(IN)TANGIBLE HERITAGE(S)

Abstract

This paper approaches the notion of intangibility within heritage conservation, especially with respect to VR space, from Manuel Delanda’s materialist phenomenological perspective, which offers a more appropriately design-oriented alternative to the convention of tangible-intangible nomenclature. The categorization of material-physical residues as mute tangibility emerged historically out of an archaeological imperative which then led to the necessity of underlining the intangibility of customs and practices. From a materialist phenomenological semiotic, if a digital map is an icon of an actual space, then in extension, the VR fabrication of an actual heritage site could be considered an icon of that site. If the mobile blue GPS dot on a map is indexical of the navigator travelling through actual space, then is not the navigator wading through the iconographic world of virtual heritage, in contrast considered to be fully present? The navigator as an indexical sign in a GPS map versus the navigator as actually present within an iconographic sign environment of the actual space offers ways of rethinking the tangibility of both the self and the terrain in relation to practices of conceptualizing and building VR experiences of places and spaces. This paper shall draw from examples of practices engaged in building VR heritage experiences to explore this thematic.