Call for papers: Digital Matter and Intangible Cultural Heritage

Call for papers: Digital Matter and Intangible Cultural Heritage

A special issue of International Journal of Digital Culture and Electronic Tourism

In recent years, partly through the development of the information society with its associated trends of globalisation, growing interconnectedness, and instant multi-modal communications that erode the boundaries of traditional societies, the concept of cultural heritage has evolved to encompass qualities that go beyond the original definitions pertaining the mere recording and preservation of cultural objects. Within the scope of UNESCO’s activities, for example, the agency now recognises cultural heritage as an irreplaceable source of knowledge with a significant role to play in the present as part of the goal towards a sustainable future.

From a knowledge management perspective, UNESCO’s work has also expanded to include the two major classes of tangible and intangible heritage. Whereas tangible heritage includes the multiple physical expressions created by diverse human cultures in the past, intangible heritage — also referred to as living heritage — is used to designate present "practices, representations, expressions, as well as the knowledge and skills, that communities, groups and, in some cases, individuals recognise as part of their cultural heritage."

The objective of this special issue will be to explore the notion of intangible heritage and its relationship with the digital media.

From the above perspective, we seek contributions related to the following topics:

• Definition, analysis and examples about the notion of intangible digital cultural heritage from the artistic, scientific, and economic perspectives
• Ecological and systemic approaches that make use of digital cultural heritage-and specifically intangible heritage-for economic revitalisation and development
• Design and implementation of digital applications for intangible heritage such as digital and multimedia archives dealing with oral traditions, narratives and myths from different regions throughout the planet
• Research into digital genres and how these might support and enable the transmission of diverse forms of intangible heritage as well as promote the creation of new ones
• The representation of space and cultural heritage through the use of digital media, including but not limited to the combined use of GIS and mobile devices
• Ontology design and implementation in digital cultural heritage applications from a cross-cultural and multiplatform application perspectives
• Explorations into the notion of heritage commodities and how these are being used, or can be used in the digital environment
• Application design, including but not limited to portals dealing with the commercial development of heritage commodities such as cuisine, knowledge, music, etc.
• The use of peer-to-peer networks in the creation of virtual cultural heritage communities
• New applications of digitally born cultural heritage objects in within tangible public exhibition spaces

Important Dates

Deadline for submitting abstracts: 31 August, 2007
All final papers are due: 28 September, 2007