IN-PERSON Barcelona. Section B

Abstract

Xinhua Zhiyun, as the first media-integrated national key laboratory in China to launch the “Cultural Digital Operation System,” relies on digital technologies such as AIGC, big data, and knowledge graphs. It extensively analyzes characters, locations, times, events, scenery, and verses from ancient Chinese classics, local chronicles, and enduring masterpieces. Combining local tourist flow, weather, transportation, and other tourism data, Xinhua Zhiyun introduces multiple digital exhibition projects, including data visualization, immersive displays, glasses-free 3D, AR interaction, virtual guide, and short video generation. For example, the Fuyang Literature Museum integrates 1,149 poems, 651 historical figures, 1,236 locations, and allusions related to Fuyang, along with 985 sets of relational data to present the digitized history of Fuyang. By aggregating literary data of Zhejiang, it establishes connections between writers, works, literary contexts, landmarks, etc., aiming to construct a comprehensive Chinese digital literary map covering literature, data, graphs, exhibitions, tours, and dissemination. However, as localities become abstracted into data nodes, history solidifies into cultural symbols. The past and present overlap in real time and space, and a contradiction in visibility emerges between the technology logic led by data and the capital logic led by visitor flow in the process of local cultural datafication and tourism assetization, against the backdrop of the cultural logic with the audience as the primary subject. This paper aims to address key questions by thoroughly observing, analyzing, and evaluating the data usage, processing, and presentation processes related to the Xinhua Zhiyun case. Specifically, it seeks to explore how invisible culture can be presented through visualized data and who dominates the logic of showcasing local culture.