research on cultural heritage-based communication and creation models chen ling ph.d china cultural...

Research on Cultural Heritage-Based

　　　　 Communication and Creation Models

CHEN Ling Ph.D

China Cultural Heritage Network (CCHN)School of Journalism and Communication, Tsinghua University

　　　中国文化遗产网络 China Cultural Heritage Network www.cchn.cn

➠ The digitization of China’s cultural heritage

➠ The cultural heritage-based communication and education models

➠ How heritage data-based communication models can be used in creative education


The digitization of China’s cultural heritage

Cultural Relics Research and the Systematic Construction Database Management

In 2000, four provincial museums in Gansu, Shanxi, Henan, Liaoning were listed as trial projects for “Cultural Relics Research and the Systematic Construction Database Management” by the State Administration of Cultural Relics.

However, these projects focused primarily on hardware systems and the setting up of equipment; it was not until later that attention turned to the digitalize the contents. Although some museums have now begun to work on their database, others are still in the process of constructing their hardware system infrastructure.


Revitalizing Program for 21st Century Education

In 2001, the Ministry of Education in China initiated a project of “Museum Construction in Universities,” part of a program known as the “Revitalizing Program for 21st Century Education.”This project sponsored the digitization of 18 museums in tertiary schools such as the Geological Museum in Beijing Geology University, the Humanitarian Museum in Sichuan University, the Anthropology Museum in Fudan University, and the Archaeology Museum in Shandong University.

These museums successfully presented such historical sites as ancient tombs by using virtual reality technology. The Ministry of Education has agreed to increase funding for museum digitization over the next few years and has stated that it wishes to establish a system for resource-sharing among university museums.


The Digitization of Dunhuang’s Grottos and Frescos

The Grottos and Frescos at Dunhuang are a rare and important cultural treasure. There are 492 grottos in all and these hold 45,000 square meters of frescos and approximately 3,000 colored sculptures that date from the Wei and Jin dynasties. This vast repositor of art is now a major resource for historical research into the culture of China, mid-Asia, west-Asia and the Indian sub-continent.

In 1998, the Dunhuang Research Academy, in collaboration with the Mellon Foundation in the US, set about the task of recording and digitizing the Dunhuang grottos. The digitization of Dunhuang can be separated into two distinct parts: one is the establishment of a Dunhuang database system; the other is the collecting and documentation of those Dunhuang artifacts and documents that are scattered all over the world.


Virtual Olympic Museum

In 2002, sponsored by the scientific committee of the City of Beijing, the Beijing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Qinghua University, the Beijing Physical Education University, and CAPINFOR jointly initiated a project known as the “Virtual Olympic Museum”. As part of this project, two prototypes; the digital recreation of an ancient archery competition in the West Zhou dynasty, as well as the recreation of the five-animal exercises from the Han dynasty have been completed.

The aim of this project is display Olympic history, to exhibit artwork relating to the Olympics, and to create a virtual and interactive space, in which people can experience ancient sports and cultures.


Archery( BC 11-BC 771) is the oldest sport in China. The prevalence of archery in China happens to coincide with the Olympic Games that were then taking place in ancient Greece.

People in ancient China held archery in high esteem and the sport was actually revered to the extent that skilled archers were said to possess magical powers. Archery can be looked upon as a kind of ritual or ceremony that included many different facets of Confucian cultures.

Every year, in the spring and in the fall, the local governor would invite eminent scholars and students to attend an archery competition held at the local school.

The Ancient Archery Competition

Sise Sima Baobaren Sanou

An archery competition in ancient China

The Procedure of Archery Competition

1. Selecting the guests: The guests were required to be a respectful person, particularly in their dealings with their parents.

2. Visiting the guests at home and inviting them -- twice

3. Sitting and Toasting

4. Archery (four steps): 1) demonstrating the archery by Sima 2) archery performances by students 3) joint archery performances by the host and the guests 4) archery with the rhythm of music

5. Calculating and Punishing

6. Celebrating

targets

The Five-Animal Exercises is based on a major component of the popular exercise routine of ancient China known as daoyin, a forerunner of the martial art of wushu. Hua Tuo, a renowned physician of the Han Dynasty (BC110-207), created and propagated this imaginative sport, which simulates the movement of tigers, deer, bears, monkeys and eagles.

The Five-Animal Exercises

The procedure of virtual Five-Animal Exercise

China Cultural Heritage Network (CCHN)

　　　　　　　　www.cchn.cn

In 2005, we began a network-based project supported by the Chinese Ministry of Education; this is now known as the China Cultural Heritage Network (CCHN). CCHN is an international platform, and its goal is to provide and exchange information about Chinese culture and other cultures around the world and to share knowledge of world culture and the benefits of media technology.

At the same time, CCHN is also a platform for the promotion of China's cultural heritage in a variety of interactive media formats. It explains how to transform cultural heritage into a visual language and to develop a new creative approach to the education of children.


Excursion to an Ideal Landscape: West Lake

- Beyond Time and Space

West Lake, the ideal landscape in which architecture, culture and nature are in a perfect harmony. Using 3DCG(2D) and QTVR and other digital techniques, the culture, gardens, and poetry which are classified in Tang, Song, Ming, QingDynasty and Modern times have 　 been reproduced

　The　interface,　2D　3Dgraphics　of　the　West　Lake

-- a project sponsored by MMCA(Multimedia Contents Association of Japan) and METI (Ministry of Economy trade and Industry)

The cultural heritage-based communication 　　　　　　　　　　　　 and education models

So far, the database in most museums is used chiefly for information retrieval, management, museum organization, education, etc. The ways adopted are basically unilateral and fixed. The problem to be addressed in heritage communication, education and entertainment remains as follows: how can the museum’s data can be brought into play at the global level and be used for communication and educational proposes?

The museum information system supported by computer and network technology is presented in a variety of forms such as simple images, 2D, 3D and moves. At present, most museum information systems are independent and dispersed. Like the physical museums themselves, a museum’s digital resources have their own space. Indeed, it could be said that invisible walls now divide most digital museums.


The interconnection of digital museums in different countries and areas can transform a small museum into a large one and a unilateral museum into a multilateral one. Given this capability, a multilateral museum could freely combine and exchange any cultural heritage information located in a variety of museum archives.

Since the old copyright policies, access systems, and security technology do not address digital databases such as movies, copyrights are now becoming a major problem in the sharing of databases and resources. As a result, while some museums　 have made the choice to open their digital doors　 completely to the public, others have decided to close them.


In the course of our research on database communication andcreative educational models, we have found that a common ground exists between today’s network-based databases andthe prevailing philosophy of ancient Asia, namely the idea that;


all things in the world are integrated and connected to each other

We can easily find this same idea of networked knowledge Mandala in Tibetan Mandalas and similar examples exist in the traditional garden designs of China, India and Japan.

In Sanskrit, the word “Mandala” means a circle or a polygon. It is often conceived as a place with four gates, each of which faces in one of the four directions. As a symbolic representation of the universe, it is most commonly associated with Indian tantra, the Vajrayana school of Buddhism in Tibet, and Shingon in Japan. Mandala is a perfect example of the way in which a single aspect of life can represent all of life itself. In that sense, a Mandala can be said to be an undivided holographic picture.


A most extraordinary ancient description of a network of interconnections is found in certain Indian Buddhist sutras. As Fritjof Capra explains in his Tao of Physics, “...particles are dynamically composed of one another in a self-consistent way, and in that sense can be said to 'contain' one another. In Mahayana Buddhism, a very similar notion is applied to the whole universe. This cosmic network of interpenetrating things is illustrated in the Buddhist Sutra by the metaphor of Indra's net.”

Computer graphics illustrate the image of Indra's Net

A style of painting known as Rakutyuurakugai that we often associate with the“cubism”of the 1890’s in the West appeared in the Late Momoyama and early Edo Periods in Japan. These pictures portrayed the life of the common people and in the streets and shops of Edo. The way these scenes were portrayed was indeed uncommon before the invention of airplanes and aerial photography or even the experience of living in high buildings. It is beyond dispute that the pictures imply an excellent command of the city’s geography and the artist’s own interpretation thereof. Unlike the use of perspective in the West, the artists of the Edo Period integrated information about the city in plan form by means of full-orientation construction.

Rakutyuurakugai

The ancient Asian ideas art mentioned above all demonstrate the same concept, namely that was the world is a undivided space, and all knowledge therein is interconnected and associated with all its multifarious parts. This is and will be the ideal model for today’s inter-museum information system.

We have come to regard these reflections of ancient knowledge patterns as an underlying framework for the construction of a virtual heritage information space characterized by dispersal, interactive communication, and sharing. As previously stated, the construction of such a virtual space is now possible and can be realized by means of internet and communication technologies.


A heritage database-based creative education models

➠　　　 ➠ ➠

Through keyword searching, users can, by choosing any one of the above patterns, get the data they require from the museum database and freely combine it in virtual space in accordance with such different categories as history, biography, aesthetics, and works, and then they can construct a new virtual knowledge space that centers around vision.

Meanwhile, an interactive heritage communication can transfer museum data into an active space for spreading knowledge and creating art. In virtual space, students, according to their own needs, can choose the corresponding knowledge construction pattern to construct their own space from a variety of museum data information systems.

They can then reconstruct the database resources in time and space by means of transfiguring, copying and interpreting the original heritage resources by means of their own creative activity.


Conclusion

Digital technology that is centered around a network provides us with reliable human knowledge, while oriental ideas -- i.e. those of space construction in the traditional arts -- offer us rich patterns from our cultural heritage that we can acquire, apply, and integrate.

In all digitization centered around Western technology with the introduction of oriental ideologies, the most important goal is the integration and activation of human knowledge. This is the best way to integrate the technology and the ancient wisdom of the East, the union of which can play an important role in the creative education of young people who will share an international perspective and a global cultural background.


research on cultural heritage-based communication and creation models chen ling ph.d china cultural...

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