IN-PERSON: Prague – Section A

Abstract

Locative media – the connection of multi-media resources to a specific place – has been recognized in the literature since the late 1990’s. Most early projects were either urban mapping projects (GPS Museum 2023o) or visual arts projects (NOVA, 2004; Townsend, 2006) engaging people in exploring and understanding their communities through artistic content. While locative media has been prevalent in heritage interpretation for the past decade, the digital documentation of intangible cultural heritage has been explored more recently. This is especially the case with migration, displacement and the dying languages that result. Locative media has been shown to be useful in storytelling for migrant communities (Nisi et al., 2021). Expanding on these findings, this case study applies locative media to the perpetuation of a dying language and the traditional knowledge it holds. The project is based in a landscape in the Karlovy Vary region of Bohemia and applies the language that was spoken in the region to the features of the land. With 90% of the local residents expelled from the region after the Second World War, the local language, Böhmisch, was lost to the region, along with it’s specific words and phrases for the landscape and traditional practices. Although only spoken by a small diaspora today, the language narrates a tour through the landscape of the Palace and village of Valeč, alongside a similar narration in English and Czech. Through a survey of users, the project attempts to answer two questions: 1. Does locative media present an opportunity to re-animate a dying language? and 2. Can the language – its words, phrases and specific meanings be re-captured by successive generations, and recognized for its repository of traditional knowledge? The results of this case study provide insights for efforts to preserve and maintain dying languages for displaced communities around the world.