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Heritage crafts (HCs) are a key element of cultural history, incorporating a shared history of craft artefacts, tools, materials and craftsmanship. HCs are designated by UNESCO as a form of Intangible Heritage, incorporating knowledge, dexterity, and the tradition and identity of present and past communities. Despite their intrinsic cultural significance, some HCs are at risk of extinction. Many of the skills are no longer practised or are isolated geographically and the knowledge is ebbing away over generations.
The EU-funded Mingei project sought to preserve HCs and their cultural history through the digitisation of crafts and their creation processes. To achieve this, Mingei researchers created a range of digital assets, incorporating historical aspects along with each artefact.
“The two things that we contributed were a protocol to record the craft creation and its semantics, and the ability to also represent the social, historical and economic aspects of crafts through narratives,” explains Xenophon Zabulis, research director at the Institute of Computer Science, Foundation for Research and Technology in Greece and Mingei project coordinator.
How to preserve heritage crafts
The team made 3D recordings of crafts being created, and followed this with 3D digitisation of the tools themselves. The project intended to create a base of knowledge so that all the practical and cultural information of each craft could be stored – and combined with anthropological information.
An example: for silk weaving, a craft with extensive heritage across Europe, Mingei created a collection of curated historical narratives from the town of Krefeld in Germany. This was combined with an interactive timeline of silk processes in the region, digital representations of textiles, 3D reconstructions and lessons about weaving.
Similarly, the glass-blowing craft has been documented in a series of 3D reconstructions, historical narratives and even videos of glass-blowing tutorials using mixed realities.
“We believe the best way of preservation is the continuation of practice,” Zabulis adds. To support this notion, the Mingei project also focused on holding events to educate the public about the various technologies.
Creating an online home for digital preservation
“For digital preservation, we created an online platform, where all of the content is available. Not only the digitisations but also the semantic representations,” says Zabulis.
The platform is open access for the public and can be used in further research projects. It includes web pages on the crafts, as well as audio and visual presentations. Some of these have been translated into sign language for the hard of hearing.
In another forthcoming EU-funded project Craeft, the Mingei platform will be used to explore some of the cognitive aspects of creativity, how a design is conceived and the plan creators execute. “We want to capture these aspects that are mainly inside the mind of a person,” Zabulis explains.
Cultural tourism
The researchers plan to introduce haptic feedback into the representations: essentially including the sensation of touch into the teaching methodology.
“This way, you can also have tutoring long distance,” Zabulis remarks – which could help spread specific crafts where only a few experts are scattered across the continent. The continuation of the work done in the Mingei project will also help to boost cultural tourism across Europe.
New workshops will include experiential presentations, where tourists can try their hand at craftsmanship. A side benefit of this inclusion could also be an uptick in new craft apprentices, which will help to keep the practices alive.