The Australian Emulation Network

Outline

The Australian Emulation Network (or AusEAASI) is a ‘grand consortium’ of partners—an expanding network of people and technology with the common aim of stabilising and providing access to culturally significant born-digital artefacts held in the archives and collections of Australia’s Galleries, Libraries, Archives and Museums (GLAM) organisations.

The Australian Emulation Network includes Australian universities: Swinburne University of Technology (Administering Organisation): Charles Sturt University, RMIT University, The University of Melbourne, University of South Australia, The University of New South Wales, The University of Queensland, Western Sydney University, and The University of Western Australia, working with Yale University and Cornell University in the United States, and OpenSLX GmbH in Germany.

Partners from the GLAM sector are: Art Gallery of New South Wales (AGNSW) Australian Centre for the Moving Image (ACMI), Australian Computer Museum Society Inc., Australian Digital Alliance, Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies (AIATSIS), Australian Institute of Architects (AIA), Australian Libraries and Archives Copyright Consortium (ALAAC), Australian Museums and Galleries Associations Victoria (AMAGA), Museum of Applied Arts and Sciences (MAAS), National Museum of Australia, National and State Libraries of Australasia (NSLA), National Archives of Australia (NAA), National Film and Sound Archive, Queensland State Archives, Tweed Regional Museum, National Library of New Zealand Te Puna Matauranga o Aotearoa, Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa, and Archives New Zealand, Te Rua Mahara o te Kawanatanga

Investigators

Melanie Swalwell – Professor of Digital Media Heritage, Swinburne University – Project Leader

Cynde Moya – Director, Digital Heritage Lab, Swinburne University

Greg D’Arcy – Senior Research Engagement Manager, AARNet

Simon Biggs – Adjunct Research Professor, University of South Australia

Margie Borschke – Senior lecturer in Media, University of Sydney

Erik Champion – Enterprise Fellow, University of South Australia

Sean Cubitt – Professor of Screen Studies, The University of Melbourne

Roger Dean – Professor, Western Sydney University

Kirsten Day – Lecturer, University of Melbourne

Harriet Edquist – Professor, RMIT University

Stephanie Harkin – Lecturer, School of Design, RMIT University

Kim Machan – Honorary Fellow, University of Queensland

Anna Munster – Professor Art & Design, UNSW, Sydney

Norie Neumark – Professor, The University of Melbourne

Simon Polson – Executive Director, National and State Libraries Australasia (NSLA)

Peter Raisbeck – Associate Professor, The University of Melbourne

Ash Robertson – Executive Director, Australian Museums and Galleries Association (AMaGA) Victoria

Helen Stuckey – Senior Lecturer, RMIT University

Elizabeth Tait – Associate Professor of Information Management, University of South Australia; Adjunct Associate Professor, Charles Sturt University

Sarah Teasley – Professor of Design, RMIT University

Kim Vincs – Senior Principal Research Fellow, Swinburne University

Caroline Wilson-Barnao – Director of Museum Studies, University of Queensland

Ionat Zurr – Associate Professor, The University of Western Australia

With its second tranche of ARC LIEF funding, AusEaaSI Phase 2 continues to enable transformative research that crosses media arts, architecture and industrial design, games and applications, AR/VR and web and pre-web networking. AusEaaSI’s decentralised network of collections and archives shared through a single platform is revealing previously unseen relationships between methodologies, artefacts and practices. Our people are engaged in transformative research using previously inaccessible content and discovering new methodologies for the analysis and interpretation of historic digital artefacts.

The Swinburne Digital Heritage Lab is an active hub for the preservation of legacy digital media, and has been sharing its tools and expertise with artists and creative practitioners to save their at-risk media. AusEAASI is about the future as much as preserving the past. Already rapid obsolescence is impacting on access to VR works, and digital work practices are becoming more complex across creative fields. This project is making a significant contribution to the development and implementation of strategies and methods to ensure that what we are creating today remains accessible to future researchers and historians.

EAASI is Emulation-as-a-Service-Infrastructure, a program of research led by the Digital Preservation Services team at Yale University Library. With infrastructure and hosting provided by AARNet, AusEAASI allows users to access the EAASI platform via a web browser to interact with born-digital media emulated within pre-configured environments that can be shared across the network.

For more information:

Click through to the AusEAASI website

Prof Melanie Swalwell (TMT)

Dr Cynde Moya (TMT)

Professor Kim Vincs (TMT)