Heritage communication is more and more integrating digital media, which help to offer a wider and deeper understanding of heritage and its values. In particular, intangible cultural heritage (ICH) can find in information and communication technologies a powerful ally to share its facets and different dimensions, through multimedia technologies (especially videos), storytelling, and several other applications like mixed realities and artificial intelligence. Such media can help not only to provide access to information and knowledge, but also to enrich the experience of people exposed to such heritage, and to promote a deep connection between the heritage itself and interested persons. This paper presents the process through which goals and needs to communicate and promote Indonesian Batik textile heritage, which has been inscribed by UNESCO among the Intangible Cultural Heritage list in 2009, have been collected and transformed into the design of digital communication outlets, namely a website and a mobile app. Such process has encompassed an extensive analysis of the presence itself of Batik in digital media through benchmarking, as well as the elicitation of needs and requirements of relevant stakeholders and target audiences, through in-depth interviews and surveys. The design has been done ensuring at every step that it was considering and integrating, as much as possible, the results of the previous analyses. While presenting the iWareBatik case, which has been successfully implemented and launched, with the support of the highest Indonesian cultural-related institutions, the paper describes in detail the used methodology, hence providing an itinerary, which can be adopted by other similar projects.
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The Internet’s dominant role in recent years has caused a change in the relationship between media producers, suppliers and consumers in the traditional media landscape. The cultural sector must therefore decide what to do with today’s digital media in response to the general public’s changing role, and for the purpose of improving accessibility. The use of multiple media resources and particularly resources like the Internet and mobile telephony seems to be inevitable. The only question that remains is: how? This paper addresses this question by focussing on social tagging and storytelling, and reports the results of an empirical study on tagging behaviour using the social tagging platform (see also Van Vliet et al., 2010).
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The paper investigates the use of mobile tools by museums in order to provide mobile access to their permanent collections and special exhibitions. In fact, it deals with the wider topic of how museums tackle the complex issue of communicating with their present and potential audience using modern (i.e., mobile in this case) technologies. The paper presents and discusses the results of a survey that was proposed to Dutch and Flemish museums mainly dealing with modern and contemporary art or with science and technology. We tried to derive some trends and best practices in order to identify a good way to provide an engaging (mobile) experience to museum visitors. These results, although not always stirring in terms of answer percentages and of what most museums seem to be doing with new media, do show a clear interest towards mobile technologies and openness to innovation in the Dutch cultural sector.
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