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Virtual reality offers a potential solution to enable visiting inaccessible cultural heritage sites. We present the design, prototyping and evaluation (n = 6) of a virtual visit to a historic graveyard. The Salla World War II graveyard is located in an inaccessible border zone between Finland and Russia. Our virtual graveyard, accessed through a he...
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... candle-lighting feature enabled the user to pick up a candle, using the handheld VR controllers, light it and leave it at any location in the scene, for example next to a gravestone, Figure 3. Although realistic clouds can be created by other approaches, after a short time users easily notice repeating patterns -hence we selected to implement clouds using volumetic modelling, which also adds to the mood of the scene. ...
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... Their paper offers a holistic assessment of the current use of VR through interviews with museum professionals, who found that the most common use of VR is to allow visitors to experience "impossible" spaces or time travel; providing historical context for the exhibits. This is reflected in the multitude of works describing VR experiences depicting historical sites for museums [4,9,10,29]. ...
Cultural heritage museums around the world are embracing new approaches to redefine their mission and roles by combining preserved knowledge with immersive technologies. This paper focuses on a virtual reality (VR) installation project within The Danish Music Museum, which showcases a glass harmonica. The project aims to provide visitors with an immersive and interactive experience, resurrecting a forgotten instrument and presenting its history, sound and interaction. Through a qualitative evaluation at the museum, it was found that the installation establishes a connection between the virtual instrument and the physical glass harmonica on display, offering an engaging and enjoyable experience. However, challenges such as disturbances caused by bystanders affecting the functionality of hand tracking were observed. Overall, the project proposes a VR experience, bringing a historical instrument back to life, offering visitors at The Danish Music Museum an immersive encounter with cultural heritage.
... Most of them have received user feedback indicating a lack of interactivity and entertainment value [15]. Conversely, other VR projects designed linear scenes while combining dispersed elements, thereby enhancing the user experience without compromising the educational aspects tied to historical significance [2,5]. For instance, Italy's VR tour system of underwater cultural relics condenses archaeological sites from the Mediterranean into a 15-20 minutes VR storytelling experience, enabling Italian youth to virtually explore the history and culture of Rome online [2]. ...
... In the latter case, VR allows us to render a disappeared or non-accessible virtual environment, such as the Salla World War II graveyard, which is located in an inaccessible border zone between Finland and Russia. This study highlighted one of the main obstacles of both techniques: the level of detail and the authenticity of the experience [17]. Notwithstanding, immersive VR is a powerful tool for transitable environments to recreate an optimum space perception experience if the motion parallax is correctly designed. ...
The aim of this work is to present graphic and historic architectural studies of several stately houses. Research took place in a physical space, the Castellón province (Spain), and for a space of time, the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and forms part of the area of conservation, value, and dissemination of architectural heritage. For this purpose, a large number of bibliographic data were collected and specific activities were carried out in the graphic expression field, such as architectural surveys. These consisted of exhaustive fieldwork and cabinet work, conducted to obtain a considerable quantity of precise data to allow modeling, to allow the studied buildings, or part of them, to be visualized in both virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR), and to spread this unknown architectural heritage on digital social networks.Keywords3D modelsVirtual reconstructionVirtual reality (VR)Augmented reality (AR)Stately homes
... A similar approach has been used in the valorization policies of isolated, particularly vulnerable archaeological sites and heritage places, which are considered to be at risk due to the conditions in which they are preserved or the dangerousness of their surroundings [22,33,37,43,44,75] . ...
... VR headsets made it possible to create frameworks in which virtual reconstructions of damaged heritage sites could be displayed, and the environment and atmosphere simulated as accurately as possible, without affecting the realism of the entire expe-rience [44] . The high degree of immersivity that these tools provide makes it possible to involve a larger number of people and create a high degree of participation even for archaeological sites in which interest has been lost, or which cannot be restored, providing the continuation of tourism in complete safety [22] . ...
... However, the quality of the user interface, or rather the simplicity of handling the controllers, as well as easy management of the navigation system of the virtual world are all factors that must be considered while developing these apps. In order to reach an audience as wider as possible, these systems should be simple to use for all users with little or no acquaintance with these technologies, such as children or the elderly, even though it is generally acknowledged that younger adults are more interested in using them [44] . ...
... Besides research into interactive technology's appropriations, HCI has also designed for the religious context. For example, Wyche et al. [58] designed a smartphone application to support Muslim prayer, O'Leary et al. [39] designed a digital health tool for religious communities that included a feature for mutual prayer support, and Häkkilä et al. [22] developed a virtual reality app allowing for virtual grave-visiting rituals. In the above examples, technology was often adopted or designed to solve (nonreligious) pragmatic problems (e.g., because communities were not allowed to meet in person [53,56], or grave sites were inaccessible [22]). ...
... For example, Wyche et al. [58] designed a smartphone application to support Muslim prayer, O'Leary et al. [39] designed a digital health tool for religious communities that included a feature for mutual prayer support, and Häkkilä et al. [22] developed a virtual reality app allowing for virtual grave-visiting rituals. In the above examples, technology was often adopted or designed to solve (nonreligious) pragmatic problems (e.g., because communities were not allowed to meet in person [53,56], or grave sites were inaccessible [22]). In doing so, technology was used to make religious rituals more easily accessible and controllable. ...
... The range of functions varies depending on the provider. A Virtual Graveyard can be a website similar to the Online Memorial Site, but also a 360-degree world reminiscent of video games that we can enter with VR glasses (Häkkilä et al., 2019 andHuberman, 2013). ...
Digital transformation is now reaching into topics like End-of-life Care, Funeral Culture, and Coping with Grief. Those developments are inevitably accompanied by the growing challenge to design IT systems that are appropriate and helpful for the stakeholders involved. Our aim in this paper is to further introduce the rather new combined research field of Socioinformatics and Thanatology (the scientific study of death and dying) and to present it with the first results on which requirements to consider for the design of digital tools within ‘Thanatopractice’. By using Participatory Design and the Sustainability Awareness Framework (SusAF) in the context of three workshops on socio-technical systems (Online Pastoral Care, Virtual Graveyards, and AI Memory Avatars), we want to sensitize software practitioners to the multidimensional impacts of their products and services in a field, which the participants in the workshops often described as “highly sensitive”.
... In the third design case example, a virtual visit to a World War II memorial and graveyard was developed (Häkkilä et al., 2019). The physical CH site marks the place for German soldiers' graveyard from World War II and is located in Russia, close to Finland's border. ...
... For instance, gamifed elements were omitted. The visualisation also includes a mode presenting human-shaped shadows representing the number of people buried at the graveyard (Häkkilä et al., 2019). Using this approach, we sought to illustrate the extent of the human tragedy related to the war in a respectful way. ...
Interactive technologies are increasingly being applied to the cultural heritage design context; digital archives, online exhibitions, and interactive museum pieces have become common approaches in the digital age. In this chapter, we explore how interactive technology can be used for sensitive cultural heritage contexts, discussing how to include decolonising design and pluriverse as an approach. Three case studies are presented, where the design context includes indigenous Sámi cultural heritage, a World War II memorial and archival materials. In these examples, digital technologies, including virtual reality and digital 3D models, are used to create interactive experiences with cultural heritage. We approach the topic through participa-tory design methodology and research through design approach. Our work can be useful when designing cultural heritage content for museums, digital cultural heritage sites and games, in the end enabling future experiences with more pluralistic and diverse content.
... They offer new ways to access the cultural heritage over inaccessible boundaries. For instance, the historical graveyard of Salla, situated currently in an inaccessible border zone in Russia, was reconstructed as an immersive 3D virtual reality (VR) experience (Häkkilä et al. 2019). Technology provides ways to present traditional cultural heritage content, such as narratives and oral traditions, in a richer manner than traditional text and picture-based presentations, as illustrated e.g. for African cultural heritage context by Chu and Mazalek (2019). ...
In this paper we present the results of a systematic literature review investigating the cross-sections of decolonizing design, cultural heritage, and technology. In total, 26 relevant publications were found and examined systematically. Decolonizing design is a growing trend and the most publications were published since 2017. By examining the results, we will introduce the current debates and discourses on using technology in the context of cultural heritage field by using decolonizing design approach. We report that whereas technology itself appears as neutral, it is applied through a lens of values which can be intertwined with politics and power. In order to improve this, the design processes should be integrated with the local and cultural context. This is accomplished through participatory and co-creation approaches. Altogether, whereas the theme of decolonizing design is gaining growing interest, there is still a relatively small number of studies which report applying the approach into the design practice.KeywordsDecolonizing designCultural heritageTechnologyDesign sensitivitiesHuman-computer interactionDesignSystematic literature review
... As some cemeteries cannot be accessed physically, Eichert [22], as well as May et al. [54], developed digitization tools to document geographical information and personal information about the deceased. Similarly, Häkkilä et al. [33] implemented a VR replica of an inaccessible historical cemetery. The VR replica enabled visitors to experience the cultural heritage site, which they would not have been able to visit otherwise. ...
Historical cemeteries are interesting design spaces within Human-Computer Interaction (HCI), due to their cultural and personal significance, and that they also serve multi-purposes within an urban community. However, contemporary usage of such places and technological developments partly interfere with preserving such places’ significance. To evaluate how to counteract this challenge, we conducted an iterative design approach including a) five expert interviews, b) a design workshop using speculative design artifacts (n=4), followed by c) semi-structured interviews that evaluated the derived design concepts (n=6). We made an exemplary study of a European historical cemetery, and consolidate ten design recommendations for interactive historical cemeteries. Eight align with prior work, two are new. Furthermore, we identified design opportunities for supportive technology to maintain such places’ atmosphere
and regulate users’ behavior to comply with the local code of conduct. Our work supports other HCI researchers, aiming to preserve
cultural heritage sites such as historical cemeteries.
... The description of cultural assets is made by a storytelling approach, in which the user is informed about the historical value of the building that is going to be visited. In the same direction, in [16] a historical graveyard (i.e. Salla World War II graveyard) placed in a remote area between Russia and Finland is made available to visitors by using VR headsets. ...
Modern digital
technologies allow potentially to explore Cultural Heritage sites in immersive virtual environments. This is surely an advantage for the users that can better experiment and understand a specific site, also before a real visit. This specific approach has gained increasing attention during the extreme conditions of the recent COVID-19 pandemic. In this work, we present the processes that lead to the implementation of an immersive app for different kinds of low and high-cost devices, which have been attained in the context of the 3dLab-Sicilia project. 3dLab-Sicilia’s main objective is to sponsor the creation, development, and validation of a sustainable infrastructure that interconnects three main Sicilian centres specialized in augmented and virtual reality. The project gives great importance to the cultural heritage, as well as to the tourism-related areas. Despite the presentation of the case study of the Santa Maria La Vetere church, the process of the final app implementation guided by the general pipeline here presented is general and can be applied to other cultural heritage sites.KeywordsVirtual realityCultural heritageCAVEVR-headsetVirtual heritage
