Exploring virtual heritage with communities in remote, rural and underprivileged settlements

My team and I been exploring how infusing virtual heritage into everyday contexts might foster spontaneous participation from a wide spectrum of communities and could have a profound impact on children. Surprisingly, we had a terrific time with them, especially the children, who were eager to see the formerly unseen culturally significant places in their immediate vicinity.

We intended to investigate virtual heritage with diverse groups from underprivileged, rural, and remote regions, where it is difficult to travel to heritage places and culturally significant sites. We held an art competition after establishing the context of cultural heritage with a few slides, while the children conveyed their understandings of and relationship to 'culture' in a follow-up discussion, as it was our objective to transform well-known historic places into hyper-real spaces and explore whether it could have the ability to engender positive forces of communal cohesiveness. And based on our observations, this virtual heritage initiative somewhat fulfilled its goal of enabling communities to discuss, provide meanings, and explore their cultural identity through the notion of 'shared' cultural heritage sites.

The inaugural event took place at Pother School, a platform that works for social improvement and educates disadvantaged children in order to empower them and promote social equality. The children were thrilled to encounter hyperreality, and we found they had a deep affinity for outdoor cultural monuments and places as Golap Shah Mazar, Baitul Mukarram, and even the TSC.

Another school was explored in the tranquil village of ‘Pakomba’ in northern Bangladesh. We planned a sketching project with them in which the children would communicate their emotional connection to places in a delightful manner. We found they were quite enthusiastic about being introduced to virtuality, having seen documentation, and expressing their own understanding of objects, places, and cultures, as well as their own human attachment to these.

Finally, we travelled to a tiny settlement of Santal communities, where these people have been living peacefully for many years and where a small school is administered by some outstanding teachers from this community. The youngsters and the old members were quite outspoken about their cultural awareness, and they were also pretty willing to share it.

These activities were a part of the outreach for our latest project, Amar Oitijjho / আমার ঐতিহ্য supported by the EMK Center in which we are attempting to project these hyperreal 3D's utilising AR and AI on banknote surfaces, primarily on a small virtual scale at this phase. We wanted to disengage from the paradigm of photorealism, despite the fact that the target audiences are somewhat mesmerised by the visually compelling, highly sophisticated 3D elements that cannot be distinguished from the actual physical objects due to their identical materiality, textures, and impressions. Moreover, AR is the option that is most accessible to the general people, as it employs ubiquitous media such as mobile phones, whereas VR requires expensive, custom-built technological equipment. Our own goal was to utilise this potential and make it meaningful for interpretation, conceptual learning, and outcome-based education. The Bengali phrase 'Amar Oitijjho' can be translated as 'my heritage'. We have intentionally employed the pronoun ‘my' to stress individual attachment, involvement in, and personal adaptation of a common cultural heritage, while underlining that this heritage belongs to the broader community. In a globalized world where we are continuously overwhelmed by influences from diverse cultures, we feel that it is essential that we take pride in and develop an intimate attachment to the cultural elements that distinguish us apart and define our identity.