In recent years immersive media technologies (IMT) such as virtual reality (VR), augmented reality (AR), extended/mixed reality (XR) have moved from the realm of toys for early adopters into the realm of ubiquitous, widely used technologies. In less than a decade, IMTs have made their way into education, training, engineering, healthcare, and entertainment. Over the past two years, our team has been working to create scalable and reusable infrastructure designed to leverage IMTs for cultural preservation and education. More specifically, our work has focused on two connected collaborative and interdisciplinary projects that use VR for cultural preservation
HeritageRoots (led by Dr. Dmitriy Babichenko) is a project in collaboration with indigenous communities in Ecuador and Senegal and focuses on connecting indigenous narratives and indigenous traditional knowledge across different cultures and representing these narratives as interactive immersive VR experiences. The Re-Envisioning Cultural Legacy through Adaptive Immersive Museum (RECLAIM) project, led by Dr. Tim Huang, is a project in collaboration with Pittsburgh’s Hill District community members and the Carnegie Museum of Arts. Both projects focus on developing interconnected scalable infrastructure and tools for using immersive virtual environments to preserve and transmit oral histories and traditional indigenous knowledge. Utilizing the Unity3D game engine, our team has been developing first-person perspective virtual reality (VR) experiences, enabling users to engage with narratives, places, objects, and relevant context.
This initiative emphasizes the importance of oral histories and traditional knowledge and seeks to address the challenges posed by globalization and the mobility of younger generations. By leveraging modern immersive media technologies, the projects provide educational tools that enhance understanding and appreciation of disappearing cultures across the world. Both projects employ a knowledge graph (KG) for data storage and management, ensuring meaningful connections and relationships within the virtual environment. The ultimate goal is to develop cost-effective digital tools and platforms that reduce development costs and make historical content and the relevant enabling technologies accessible to communities.