from the historical or archaeological record. To top that all off, the absence of a main narrative can be off putting. What's the point?

Scale, uncertainty, aimlessness. All pretty thorny criticisms. But imagine the power of stepping into a mostly functional historical landscape and seeing the interrelationships between craftspeople, farmers, elites, men and women and children. For serious games where knowledge sharing is the driving force, these can be lessons that are much more impactful than textbooks and glass cases full of pottery (said with affection; I've spent plenty of happy hours with archaeological pottery!).

[immersive-heritage]

Making heritage into games... but don't forget the games in our heritage

Anyone remember the first time their favorite game became unplayable? Maybe the cartridge just wouldn't work no matter how you blew on it. Maybe the disc was too scratched up. Maybe the console stopped working, or the new TV didn't have the right plugs for it to connect. What do you do to keep that connection alive?

The Fate of Video Game Preservation Is in Your Hands

Today's digitally distributed landscape makes it easier for games to get lost to time. Archivists need developers, studios, and players to h

We have libraries for books, the internet archive is working very hard to preserve webpages and online content, and people like Marion Stokes recorded what was aired on live tv for years, but for games it's a bit trickier. Wired argues a good case (not that they were the first, but it is a nice recent contribution).

What about the joy of Easter eggs? The in-jokes and culture that grows up and through the games themselves? Thumbsticks recently talked about this via reporting on the closure of USGamer. There's no real moral to be written about it, it's a decision made by a business without reference to the significance of preserving cultural artifacts big and small. It is, however, a ringing endorsement of the importance of using the internet archive's WayBackMachine to preserve individual pages.

Preserving games media is as important as preserving the games themselves – Thumbsticks

Another video game website will soon disappear. In the digital age, more has to be done to preserve video games coverage.

It'll be interesting to see what practices become standard in the coming years. After all, when game developers keep future archives in mind, there's a far better chance of their games making it into the archives. And it's meaningful to invest time and effort into preserving the network of media that contextualizes those games, though it's not clear how that might be formatted at this stage...

[geekmyclass]

Interesting article on the difference between gamification and serious games.

[immersive-heritage]

Not a new article (3 years!) but it's funny how these two things can blend together when people are thinking so hard about engagement. Two different approaches to getting a message across, here, but whether or not it can actually be considered a game is pretty clear cut.

[immersive-heritage]

Our latest project: Tracing the Potter's Wheel

Introducing Tracing the Potter’s Wheel / De Geheimen van het Pottenbakkerswiel

Introducing Tracing the Potter’s Wheel / De Geheimen van het Pottenbakkerswiel Have you ever wandered through a museum gallery and wondered

The Tracing the Potter's Wheel exhibit is our first blended exhibit - you can visit at the Allard Pierson in Amsterdam at their ArcheoHotspot (until 6 November!!), and you can play complementary games on our itch.io page - everything's in Dutch and English, (presto in italiano)!

We're really proud of these little games, they gave us opportunities that aren't possible in a museum exhibit. I've talked about the relationship between the displays and the games in the blog post linked above. It's an exhibit curated by archaeologists to share how we do research, so if that's up your alley then it's worth a peek.

If you're in Amsterdam during museumnacht (November 5!) come by and chat - I'll be there along with the other archaeologists who put the exhibit together! We'd love to chat with you between the cocktails and the live music ;)

[immersive-heritage]

What is a museum, anyway?

Definitions matter, and with the change to how ICOM defines "museum", there are some opportunities on their way. I wrote a blog post about this recently.

Defining the museum: a pathway for digital integrations

Redefining what a museum is has created new opportunities within the cultural heritage sector, which can be met with digital and blended int

In short:

A museum is a not-for-profit, permanent institution in the service of society that researches, collects, conserves, interprets and exhibits tangible and intangible heritage. Open to the public, accessible and inclusive, museums foster diversity and sustainability. They operate and communicate ethically, professionally and with the participation of communities, offering varied experiences for education, enjoyment, reflection and knowledge sharing.

It's the less radical of the two options under discussion, but it still is a massive step forward.

[museum-spaces]

I'm really sorry to bother you, but I've been thinking about studying Museology and have read a lot of your posts (and those of people you've reblogged), and a few of those have been about the ethics of displaying corpses versus in some cases reburying them (which sounds like a very interesting dilemma considering that {in the opinion of someone who doesn't know a lot about museums} museums often are about preserving artifacts) - how often do questions like these come up? Can you avoid them?

not a bother at all dear nerd.

to quote a curator i used to work for ‘people don’t learn from bodies’

she was speaking about mummified human remains - i am not going to call them corpses as that is too clinical for what museums do. mummified human remains are somebody’s ancestor. somebody’s grandfather/mother/auntie/cousin/etc. all it takes for me to see the ethical quandary is to question if i would want my own grandmother displayed in a case in 100 years. - the answer is no i would want her body to remain in private for rest until she becomes earth again.

what that curator was talking about is how the macabre tends to shock and fascinate many guests without them questioning or learning anything new from the display. a museum that did it very badly had a human head on a stick with interpretation that said something like ‘do you think i’m scary’. i can’t tell you what else was in that gallery because there was a human being on a stick there. this institute has since re-displayed their human remains much more ethically - in a gallery off to one side with notices on the doors about the ancestors resting there.

from the position of museums having human remains will always change the landscape of the gallery. your display will become about the remains instead of about the culture they are taken from. you will always have issues with originating communities wanting their ancestors back - repatriation 101 - and they will be right to demand their return. they change the landscape of education in the gallery and more than that.

on the other side of the coin is the issue of consent. consent is not just for the bedroom. we as museum guests do not consent to walking into a random gallery and being confronted by a human head on a stick. we just don’t. not all visitors would necessarily have an issue with that but i know one woman who had nightmares for years after visiting that gallery.

culturally speaking, not everyone is blase about human remains, many cultures disallow viewings and many parents do not want to have to explain to their children what death is in the middle of a museum. taking away the cultural context of the humans on display, there is still many many cultural issues with their display.

one way to get around that particular thorn, is to put up notices. to incorporate consent into the gallery space. and to make it an optional space. that is to say, in order to get through the whole exhibit from start to finish a guest does not have to go through the gallery with ancestral remains in it. instead they can consent to see a little bit more off to the left in a side gallery if they want to.

that does not deal with the cultural requirements of the human being on display - let alone their personal wishes. one of the cultural requirements for Egyptians is preservation in memory, so some people argue that having a mummy on display in Canada is not bad because people remember that person. this, however, ignores another aspect of Egyptian culture - to die and be burred away from Egypt meant they could not access Egyptian afterlife. therefore that mummy in Canada should be returned post-haste to Egypt.

this actually happened with Ramses the second. he was ‘found’ in Canada, and repatriated to Egypt. in Egypt he is still in a museum but he is among his grave goods, and among his people - and you have to consent to go into his final resting place.

this is getting away from me…

lets address ‘museums are about preserving artifacts’.

yes and no.

the ICOM definition of museum is down to two proposals as of this year

Proposal A

A museum is a permanent, not-for-profit institution, accessible to the public and of service to society. It researches, collects, conserves, interprets and exhibits tangible and intangible cultural and natural heritage in a professional, ethical and sustainable manner for education, reflection and enjoyment. It operates and communicates in inclusive, diverse and participatory ways with communities and the public.

Proposal B

A museum is a not-for-profit, permanent institution in the service of society that researches, collects, conserves, interprets and exhibits tangible and intangible heritage. Open to the public, accessible and inclusive, museums foster diversity and sustainability. They operate and communicate ethically, professionally and with the participation of communities, offering varied experiences for education, enjoyment, reflection and knowledge sharing.

my preference is the first one, but you can see the complex issues we deal with from both of these.

If we were just about the artifacts we would be an antique store…. without prices.

yes museums with collections have a duty of care to those collections - a big part of why it is challenging to repatriate. but that is not our only duty. and there is only ever a fraction of our collection on display - there are too many things to display otherwise. So, even without returning ancestral remains to their living communities, there is no ethical reason to have them on the gallery floor. UNLESS the gallery space is the only climate controlled storage you have… but then you have bigger problems than ancestors on your hands.

please feel free to ask questions always - it is never a bother - and this is a 100 per cent non-judgmental answer. i know tone can be hard through text.

i would appreciate it if some other blogs chimed in with your opinions. i don’t have to worry about ancestors in my current or former museums so i am sure i am missing nuance.

[burninglights]

hello!

While I’m not trained in museology, I’m someone from an originator culture (I hope that’s the correct term?) that had a high profile case involving the ethics of displaying bodies about a decade ago; that of El Negro de Banyoles, which I have written about at greater length here.

There are several things to consider when it comes to the ethical display of human remains.

In order for ethical display, you have to consider the origin of remains.

For many cultures, including my own, human remains often came to be in museums as a consequence of colonial fascination with the societies under colonial rule.

Too often, remains displayed in museums were removed from the places where they were interred with little to no regard for cultural customs surrounding burial and indigenous religious beliefs surrounding the conditions for burial needed for the interred individual to pass on to the next life.

It doesn’t matter that museums are secular, academic institutions; indigenous faith traditions are a) still alive b) still observed and c) still deserving of respect, and individuals who belonged to those faith traditions deserve to have those beliefs protected and observed, no matter how long ago they lived.

It is a great injustice to have your ancestors displayed as curiosities or in ways that violate cultural burial or funerary practices. Cross-culturally, death is a massive aspect of society & cultural focus; to remove remains from their culture of origin is to prevent the observance of the culture of origin, which serves to damage cultural understanding and practices

Arguably, the people most capable of ethical display are the societies of origin. Even then, within certain societies/cultural practice the only true ethical decision may be re-interring the remains, as was the case with El Negro.

The long hand of colonialism and colonial-era displays of remains casts an ugly shadow.

Just as Darder Museum stripping the identity, dignity and culture of the San warrior turned something as profound and private as the grave into a token curiosity of a “primitive people” for colonial eyes in the case of El Negro, the refusal to repatriate human remains perpetrates the ideas of the commodification of cultures and the reduction of complex cultural beliefs and practices as curiosities instead of living, dynamic things that shape our identities.

Apologies for long-winded explanation! I hope that this didn’t come off as preachy or sanctimonious - I merely wanted to give my point of view as a member of an originator culture. I’m happy to answer any questions you might have to the best of my ability :)

[museum-spaces]

thank you so much. this is not at all preachy or sanctimonious, this is very very valuable - much more so than my academic approach - though they do have the same conclusion ‘ancestral remains do not belong in museums and should be returned home, at which point i trust descendants to do well by their ancestors.’

‘originator community/culture’ is an academic way of explaining things, if you feel it is the right words for you to use, feel free. if you feel another set of words is better, let me know.

museums are not neutral. they cannot be. nothing controlled by humans is ever neutral because humans all have biases. what we - museums - choose to display is inherently a mirror of what our employees believe. and those displays have a tangible and intangible effect on visitors - how many of you remember visiting museums as kids or adults and learning something you still carry with you - was it biased against someone - was it about ‘noble savages’ or ‘primitive people’.

displaying ancestral remains is not neutral

[headspace-hotel]

so for my anthropology class I had to watch this short documentary “Ishi’s Return”

tl;dr: A Native American man is found living alone in the California wilderness in 1911. His family and loved ones are dead; he’s the only survivor. He gets basically taken to a museum and turned into a live museum exhibit of the “Last Wild Indian.”

“Ishi” isn’t his name, he never told his captors what his name was. “Ishi” just means man. He requests that when he dies, his remains are returned to his homeland.

But that doesn’t happen. The museum keeps his brain in a jar and stuffs it in a closet somewhere. (???!!!!??) The documentary is about returning his remains to where they belong (AFTER EIGHTY YEARS).

I think that keeping human remains as museum exhibits can be seen as an extension of the real and horrible practice of keeping alive humans as museum exhibits. I also think that a crucial aspect of bodily autonomy is being able to decide what will happen to your body after you die. People use “being given fewer rights than a corpse” to describe the abortion crisis happening right now in America, but I’ve seen a lot of people who don’t understand why we need prior consent to harvest organs from dead people. It’s because your body (whether ‘you’ are ‘inside’ it anymore or not) is considered to be inherently deserving of a certain amount of respect by virtue of belonging to you.

If displaying bodies helped us learn about people and history, we would keep the preserved remains of presidents and historical figures on public display. But you can’t go to a museum to see the desiccated corpse of Abraham Lincoln. I’ve never seen a Civil War exhibit that had a dug-up skeleton of a Civil War soldier in it. I think that should clear it up that it’s not a respectful act to put someone’s remains in a glass box to be stared at.

[caimofnoceur]

47 more free and helpful things, that everyone can take advantage of

Music

Gnoosic is your place go for new music recommendations. It asks for three of your favourite bands, and based on them, spits out an artist that you might like. You can also “like”, “dislike”, or mark it as something you aren’t familiar with – which further refines the results.

NoCopyrightSounds is a copyright free / stream safe record label, providing free to use music to the content creator community. NCS Music is free to use for independent Creators and their UGC (User Generated Content) on YouTube & Twitch - always remember to credit the Artist, track and NCS and link back to our original NCS upload.

Radio Garden take a trip 'round the world's airwaves! Just pick a city — literally any city — and Radio Garden will play you whatever its local radio station is broadcasting.

Radiooooo Radio Garden walked so Radiooooo could run. This site adds a timeline function so you can listen to radio from not just anywhere, but anywhen. Get down to those 1910s Germany bops!

Art

Krita free and open-source raster graphics editor designed primarily for digital painting and 2D animation.It is made by artists that want to see affordable art tools for everyone. It runs on Windows, macOS, Linux, Android and Chrome OS

29a.ch interactive site that lets you color what looks to be a map of the cosmos, but I'm honestly not sure. Whatever it is, it's mesmerizing.

Games

Patatap is an interactive website that responds to the keys on your keyboard with a sound and a brief animation. Now imagine hammering in entire sentences – and you got an explosion of sounds, colors, and movement! Once you start typing in random paragraphs, it becomes almost hypnotic, in a way.

Drench a very simple browser game, Drench gives you a board with different colored tiles, and you use the buttons to flip the colors around. Do this until your board is full of tiles of a single color only.

River Styx an interactive point-and-click game that takes you through the river Styx and the Underworld. You will meet many Greek Gods and Goddesses here, and you will also be learning a lot about their myths and legends.

2048 this website lets you play a game called 2048, which is kinda like Tetris but with addition. Use your arrow keys to try to combine numbers until you reach 2048, or go ~beyond~ and try to reach 4096.

Little Alchemy 2 fun little time killer. As its name suggests, the website deals with the process of transformation you achieve when you start mixing different things. You start with Earth, Fire, Water, and Air. The goal is to create as many different materials or objects as possible. For example, earth and air will form dust. There are no rules just mix and match your creations to create new ones. You will not even know where your time went.

Akinator website is magic or rather feels like one. You can think of any character in this entire world and through a series of question, it will deduce the name. Don’t believe me, go try for yourself.

Find the Invisible Cow You’re going to want to make sure your sound is on in this fun finding game! Find the invisible cow in this laugh out loud version of hot and cold.

CookieClicker How fast can you click for cookies? Level up and become a cookie pro with this fun time-wasting website!

Knowledge

Zooniverse A really neat website that brings people together to create one of the largest platforms for people-powered research. Volunteers come together to assist professional researchers. There is no need for a specialised background or training; all you have to do is to answer simple questions.

Cool Hunting is a really cool publication platform that uncovers the latest in design, technology, style, travel, art and culture. If you are into art, architecture, and culture, then this website is perfect for you.

OCEARCH Shark Tracker This one looks right on the money for the folks who can’t get enough of sharks! With OCEARCH Shark Tracker, you can keep a track of tagged sharks as they are busy swimming around the deep ocean. Moreover, the website also lets you zoom in on a particular location to check where sharks have been swimming for the past year.

Ad Astra-app An essential tool for every astronomer. The star atlas and skyguide that makes it really easy to pick the best objects, make your own observation list and use it when you are outside

100,000 Stars is one of the most beautiful things I have ever seen on the web. It shows a representation of galaxy with stars inside it. You can take a tour which starts from the Sun and takes you to the outer edges of the galaxy while teaching you valuable insights in between.

wikiHow is an online wiki-style publication featuring how-to articles on a variety of topics. For example: How to make ginger ale, How change a lock or How to survive an encounter with an ostrich.

Cooking

Cooking for Engineers is a godsend for those who love to cook. This website has it all, from recipes, to kitchen gear, to cooking tests, down to a handy dictionary. The best part about this website is its classic 90’s layout, which makes accessing the recipes and files intuitive and easier.

My Fridge Food at this point, your fridge probs has, like, three random items in it, and you're starting to panic about meal options. Enter My Fridge Food, which inputs everything you have in your kitchen and outputs a recipe. Bless.

Work, or relax

Da Font Tired of your basic Times New Roman? You can spend hours downloading new fonts from typography artists to spice up your new document!

A Soft Murmur If you’re looking to create your own ambient background music to listen to while you work or read, A Soft Murmur is the fun website for you! Create your own mix of white noise and other natural sounds to relax and waste some time.

Rainy Mood Get all the benefits of rain without getting caught in it with Rainy Mood! This is perfect for setting a relaxed and chilled out mood.

I Waste So Much Time The website is designed to literally allow you to waste your time. There are no long articles, just funny pictures with embedded texts. A very good time waster for short breaks.

This Is My Website Now The website truly kills your time. It is just a collection of small games which you can play on your browser. Effective for less than 10 minutes of usage, it’s good for a short break.

Instructables If you’ve always wanted to learn how to DIY but didn’t know where to start, try Instructables. They have community posts with step-by-step instructions to help you become a DIY master in no time.

OBS Open Broadcaster Software is free and open source software for video recording and live streaming. Stream to Twitch, YouTube and many other providers. only downside to it is that you have a power director watermark in the corner of your video, but its not very large.

Sleepytime is your sleeping schedule out of whack? This fun website calculates exactly when you need to go to sleep and wake up in order to get a good night’s sleep.

Boredom

MapCrunch Go on an adventure without leaving your home — because you can't! This site plops you down in a random location on the globe, and all that's left to do is explore.

List of Conspiracy Theories Get sucked down the dark rabbit hole of the internet that will have you denying history and wearing tinfoil hats. Wikipedia’s list of conspiracy theories will have you scrolling for ages!

This Person Does Not Exist If AI and deep-fakes fascinate you, this is a website that will either make you very excited, or give you nightmares about whether ‘The Matrix’ is real, and if you, at some point in your life, took the blue pill instead of the red one. Either way, the website generates fake people using GAN (or generative adversarial networks), and displays them to you. You can refresh the page to see a different face. Also, if this interests you, you might also like:

This Cat Does Not Exist. You know, because why stare at human faces when you can look at cats instead.

The Useless Web Want to see what the Internet truly has to offer? Take a peek at The Useless Web to see what truly is out there.

Not Always Right Had a bad day at work? Did that one annoying, pesky customer or client who just wouldn’t shut up tried to give you a hard time, and succeeded? Then this website is just perfect for you! It’s a collection of stories about customers who just don’t know when to shut up.

Zoom Quilt If you're looking to be hypnotized, then check out this site, which is basically a picture that infinitely zooms in to reveal new pictures.

Just for fun

Tickld is your go-to spot for anything humorous and funny, for anything that’s really cool and interesting, or stuff that’s just plain WTF.

Paper Toilet Just because stores are sold out of toilet paper doesn't mean you have to live without. This site features some interactive TP that you can roll up or down.

The Passive-Aggressive Password Machine Type a password (real or fake) into this site and it'll shade you for how much it sucks.

CoolThings is a collection of cool things. From entertainment, to gadgets, to even toys and inventions, there is bound to be something here that will interest you.

This Is Why I Am Broke This is a great website for discovering new gift ideas which are distinct. The products range from a few dollars to a few thousand. There’s something for everyone here.

PostSecret is a very interesting website. Visitors are encouraged to send in anonymous postcards on which they write their secrets. There are all sorts of secrets on all kinds of postcards, and the variations make this a really interesting project. However, be warned – these secrets are very real… and very heavy.

NOIYS – Post, read, forget is a place to post an anonymous note to be viewed by many people, only to be deleted within 24 hours. It’s the perfect website for venting anonymously and not worry about the consequences, as it will be deleted within a day. The best part (or maybe worst) is that strangers can reply to your note, too. That way, you can have a running conversation with a complete stranger.

Scream Into the Void Take your outrage about our current situation (or any problem in your life) and throw it into the void. Just type out your feels and then click the "Scream" button, which does exactly what you think it does.

And lastly...

Dildo Generator Welcome, good citizens of the web, to my favorite site of all time. It's right in the name: You can generate a custom dildo by length, width, base, contours, and so many more variables. Things get wild pretty fast.

Eyebleach Did you see something on the internet that was just too scary? Or just need to get it out of your head? Click on Eyebleach to be fed adorable pictures of puppies, kitties, or babies!

Earlier post

[immersive-heritage]

GIF it up!

GIF IT UP

remixing cultural heritage

I hope it's just us who are the last to know, but there's just one more week left to the gif making contest put together by Europeana.

I'm going to try and get my three put together this weekend, we'll see how that goes, but it's been weird and wild to browse the Europeana images looking for inspiration...

Photo title "Romulus und Remus", from the Museum of Arts and Crafts, Hamburg collections. Date taken: 1903. Photographer: Heinrich Hamann.

There are prizes!

Grand prize winner receives a Domestika 10-course bundle and a 100 euro Etsy gift card 

Runners-up  receive a Domestika 3-course bundle and a 50 euro Etsy gift card 

First-time GIF-maker winner receives a Domestika 3-course bundle and a 50 euro Etsy gift card

People’s choice award winner receives a Domestika 10-course bundle and a 100 euro Etsy gift card 

Winners of Children and Teenagers Category (age 6-18) receive a Domestika 3-course bundle and a 50 euro Etsy gift card 

Nature category winner receives a Domestika 3-course bundle and a 50 euro Etsy gift card

Crafts category winner receives a Domestika 3-course bundle and a 50 euro Etsy gift card

Entry is free!

the rules are here

I don't get anything if you enter or if you don't, so this isn't really an ad. Just hoping to share and see what everyone else puts together since this is the home of so many gif artists!

Happy gif-ing!