The intervention of immersive media in the cultural safeguarding and heritage sustainability of China’s commercialized heritage town - Pingwang 2022

This research proposal aims to understand the role of new media art, which contributes to safeguarding and restoring the essential culture in some of China's cultural heritage destinations with the rapid development of commercialization. Some cultures lose their critical role; the few fresh and creative ideas are neutralized by constant repetition and are simply absorbed into the capitalist order (Horkheimer& Adorno, 1972). The United Nationals (UN) initiated 17 goals of sustainable development (“Do you know all 17 SDGs?”, 2022) starting in 1992. The sustainable development goal (SDGs) 11.4 aims to “strengthen efforts to protect and safeguard the world’s cultural and natural heritage” (“Sustainable Development Goal 11.4”, 2022). Therefore, this study’s focus is to discuss some specific issues in the commercialization of cultural heritage and tries to intervene in the commercialization process through new media art. The new media art provides an unconventional channel for researchers to recontextualize their experiments within the humanities and social sciences (Ahmedien, 2020). Taking a Chinese heritage town-Pingwang as a case study, through a qualitative research strategy, the project will be analyzed by a mixed approach, including an original practical design that consists of 3D modeling with AI motion capture, Augmented Reality (AR), Soundwalking and sound visualizations as an immersive media matrix. Therefore, this study will explore how to use media art to reconstruct the image of Pingwang’s culture and mitigate the loss of essential culture caused by commercialization to pursue the sustainability of cultural heritage.

Keywords: digital heritage/ cultural restructuring/ heritage sustainability/ augmented reality/ sound art/ immersive media

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