(IN)TANGIBLE HERITAGE(S)
Abstract
As the global pandemic continues to effect daily life in Hong Kong, the forced mass closure of architectural heritage sites has been highly detrimental to heritage conservation. This will have lasting and devastating social and economic impacts on the surrounding community which is overly reliant on tourism (UNESCO, 2021). Therefore, computer-aided representation techniques have been further applied in heritage conservation during the pandemic for transcending the traditional constraints of place and time. However, most digital heritage preservation platforms in Hong Kong are typically unanimated and receive little engagement, making them less effective for developing digital heritage that produces participation and widespread exposure (Bozorgi & Lischer-Katz, 2020). Furthermore, establishing genuine conversations between heritage sites, visitors, and the surrounding community in an immersive virtual environment (IVE) has been less considered in heritage conservation. This experimental study explores how digital heritage can enhance auxiliary cultural heritage communication in the post-pandemic era, mainly proposing a new adaptive VR platform for achieving immersive non-geographical “conversation” with tangible and intangible cultural heritage. Specifically, the site of Bishop Hill Underground Reservoir in Hong Kong will be used as a case study. It just embarked upon the phase of publicity but was obstructed by the pandemic. This research proposes to simulate and represent the reservoir and its surrounding area through Virtual Reality with avatar embodiment for all participants to enhance self-awareness. It allows social interactions between participants and engagement between participants and the heritage IVE. An immersive and interactive exhibition will be designed to introduce the three significant makeover transformations of the Reservoir over the past 100 years. It provides an opportunity for promoting conversations and publicity among all interest groups. Upon reopening of the venue, this platform is expected to use its digital functions of documentation, representation and dissemination to provide supplemental tourism experiences on site.
Yuan Jin received her master’s degree in Adaptive Reuse and Narrative Environments at the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD). She also received a bachelor’s and a master’s degree in environmental design from the Beijing Institute of Technology. During her studies at RISD, she participated in heritage conservation advanced studios, such as the reuse project for the grain elevator in Philadelphia and the renovation of the city wall ruins in Beijing. These projects aroused her strong interest in heritage conservation. Her master’s thesis is on approaches to displaying outdoor architectural ruins, a combination of exhibition design and heritage conservation. From 2019 to 2020, she worked as an exhibition design assistant at the RISD Museum, where she established smooth communication between the museum’s curators and program managers and successfully designed several large-scale exhibitions, such as “Raid the Icebox Now,” “Defying the Shadow” etc. Her recent research is driven by underground cistern preservation; it includes adaptive reuse, heritage representation, and conservation. Currently, she is continuing research on adaptive reuse as a medium for water facility conservation.
Mingming Zhao, LEED AP, is currently a Ph.D. student in the School of Architecture at the Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK). She completed her master studies at Virginia Commonwealth University in 2017 and undergraduate studies at the University of Nottingham Ningbo in 2015. Prior to CUHK. Mingming has served as a project coordinator and interior designer in Beijing for globally renowned design firms including Hirsch Bedner & Associates and Woods Bagot for four years. With her education and industry experience in interior design with digital media, Mingming’s area of interest include the interdisciplinary research of design, user experience and human-computer interaction using computer simulation techniques. Her work promotes the adoption of new design technologies and innovative approaches from neuroscience and environmental psychology, to better answer the research questions related to user experience and the impacts of designed environments. Her thesis focuses on exploring the different environments’ impacts on occupants’ perceived satisfaction and performance comparing immersive virtual environments with the built environments.
9:00 am - 10:30 am
Friday 17th June, 2022