Cultural Heritage (CH) is pervasive. It is created by ourselves and the people around us. It exists within and is expressed by the streets and houses where we live, work and shop every day. However, existing approaches to CH typically encourage the idea that it is something distinct and separated from the world around us. Much of this is due to the traditional centralised models of heritage. Special institutions, such as museums, have been responsible for collecting, curating and presenting heritage information.
Digital technology challenges this centralized model. New participatory forms of media and content creation have democratised the creation and curation of knowledge. With a £15 smart phone from Carphone Warehouse, users can take personal guided tours of cities they will never visit, peruse virtual collections of museums they will never enter and see old photographs of streets that no longer exist, superimposed on the real world.
Although technology has transformed the way in which CH can be created and accessed, there are still many challenges in the way this information can effectively be presented outside of museums or institutions. In this project, we will begin to investigate the transformative issues of engagement and empowerment offered by mobile computing and, in particular, augmented reality. We will leverage off of UCL-created technologies. Within the EU-funded ARTHUR project, UCL has develop user experiences through a series of AR interfaces and simulations and visualisations of aspects of building performance, so that the consequences of design changes could be evaluated while the design is being manipulated. Within the EU-funded BEAMING project, UCL has developed technologies to allow people from other countries to virtually “visit” a remote location. We have developed AR technology which blends, in real-time, computer-generated graphics with a user’s view of the real world. This illustrates how remote virtual content can be interposed in a user’s natural view of an environment.
Together with our partners at Brunswick Town Charitable Trust (BTCT), we are exploring how we can repurpose this technology to display, in context, community-gathered information about the history and occupancy of buildings. Using the smartphone or tablet device as a “window onto the past”, the public will witness animated graphical recreations of family life within those buildings. They will navigate through the CH and historical records of the buildings through a range of multimedia presentations. Two test cases will be considered: the North Laines area of Brighton, and Leytonstone Town Centre. Through the development of these test cases, we will develop a potentially commercialisable platform together with algorithms and a body of knowledge. Through the creation of these applications, we believe this will open new opportunities for cultural institutions, local businesses and local communities to engage with their local CH and with one another.