Virtual Reality of Medieval Culture: Collaborative Network for Cultural-Feed Virtual Heritage (CfVH) platforms of medieval Cairo

主题：“数码世界：机遇与挑战”全球标志性遗产受到恐怖主义、气候变化、猖獗的商业化和旅游业过度开发的威胁；以埃及为例，投资大幅减少。由于缺乏负责任的规划、维护和保护战略，开罗这座中世纪城市的许多遗产遗址和文化传统同样遭到了严重的遗弃和不可逆转的破坏。中东和北非地区的不稳定促使人们呼吁保护文化和考古遗产，这是一项政治、经济和全球挑战。随着遗产遗址被破坏的速度越来越快，历史文物和文化遗产的数字化保存已成为国际上的优先事项。随着旅游业对埃及国内生产总值的贡献达到11%，非政府组织、慈善基金会和私营部门企业正在急剧增长，对旅游业的技术和社区支持已成为当地人口可持续经济和社会福利的最前沿。然而，有一些策略、做法、技能和技术可以通过其他形式的繁殖来保护、发展和维持这些地方；例如数字建模，沉浸式虚拟和增强现实，电影摄影和视听档案。通过习俗、照片档案、电影片段、口述历史纪录片等方式对遗产进行数字化，已成为保护国家身份的核心，也是削弱边缘化社区激进意识形态战略的有效工具。在线平台、虚拟展览和遗产数字化的使用不断增加，历史遗址的虚拟现实模型正在成为与遥远和偏远的遗产地点互动的主要工具，同时扩大了受众范围，并有助于在线创收活动。通过数字媒体嵌入文化遗产的虚拟环境通常被归类为“虚拟遗产”。这些新媒体和技术平台为游客、旅行者甚至居民提供了体验虚拟重建的历史遗址或遗产地的可能性。拟议中的文化-虚拟遗产CfVH合作网络将开发项目、交流论坛和活动，重点开展虚拟环境中文化遗产成像的创造性和实践性研究。它将支持年轻的研究人员、企业家参与创新技术产业，并向政策制定者和在线旅游业通报参与虚拟遗产数字平台的优势和回报。该项目旨在帮助学术和非学术参与者使用最新技术（CAVE和virtual HoloDeck）参与虚拟遗产平台的开发、设计和规划，并开发以实践为主导的研讨会。年轻的专业人士和毕业生将获得支持企业家自我发展的创新和技术技能，并为与英国专家和研究人员建立联系提供场所。该合作旨在培训一个由30-40名埃及人组成的催化剂小组，以获取、学习、实践和促进虚拟遗产的数字化生产，并支持他们未来在埃及和英国的文化和考古遗产研究项目。参与者将接受平均60-80小时的研究、生产和商业规划培训，以帮助发展私营企业，并与当地社区和学童接触。该合作网络预计在其结束后的两年内支持4-6个初创企业和研究项目，并将在埃及大学和伍尔弗汉普顿大学开设遗产数字化研究生课程，预计5年内将有60-80名毕业生。

Theme: "The Digital World: Opportunities and Challenges". Iconic heritage is globally threatened by terror, climate change, rampant commercialisation, and overexploitation by tourism; and in the case of Egypt, significant disinvestment. Lack of responsible planning, maintenance and preservation strategies have equally caused unmitigated dereliction and irreversible damage to many heritage sites and cultural traditions in the medieval city in Cairo. Instability across the MENA region has prompted calls for the protection of culture and archaeological heritage as a political, economic and global challenge. With the increasing rate of destruction of heritage sites, digital preservation of historic artefacts and cultural heritage has arisen as an international priority. With tourism industry contributing 11% to Egypt's GDP and Non-governmental organisations, charity foundations and private sector enterprises are dramatically growing, technical and community support to this industry has become at the forefront of sustainable economy and social welfare of local populations. Yet, there are strategies, practices, skills and technologies that can protect, develop and sustain these places, in other forms of reproduction; such as digital modelling, immersive virtual and augmented reality, and cinematography and Audio-visual archives. Digitisation of heritage through customs, photo archives, film footage, oral history documentaries has become central for the preservation of national identity and effective tool in strategies of undermining radical ideologies in marginalised communities. The use of online platforms, virtual exhibitions and digitization of heritage is ever increasing and the virtual reality models of historic sites are becoming a main tool to engage with distant and remote heritage locations, yet stretch audience outreach and contribute to online income generating activities. Virtual environments which embed cultural heritage through digital media are often categorized as 'virtual heritage'. Such new media and technology platforms offer the possibility to experience virtually reconstructed historic sites or heritage sites as visitors, travellers or even as a resident. The proposed Cultural-feed Virtual Heritage CfVH collaborative network will develop projects, forums of exchange and activities that focus on undertaking creative and practice-led research on Imaging Cultural heritage in virtual environments. It will support young researchers, entrepreneurs to engage with innovative technological industry and inform policy makers and online tourism on the advantages and reward of engaging with digital platforms of virtual heritage. This project aims to help participants, academic and none-academic, to take part in the development, design and planning of virtual heritage platforms using latest technology (CAVE & Virtual HoloDeck) and develop practice-led workshops. Young professionals and graduates will acquire creative and technical skills that support self-development as entrepreneurs and offer venues for networking with UK-based experts and researchers. The collaboration is designed to train a catalyst group of 30-40 Egyptians to acquire, learn, practice and promote the digital production of Virtual heritage and support their future research projects of cultural and archaeological heritage, both in Egypt and in the UK. Participants will be trained for an average of 60-80 hours on research, production and business planning to help develop private enterprises and engage with local communities and school children. The collaborative network anticipates supporting 4-6 start-ups and research projects in the two years following its conclusion and will initiate graduate courses in Heritage Digitisation at Egyptian Universities and at the University of Wolverhampton with prospected 60-80 graduates over 5 years.