From Readership to Usership: Communicating Heritage Digitally Through Presence, Embodiment and Aesthetic Experience

Abstract

The primary mission of cultural institutions, including heritage sites and museums, is to perform and perpetuate Cultural Heritage (CH) by ideally transforming audiences into stewards of that heritage. In recent years, these institutions have increasingly turned to Mixed Reality (MR) technologies to expand and democratize public access to Cultural Heritage—a trend that is called upon to accelerate with COVID-19—because these technologies provide opportunities for more remote outreach, and moreover, can make partial remains or ruins more relatable to the public. But as emerging evaluations indicate, existing MR intangible and tangible Digital Cultural Heritage (DCH) applications are largely proving inadequate to engaging audiences beyond an initial fascination with the immersive 3D visualization of heritage sites and artefacts owing in part to misguided storytelling or non-compelling narratives. They fail to effectively communicate the significance of Cultural Heritage to audiences and impress upon them its value in a lasting way due to their overreliance on an education-entertainment-touristic consumption paradigm. Building on the recent case made for Literature-based MR Presence, this article examines how the literary tradition of travel narratives can be recruited to enhance presence and embodiment, and further elicit aesthetic experiences in Digital Cultural Heritage applications by drawing on recent findings from the fields of Extended Reality (XR), cognitive literary science and new museology. The projected effects of this innovative approach are not limited to an increase in audience engagement on account of a greater sense of presence and embodiment. This approach is also expected to prompt a different kind of public involvement characterized by a personal valuation of the heritage owing to aesthetic experience. As the paper ultimately discusses, this response is more compatible both with MR applications’ default mode of usership, and with newly emerging conceptions of a user-centered museum (e.g., the Museum 3.0), thereby providing a narrative roadmap for future Virtual Museum (VM) applications better suited to the primary mission of transmitting and perpetuating Cultural Heritage.

Maximizing Engagement with Cultural Heritage through Video Games

“…There is not a specific method to guarantee the perfect "emotional experience" in a game. Yet, research has suggested that if the visuals and messages in the game reflect the fear of losing heritage, it should be coupled with feelings of hope and solutions that are associated with people's everyday lives in the cultural heritage world [47]. Otherwise, they may perceive a sense of helplessness.…”

Photogrammetry for Digitization and Digital Display as a Sustainable Way to Develop Vietnam’s Museum Sector?

“…Many studies on digital technologies at museums during covid discuss digital innovations, adaptations, and pivots due to new circumstances. Digital innovations include new digital galleries, VR/AR applications for virtual tours and games [Decker et al, 2021;Bertrand et al, 2021;Cecotti, 2021;Kang & Yang, 2022], how to better engage the audience [Siwalette & Suyoto, 2020;Damayanti et al, 2021], and how to use photogrammetry or new types of digitization [Apopei et al, 2021;Aquino et al, 2021]. To illustrate, Apopei et al [2021] discusses their use of cross-polarized light photogrammetry to generate a comprehensive virtual 3D collection of mineral and rocks in Romania.…”

Interactive Display of Images in Digital Exhibition Halls under Artificial Intelligence and Mixed Reality Technology

“…Besides, interactions between scenes generate. People feel the grip, weight, and movement of real objects in the virtual environment, and the virtual images and participants can get interactive feedback in the experience [14].…”