Valuation of heritage buildings is usually performed by architectural-historical experts, who use a typology of heritage values based on conservation philosophy. Increasingly, social and spirituality values are included in heritage assessment frameworks.What happens to valuation systems when external events influence the chances of survival of heritage buildings, such as earthquakes induced by gas extraction in the Netherlands? While the mining company uses a narrow economic perspective on value, the public fears for loss of character of their historic towns. New safety regulations constitute a new and even stronger threat to heritage buildings. Recently, a heritage assessment framework was published, to help with value assessments in the affected region. In this paper, we compare experts’ and laypersons’ values by analyzing the new assessment framework as well as public documents. We conclude that heritage value assessments should incorporate social values, including memories and symbolic meanings, to create a balanced valuation system.
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The advent of information and communication technologies (ICTs) has had and is having a major impact on Indonesian cultural resource management, and on the safeguarding methods of its tangible and intangible cultural heritages. Despite varied levels and visible gaps between rural and urban regions in terms of technology usage, innovative initiatives have been created, which correspond to the needs and expectations of a technology-savvy public. As a starting point, a number of public institutions dealing with tangible cultural heritage (e.g. museums, palaces, temples, World Heritage Sites (WHS) do use innovative digital tools in order to communicate to various audiences, as well as to enrich visitors' experience, especially taking into consideration young generations. This paper will firstly examine the role of ICTs in intangible cultural heritage (ICH) (e.g. Batik, Wayang puppet theatre, etc.); secondly, the authors will explain how ICTs can help to communicate and promote the values, history, and significances of ICH products, both for locals and tourists, with the goal of raising awareness on cultural identity. However, the knowledge of ICH still requires contacts with its own communities and is vulnerable, as it can be exposed to excessive cultural commoditization through e-platforms. This study aims at giving an overview and some examples of digital interventions for cultural heritage communication implemented by various stakeholders in Indonesia. In addition, this paper analyses to what extent a participatory approach engaging local communities, academics, private sectors, NGOs and the government, can ensure higher levels of effectiveness and efficiency, hence supporting the conservation of UNESCO tangible/ICH in Indonesia. This paper aims at: (1) presenting the development of digital heritage platforms in Indonesia; (2) providing a grid of analysis of digital heritage knowledge platforms dedicated to UNESCO tangible and ICH in forms of websites and mobile apps.
MULTIFILE
The international Wadden Sea is an estuarine tidal area along the North Sea coasts of The Netherlands, Germany and Denmark. It is characteristic for regions with sandy coasts and a medium tidal range. Fifty barrier islands separate the Wadden Sea from the North Sea, and an offshore transition zone to the North Sea. The tidal flats of the Wadden Sea form the largest unbroken stretchof mudflats worldwide. The present form of the Wadden Sea is still mainly the result of natural forces, although since the Middle Ages man has changed the Wadden Sea landscape by building dykes and reclaiming land. The Wadden Sea is an important nursery area for fish, a foraging and resting habitat for seals, and a foraging habitat for migrating waders. The Wadden Sea, including large parts of the islands, is a fully nature protected area and designated as a natural World Heritage site in 2009 (Wolff, 2013). The research group Marine Wetlands Studies at Stenden University is focusing on the sustainable development of tourism in the area. Current research has the purpose to get insight in to the effects of the World Heritage Status, in particular the natural values of the area, on future tourism development.
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This Professional Doctorate (PD) project explores the intersection of artistic research, digital heritage, and interactive media, focusing on the reimagining of medieval Persian bestiaries through high dark fantasy and game-making. The research investigates how the process of creation with interactive 3D media can function as a memory practice. At its core, the project treats bestiaries—pre-modern collections of real and imaginary classifications of the world—as a window into West and Central Asian flora, fauna, and the landscape of memory, serving as both repositories of knowledge and imaginative, cosmological accounts of the more-than-human world. As tools for exploring non-human pre-modern agency, bestiaries offer a medium of speculative storytelling, and explicate the unstable nature of memory in diasporic contexts. By integrating these themes into an interactive digital world, the research develops new methodologies for artistic research, treating world-building as a technique of attunement to heritage. Using a practice-based approach, the project aligns with MERIAN’s emphasis on "research in the wild," where artistic and scientific inquiries merge in experimental ways. It engages with hard-core game mechanics, mythopoetic decompressed environmental storytelling, and hand-crafted detailed intentional world-building to offer new ways of interacting with the past that challenges nostalgia and monumentalization. How can a cultural practice do justice to other, more experimental forms of remembering and encountering cultural pasts, particularly those that embrace the interconnections between human and non-human entities? Specifically, how can artistic practice, through the medium of a virtual, bestiary-inspired dark fantasy interactive media, allow for new modes of remembering that resist idealized and monumentalized histories? What forms of inquiry can emerge when technology (3D media, open-world interactive digital media) becomes a tool of attention and a site of experimental attunement to cosmological heritage?
PhD research in progress@Wageningen University and ResearchPromotors: Prof. dr. Joks Janssen, Prof. dr. Hans Renes
In de toekomst zullen wateroverlast en droogte steeds vaker voorkomen. Hoewel water van grote betekenis is voor ons dagelijks leven - en Nederland een rijke traditie heeft van waterbeheer - maken sociale, culturele en historische waarden slechts sporadisch deel uit van watergerelateerd beleid. Omdat er bij wateropgaven veel verschillende partijen aan tafel zitten, is het belangrijk te snappen welke waarden meespelen bij besluitvormingsprocessen. Een serious game kan helpen bij het formuleren van die waarden om bij te dragen aan een beter ‘waterbewustzijn’ van zowel beleidsmakers als bewoners, en bewoners beter te betrekken bij hun eigen leefomgeving. Six Architecten, actief in bouw- en renovatieprojecten waarin water en erfgoed een rol spelen, lopen aan tegen een beleidsomgeving van tegengestelde belangen. De gameontwikkelaar IJsfontein in Amsterdam ontwikkelt serious games en heeft veel ervaring met het visualiseren van historisch materiaal voor musea en archieven, maar zoekt naar de kennis om deze vaardigheden toepasbaar te maken binnen de hedendaagse klimaatopgave. Met deze twee praktijkpartners werken onderzoekers van de TU Delft, op het gebied van watererfgoed, ontwerpen voor waarden (Delft Design for Values) en games (TPM), samen aan de WaterWaarden-game. Voor dit project gaan we in gesprek met beleidsmakers en bewoners om te achterhalen welke waarden er meespelen bij een selectie van objecten (zoals kades, dijken, gemalen) binnen de casus Amsterdam. Waternet, het waterbedrijf van de gemeente Amsterdam en het waterschap Amstel, Gooi en Vecht, zal bijdragen bij het contacten leggen met betrokken en het toetsen aan de beleidswerkelijkheid. Door de waarden en uitdagingen in specifieke opgaven in Amsterdam te analyseren en in de game te verwerken, werken we toe naar een prototype en een aanvraag om deze serious game te ontwikkelen tot een gameplatform dat in de toekomst ook bij wateropgaven in andere gebieden gebruikt kan worden.
