Experiencing the Digital World: the Cultural Value of Digital Engagement with Heritage

该项目的目的是对数字参与和访问在塑造博物馆、画廊和遗产背景下的文化体验方面的作用进行批判性审查。自20世纪90年代末以来，数字世界在创造与广泛定义的遗产部门接触的新方式方面的潜力一直是学术工作和文化实践的关键焦点。学者和实践者都在探索数字技术的潜力，为我们对过去的理解提供新的见解，使社会更广泛。这已经采取了多种形式，从考古遗址的3D建模到长期保存和管理物质遗产的大规模数字化项目。与此同时，同事们也在探索如何利用数码世界作为工具，增加和扩大公众对遗产文化的参与。一方面，它关注的是互联网如何帮助为博物馆、画廊和遗产提供“商店窗口”，并将其转化为对遗址的实际访问。另一方面，该部门越来越多地寻求利用数字领域提供一个更有活力的、与遗产文化双向接触的空间，旨在为实体参观提供补充体验，从而通过一系列现象（例如用户生成内容、在线社区、众包项目）提高遗产的文化价值。在过去的十年里，世界各地的遗产文化中出现了大量规模各异的数字项目。这些为数字技术的潜力提供了大量的案例研究，既扩大了对世界遗产的访问，又为个人和社区提供了体验和消费遗产的新方式，从欧洲基金会（一个提供访问来自欧洲各地的数百万件文物的互动论坛）到小型项目，如“Ostalgie Kabinett”，它有助于支持社区参与前东德国家的历史记忆。与此同时，在学术文献和灰色文献中，越来越多的人强调我们如何衡量这种活动的价值，以及在这种情况下我们对价值的定义。正如Parry（2010）所强调的，这是一个很容易“迷恋未来，忽视过去”的活动领域。或者，它有可能帮助限制物质文化的获取，将其锁在“保护性”数字墙后面（Cameron and Kenderdine 2010）。我们的评论将通过“文化价值”的批判性视角来审视这种紧张关系，将数字参与的讨论置于更广泛的文献中，讨论与遗产本身的互动和参与，研究中合作生产的潜力，以及这可能对遗产“所有权”问题产生的影响，所有这些问题都塑造了当前物理领域和数字领域之间关系的概念化。这个CR的目的有三个。1)它将概述遗产部门目前与数字世界接触的方式，提供一系列国际案例研究，以突出全球领先的实践。2)这些案例研究将嵌入到对学术和灰色文献的批判性分析中，特别是对文献如何试图理解这种背景下的“价值”问题的调查。3)通过在利兹举行的研讨会，一个国际遗产专家小组将对批判性审查的结果进行评估，以探索他们认为文献中持续存在的差距以及博物馆学和遗产实践的潜在新方向。反过来，这也将导致为遗产专业人士制作简报文件，以加强他们与观众的数字互动。

The aim of this project is to provide a critical review of the role of digital engagement and access in shaping cultural experiences in the context of museums, galleries and heritage. Since the late 1990s the potential of the digital world for generating new ways of engaging with the heritage sector, widely defined, has been a key focus of both academic work and cultural practice. Academics and practitioners alike have explored the potential of digital technology for offering new insights into our understanding of the past for an ever wider section of society. This has taken a number of forms, from 3D modelling of archaeological sites to large-scale digitisation projects for the long-term preservation and curation of material heritage. At the same time, colleagues have explored the ways in which the digital world can be used as a tool for increasing and broadening public participation in heritage culture. On the one hand, this has focussed on how the internet can help provide a 'shop window' for museums, galleries and heritage, and translate this into physical visits to sites. On the other, the sector increasingly seeks to use the digital sphere to provide a space for more dynamic, two-way engagement with heritage culture, aimed at providing a complementary experience to the physical visit that can, in turn, enhance the cultural value of heritage through a range of phenomena (e.g. user-generated content, online communities, crowdsourcing projects). The last decade has seen a huge number of digital projects take place on a variety of scales operating in a whole host of heritage cultures around the world. These provide a plethora of case studies for the potential of the digital both to widen access to the world's heritage and provide new ways for individuals and communities to experience and consume heritage, from the Europeana Foundation - an interactive forum which provides access to millions of artefacts from across Europe - to small scale projects such as the 'Ostalgie Kabinett' which helps support community engagement with the historical memory of the former East German State.At the same time, there has been a growing emphasis, both amongst scholarly and grey literature, on how we measure the value of this activity and what we mean by value in this context. As Parry (2010) highlights, this is an area of activity which can easily 'fetishise the future, and neglect the past'. Or it has potential, somewhat counter intuitively perhaps, to help limit access to material culture, locking it away behind a 'protective' digital wall (Cameron and Kenderdine 2010). Our review will examine this tension through the critical lens of 'cultural value', placing discussion of digital engagement within the broader literature on interactivity and participation with heritage per se, the potential for co-production in research and the ramifications this can have on the question of the 'ownership' of heritage, all issues that shape current conceptualisations of the relationship between the physical and the digital sphere.The aim of this CR is threefold. 1) It will give an overview of the ways in which the heritage sector currently engages with the digital world, providing a range of international case studies in order to highlight leading-edge practice globally. 2) These case studies will be embedded within a critical analysis of the scholarly and grey literature, and in particular an investigation of how the literature has sought to understand the issue of 'value' in this context. 3) The findings of the critical review will be evaluated, via a workshop to be held at Leeds, by an international group of heritage professionals in order to explore what they perceive to be the continuing gaps in the literature and potential new directions for museological and heritage practice. This will, in turn, also lead to the production of briefing document for heritage professionals looking to enhance their digital engagement with audiences.