A new Facebook-like social platform and smartphone applications (apps) will be developed by a European consortium to enable people to document Europe’s cultural heritage.
The European collaboration called ‘PLUGGY’ (Pluggable Social Platform for Heritage Awareness and Participation) is a €2.5 million consortium that involves academics from Imperial College London’s Dyson School for Design Engineering and organisations from Greece, Italy, Slovakia, Spain and the UK. The three-year project aims to develop a suite of smartphone tools that will enable individuals, community groups, industry, museums and countries to document and share their heritage online.
An Augmented Reality app will enable people to build virtual models of important local heritage. These will be overlaid with information uploaded by users, and shared via the Facebook-like social media platform, so others can learn more about cultural heritage places across Europe.
The Geological Mobile app will enable users to act as curators of their local heritage and showcase geographical information that may have cultural significance. When activated on a smartphone, users visiting regions or countries will be notified by the app about nearby interesting ‘encounters’ that are targeted to their outdoor activities.
The 3D Sonic Narratives app will enable users to create audio packages that they can upload onto the social media platform. It will have advanced 3D acoustic recording technology so that users can record realistic audio soundscapes of local attractions, such as the ringing of bells at a church, which have a heritage value.
The final Collaborative Game app will enable users anywhere in Europe to work together to compose a comprehensive narrative around particular cultural heritage topics. Topics could be based on anything, from the de-industrialisation of local areas and their impact on locals in the community, to the rise of modern architecture in urban environments, and the preservation work that groups are undertaking to save local landmarks.
Dr Lorenzo Picinali from Imperial’s Dyson School of Design Engineering said: ‘The PLUGGY tools will be designed to solely focus on a niche area in social media – celebrating Europe’s collective heritage. The development of this technology has the potential to generate new interests in forgotten heritage, unearth new cultural gems for people to go and explore, or even celebrate things that people haven’t even considered as important parts of our heritage.’
