Special Issue on VR for Culture and Heritage: The Experience of Cultural Heritage with Virtual Reality: Guest Editors’ Introduction

Human culture is profound and is always changing and evolving. Heritage, on the other hand, remains perpetually frozen in time, molded or engraved in material culture as a testament to the past. Yet some intangible heritage lives on, sewn into the intermingled fabric of present cultures, evolving, being influenced by and conforming to a highly connected modern society brought about by digital technologies. Others are at risk of diminishing as newer generations, enticed by disparate modern cultures, shun the traditions that were handed down to them. What cultural heritage contributes to our present society is that it validates our memories and provides us a physical means to connect us to past cultures. Tangible heritage may appear to be unchanging, perhaps because of the fraction of our existence within the arrow of time, yet entropy occurs and the physicality of any material will inevitably decline, eroded by the passage of time and any unfortunate disasters, including threats from deliberate destruction of monuments (CuriousTravellers, 2016). This is why digital preservation is important (Webb, 2003). Any virtual records of cultural heritage are considered good contributions, for digitized information can potentially preserve and generate more value than its physical counterpart in the longer term (Ch’ng, 2013). However, the simple record of information will not add any more value to culture and heritage than what the present existence of it already does. What are needed are accessibility and a means to contextualize and communicate digital information in a way which can bring to life past cultures, and enhance the learning of it (Ch’ng, 2012). We believe that virtual reality exists for this reason and more. The ability to simulate complete interactive virtual environments can provide a more concrete means to the experience of past cultures. How well virtual reality and Augmented Reality are doing in terms of allowing participants to truly experience past cultures remains a question. Here, we are focused not on the museum experiments (Bowen et al., 2008) in general, but on the experience of past cultures, the phenomenology (Tilley, 1994) of it, which we believe virtual reality can provide. As such, this special issue aims to gather researchers working on all aspects of culture and heritage that use virtual environments or aspects of the mixed-reality continuum to conserve, analyze and communicate contents from the past and the present. It therefore encompasses contemporary public-facing work in GLAMs (Galleries, Libraries, Archives, and Museums) and the backdrop of in-depth investigations to bring to light the contents and contexts of culture and heritage via virtual environments. The series of articles presented within this two-part issue is a continuation of the previous special issue on ‘‘Virtual Heritage: Cultural Agents, Environments, and Objects’’ (Presence: Teleoperators and Virtual Environments 24-3), which highlighted the need for a closer inspection of our method of work in merging often disparate focuses from multiple disciplines (Ch’ng, 2015). In the guest editor’s introduction to the 2015 issue, we discussed the role of technology in support of research, conservation, and communication of cultural heritage, and how technology must not become the focus of virtual heritage within the many opportunities provided by heightened awareness of the importance of cultural heritage conservation, funding bodies, and cooperation with cultural institutions. The introduction to the previous issue also discusses the issue of sustainability and how virtual heritage can be a means to exploit the value of cultural heritage and, at the same time, conserve heritage in the process. As with any fast-developing sector, both heritage and the use of digital technologies are important to society and even to economic growth. The Flow and Collections Presence, Vol. 26, No. 3, Summer 2017, iii–vi doi:10.1162/PRES_e_00302 a 2017 by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology