Dallas, Costis (2004) Interactive living heritage.

Paper presented to the Interactive Living Heritage session,

Towards a Continoum of Digital Heritage European conference, 15-16 September 2004, The Hague..

Interactive living heritage

Costis Dallas♠

Citizens emerge, through the promise of technological and social developments, as

interactive creators of the social and cultural memory of a changing, multicultural
Europe, as participants of living and sustainable communities spanning geo-local
and cultural boundaries, and as users of a broad range of cultural experiences,
which could be delivered through a variety of channels and devices, giving rise to
new business models and services for the production, use and exploitation of cul-
tural assets. Contemporary cultural practices give rise to the blurring between crea-
tor and consumer of cultural experiences, and to a shift from cultural objects (data)
to cultural practices (process); participation, creativity and engagement become key
objectives, and interactivity, storytelling and immersion emerge as important func-
tions of the new cultural landscape. This contribution attempts to open up a dis-
cussion on RTD priorities, with a view to the 7th Framework Programme, based on
recognising the need to unlock the creative potential of the European citizen, of the
communities of the enlarged Europe, and of its diverse cultural organisations, large
and small (including, but not limited to, libraries, museums and archives). These in-
clude mechanisms and tools supporting the emergence of a citizen- and commu-
nity-driven European cultural record, the lifecycle of viable and culturally inclusive
digital virtual communities, and the deployment of highly accessible, engaging,
state-of-the-art digital cultural experiences based on the perspective of the citizen,
combining a lifelong learning perspective with fun and enjoyment, and delivered
across multiple, mobile and pervasive delivery channels.

Introduction
During the last few years, we are witnessing increasing deliberation and ac-
tivity in the field of European cultural heritage informatics. Several years
along the line, considerable effort has been put in probing the ground with
innovative technology-based solutions to perceived problems in the field. In
some cases, significant research and development results have been achieved,
and we can see their mark in the work of real cultural institutions – muse-
ums, libraries, archives and others – in different European countries. The pro-
gramme can be credited for nurturing a culture of cooperation and interoper-
able access to cultural resources, and for encouraging a common European
approach to IST-based intellectual preservation and access to cultural heri-
tage, notably through the Lund principles and the work on digitisation and

♠
Department of Communication, Media and Culture, Panteion University, Syngrou 136, Athens 176 71.

© 2004 Costis Dallas <cdallas@panteion.gr>. Some rights reserved. This work is licensed
under the Creative Commons Attribution -Non Commercial -No Derivatives 2.5 License.
Electronic version: <http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.5/>
 2 COSTIS DALLAS

policy harmonisation of the Minerva network. Thanks to the support of the

research programme, we see the almost miraculous persistence of large, vi-
brant networks, coordinating actions and other initiatives, such as our own
CALIMERA partnership, a descendant of the local libraries PULMAN net-
work that now encompasses the cognate field of museums and archives, link-
ing together a few dozen very active local cultural institutions from Europe
East and West (and, being Greek, should I add, North and South), and bridg-
ing out to even more cultural institutions, research organisations and tech-
nology solution providers in participating countries.1
Despite all this thought and innovation, the 2002 Digicult study2 – itself an
offspring of the IST research programme – concurred to the nagging exis-
tence of some significant outstanding issues. While they cover the whole
gamut of policy, organisational and technological agendas, the most vexing
issues regard the actual impact of information society technologies, and the
results of European Commission-funded research, on the cultural heritage
domain proper - in other words, the obstacles that stop, or otherwise limit,
the fruitful inception of information society technologies in the cultural do-
main. Indeed, one of the motivations of the CALIMERA coordinating action
was to look afresh at the whole range of technology, policy and use issues re-
garding the adoption of technology-based services in the cultural sector, with
a significant addition: that this review would be from the viewpoint of the
smaller, local cultural institutions, and with a specific purpose in mind, to
find out what worked, what not, and – risking to fall into technology fore-
sight quicksand - what might work in the cultural domain proper. My inter-
vention is intended to contribute to this discussion and to our arguments as
they are taking shape. Needless to say, it owes a lot to the input of my Ca-
limera colleagues, not just those present today in this panel, but also the
many others who participated in our forums, consultation meetings and in-
formal extra-mural discussions.
To make a provocative statement, I assert that the main reason we do not see,
today, the desired level of inception of innovative technology-based solutions
and services in the cultural field has nothing to do with technology. I do not
believe that the wide availability of broadband networks, or for that matter,
the creation of large, high-quality, digital collections, will make the riches of
European art accessible to all, anymore than I would accept the argument

1AA.VV. (2001) European content in global networks: Coordination mechanisms for digitisation pro-
grammes. The Lund Principles. (ftp://ftp.cordis.lu/pub/ist/docs/digicult/lund_principles-en.pdf);
MINERVA: Ministerial network for valorizing activities in digitization. Web site:
http://www.minervaeurope.org; CALIMERA: Cultural Applications, Local Institutions Medi-
ating Electronic Resources. Web site: http://www.calimera.org.
2Geser, G. & Mulrenin, A. (2002) The DigiCULT Report. Technological Landscapes for tomor-
row’s cultural economy - Unlocking the value of cultural heritage, Luxembourg: Office for
Official Publications of the European Commission, 2002.

© 2004 Costis Dallas <cdallas@panteion.gr>. Some rights reserved.

 INTERACTIVE LIVING HERITAGE 3

that the growth of the telephone service was enough to produce more cohe-
sive interpersonal communication (and a less dehumanised society), or that
international travel automatically made people tolerant of foreign cultures.
Similarly, I don’t consider 3d photorealistic visualisations of monuments by
necessity a better way of encouraging people to be interested in architectural
heritage, and even less so to that other foreign country, the past.

Broader trends and policy issues

Before you start wondering what business I have in this panel, I will start my
argument from the opposite end. That of understanding how broader
changes in European society and culture shape up the cultural practices of
Europeans, and their attitudes to their multiple historic pasts and heritages,
and what this might mean for relevant R&D in cultural heritage technologies.
It is, indeed, a truism to say that, after the enlargement process and in the
context of increased globalisation, Europe is becoming even more multicul-
tural, multilingual and mobile (geographically and socially) than before. It is,
also, an accepted truth that media and information technology already play a
significant part in informing the Europeans’ sense of identity and their per-
ceptions of alterity (in common language, what is the identity of others). In
this context, I was struck – as I am sure others did as well – by the way in
which Vivienne Reding expressed recently her programmatic vision as new
Commissioner for Information Society, Audiovisual Policy and the Media
Economy – “in other words”, she added, “as the Commissioner for innova-
tion, inclusion and creativity.3 The words resonate with us, and with the con-
cerns and prospects of the European cultural domain as well. Her statement
reinforces some of the questions that form the background of my concerns in
the context of this discussion, regarding the record so far, and the imagined
future of European cultural heritage technologies: Is European research rele-
vant? Does it benefit (all) European citizens? Does it cater for the evolving
cultural practices of European creators and audiences? Is it contributing to
the emergence of culture – creativity, access and participation in cultural life –
as an equal rights citizen in the information society?

Metaphors
The current IST workprogramme focus in the field of culture is on “improv-
ing access to and preservation of Europe’s cultural and scientific resources”.
This is closely linked to the idea of adding value – through appropriately
technology-based services – to European cultural and scientific heritage; in
other words, to unlocking the potential of European heritage through Infor-

3Hearing of Viviane Reding (information society and media), European Parliament, 29 Sept.
2004 (http://www.europarl.europa.eu/press/audicom2004/resume/040929_reding_EN.pdf) .

© 2004 Costis Dallas <cdallas@panteion.gr>. Some rights reserved.

 4 COSTIS DALLAS

mation Society Technologies; or, if you prefer, to create a “European digital

continuum” of cultural resources.
Those among you familiar with the current thinking among stakeholders in
European cultural heritage informatics will immediately recognise some of
the “straplines” we use to order to focus on common agendas, mobilise pol-
icy makers, and summon the cultural and scientific heritage community to-
wards more intensive adoption of information society technologies and par-
ticipation in European initiatives. What they share is the representation of
heritage as a passive resource; as some sort of collective – yet diffuse – Euro-
pean asset that needs to be translated into capital, so that it generates “added
value”, or so that its potential is “unlocked”. Such metaphors – of viewing
heritage as an asset or resource – persists, in fact, across the whole gamut of
thinking about the key benefits of Information Society. Witness, for instance,
that when we think about creations (or even information) accessible by virtue
of digital media, we use the metaphor of content, packaged or “served”, natu-
rally, in appropriate technology-based containers.
The apparently general acceptance of such metaphors, invariably regarding
information in general, and cultural heritage in particular, as a passive re-
source to be better managed and exploited, has clear repercussions in policy
and practice, constraining information society technologies in the role of the
container, or the channel. However, an initial examination of what happens
in practice in the field of culture shows a much more complex, broader spec-
trum of operations that take place in all stages of cultural life, from the mo-
ment of creation to that of aesthetic or cognitive enjoyment by the heteroge-
neous publics of culture and the arts.
Let us, for a moment, consider a number of questions that people working in
the field of culture – as creators, academics, interpreters, educators or arts
managers - might ask themselves: How natural human creativity is funnelled
through form, artistic and literary convention? What constitutes an artistic
breakthrough? How do artists acquire followers, and are accepted as mas-
ters? How is the sense of historical memory shaped through dominant narra-
tives and interpretative exhibitions? How do literature readers read, and
choose what to read? Through what means are children attracted to drama,
or to dance? Taking into account the fact that what we may call heritage to-
day was the contemporary reality of yesterday, and that heritage and the arts
are, in fact, an inseparable whole, it is possible to conclude that the produc-
tion and use of our aesthetic universe through the experience of art, the pro-
duction and us of our conscience of the past through heritage, is an active
process.
In this sense, I would like to propose a much broader – or should I say more
complex – understanding of what we mean by cultural heritage, and align
our scope of appropriate technology research accordingly. The easiest way to
introduce this broader view of heritage is through illustrating my definition

© 2004 Costis Dallas <cdallas@panteion.gr>. Some rights reserved.

 INTERACTIVE LIVING HERITAGE 5

of “interactive living heritage”, and present, at the same time, a different set
of driving metaphors to those discussed above.

“Interactive”
First, let me explain why I consider heritage to be ‘interactive’ (or, conversely,
what constitutes the particular genre of interactive heritage). In order to do so,
I would like to distinguish between two types of interactivity. We may call the
first type ‘reactive interactivity’, illustrated by a stimulus-response cycle. This
is the kind of interactivity we note in the sensory motor mechanism that al-
lows most of us to walk, or drive a car. Also, this is the mode of interactivity
displayed by players of action computer games, or, to some extent, by re-
source management games (where, after awhile, planning the next steps be-
comes a routine). In fact, this is the interactivity witnessed by those visitors to
museum exhibitions who move mechanically from object to object, just read-
ing the legend and looking cursorily at object. It is a pattern of disorientation,
driven by information overload, that visitors lacking the requisite cultural
capital would feel in an exhibition lacking adequate visitor support guidance;
it also occurs in using hypermedia applications, and in the hypertext com-
munity it acquired, amusingly, the name of the ‘art museum’ syndrome. Most
people dealing with cultural heritage and the arts would agree, however, that
this is not the only, and certainly not a desirable, pattern of museum experi-
ence, and that many visitors of museums get much more than just disorienta-
tion and information overload; in fact, just engaging in a stimulus-response
interaction with interpretative or creative material cannot engage cultural
audiences to anything but a passive, mechanical relationship with art and
heritage.
The other type is what we may call dialogic interactivity. The term dialogic
draws is central to the cultural theory of Michail Bachtin, and, in the context
of interactive media, it was taken up by digital art theorist Lev Manovich.
4
While we can easily specify the functional affordances of an application that
supports the reactive type of interactivity – it’s enough that it produces stimuli
to users, which, if addressed by user action, activate some system function –
it is far more difficult to specify requirements for dialogic interactivity. To en-
gage users of a cultural heritage technology application so that they have a
transformative experience, or so that they engage in substance in the collabo-
rative dialogic enterprise of meaning-making – the one which, according to a
current theory, the act of reading constitutes a meaning-making operation
over and above the act of creation (the intention of the artist or the museum,
the meaning nominally embedded in the work or the exhibition itself) – is not

4Bachtin, Mkhail (1981) The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays, ed. Michael Holquist, Austin:
University of Texas Press; Manovich, Lev (2001), The language of new media, Cambridge, Mass.:
MIT Press.

© 2004 Costis Dallas <cdallas@panteion.gr>. Some rights reserved.

 6 COSTIS DALLAS

just a matter of technology, the application, or ‘the container’. It is neither a

matter of ‘content’ alone. It may manifest itself in a strong, appropriate meta-
phor driven through the technology. It may be based on a particularly apt
and creative combination of form and content. In the case of heritage, it
should most certainly be based on an honest approach to the past, and one
that is potentially open to different readings or interpretations. It is a chal-
lenge for technologists to develop engaging applications that mobilise audi-
ences in this kind of dialogic relationship with cultural heritage, or with art,
through interactivity.
Communities
Dialogic interactivity implies successive, intertwined acts of communication.
As we talk, thus, about it, the question arises: interaction with whom? Instead
of adopting an approach by which cultural institutions, and other formal or-
ganisations, are the focus (as successfully applied in the approach of projects
such as Digicult Forum or Minerva), I will base my ensuing argument on the
notion of community, a central concept in the CALIMERA approach, and one
that is a pillar of what we understand as ‘interactive living heritage’. In fact, if
we consider the process of discovering, managing, interpreting and using the
past – that is, the process of heritage – or, conversely, the process of creativity
and reception of the arts, we will see that these cultural processes are inher-
ently social. Interaction with cultural heritage and the arts makes sense only
within a context of norms, values, perceptions and a ‘horizon of expectations’
that is different for different historical periods, tastes, or groups of people,
but which, at any rate, presumes society.
Communities may be geo-local, i.e. based on a particular geographic location;
this is the kind of community that forms the patronage of a local library or
museum; or that is represented through the fonds of a local archive. With the
advent of mass media, and their convergence with information technology
and telecommunications, geo-local communities are increasingly comple-
mented by virtual communities: communities of interest, or even communi-
ties of practice. In the information landscape, it is clear that interactivity – and
interactive heritage – may concern both geo-local and virtual, networked
communities.
The potential heterogeneity introduced by virtual communities constitutes a
particular challenge. This, in my opinion, cannot be tackled fully by just in-
troducing more personalisation to applications – in fact, perpetuating the de-
velopment of applications programmed to act time and again as if they have
no memory or knowledge of any previous user but the one in the current ses-
sion. While the problem can be understood as one of matching dynamically
individual user’s preferences, the most vexing problem, in my mind, is to
create knowledge-based applications that utilise prior knowledge about the
interests and interaction patterns of different communities, and that use it so
as to provide knowledge-assisted services to members of these communities.

© 2004 Costis Dallas <cdallas@panteion.gr>. Some rights reserved.

 INTERACTIVE LIVING HERITAGE 7

An interesting challenge, therefore, would consist of conceptualising, model-

ling and architecting systems that have knowledge of the cognitive, aesthetic
and affective presuppositions of different publics, and that use that knowl-
edge transparently for interesting cultural services.
For the purpose of giving empirical substance to some of the ideas expressed
here about research challenges and potential solutions of interest to the cul-
tural heritage field, I will differentiate between three functional types of cul-
tural communities that are associated with major aspects of cultural heritage
and the arts, and can be one of the two poles of our dialogic interactivity:
Firstly, creative communities. If we accept that the notion of heritage is intri-
cately linked with that of interpretation of the past – that is, of producing au-
thoritative accounts of the past through exhibition, storytelling, performance
or other means – then interpretation, by museum curators, writers and crea-
tors of media and technology based-applications, is certainly a creative act.
This act is both enabled and constrained by the academic disciplinary rules,
expressive languages and styles of a community of practice (possibly differ-
ent for Classical archaeological museums, or for national or regional tradi-
tions). As regards literary and artistic creativity, there again the notion of a
community of practice is an obvious one, not least on account of the historical
derivation of artistic schools from guilds. The importance of communities for
the creative act, both in art and in heritage interpretation, is reinforced by the
fact that, nowadays, creative work very often involves a whole army of dif-
ferent specialties of creative people; this is most notable technology-based
media work.
Following this argument, it is imperative that creative communities, includ-
ing artists and cultural heritage professionals engaging in interpretation
work, are seen by the technology R&D community as an important constitu-
ency. The may not appear financially lucrative or important at first, but the
fact is that the value of everything else in cultural heritage and the arts – in-
cluding commercial success, or educational impact – ultimately depends on
the quality of the original creative act, in which they engage. Great, innovative
applications of information society technologies require the involvement of
the best in the cultural field – in culture, as much as in computing, it makes a
difference if you get the equivalent of an MIT professor rather than a com-
munity college tutor onboard, and the former kind is, by necessity, more de-
manding and difficult to please than the latter. In addition, it is only through
kick-starting information technology tools and solutions for creative commu-
nities of practice that new interaction models are going to be tried and vali-
dated by real practitioners in the creative process. One could think of meth-
odologies and applications for enabling museum professionals to use object
collection semantics in order to better plan, prototype and test exhibition
structures; tools for educators allowing them to recombine existing resources
in order to produce handouts, create and test learning scenarios; solutions

© 2004 Costis Dallas <cdallas@panteion.gr>. Some rights reserved.

 8 COSTIS DALLAS

enabling geographically dispersed creators to create collective visual, musical

or mixed media works, while maintaining forms of communication typical of
artistic interaction, or establishing novel ones based on the limitations of
asynchronous communication and on the ubiquity and common workspace
of collaborative work support technologies.
Secondly, learning communities are based on the importance of learning in the
process of participation in cultural heritage and the arts. In the sense used
here, learning is conceived as social, i.e., not as an interaction between a
learner and a resource, but as the outcome of a more complex interaction in-
volving resources, a community of learners interacting with one another (and
with a docent, or teacher), their prior knowledge and learning plans as de-
termined by norms and practices accepted in the context of a community.
New knowledge is, in fact, produced continuously as the learning commu-
nity members interact with resources and with each other. The term learning,
therefore, is not used here as in the phrase “learning materials”, but rather as
in “the learning organisation”.
Learning communities can be geo-local, or more typically, virtual communi-
ties of interest; they can be more formal – as is the case of school pupils be-
longing to the same age cohort – or less so – as is the case of people interested
in impressionism, or emblematics. Tacit knowledge created and used in the
context of such communities, and its preservation, plays an important part in
maintaining a sustainable model for learning in the field of cultural heritage
and the arts. If we do accept, and not just pay lip service, to the Aristotelian
agenda whereby education (including culture) is an essential asset for good
citizenship, then we need to explore mechanisms and tools in order to sup-
port the sustainability and life of cultural learning communities. The knowl-
edge management literature and technology arena provides a background
for an initial investigation of research ideas that might be useful in the cul-
tural field, although one would welcome technology research and applica-
tions that are based on more comprehensive domain understanding of what
actually constitutes learning in the process of visiting, say, an archaeological
site, or taking part in a literature reading group. As learning in cultural heri-
tage and the arts is embedded within specific social practices, real and virtual
(e.g., a family visiting a museum; a pupil grabbing pictures from an art site in
order to illustrate a school essay), such contexts should be researched more
closely, and appropriate solutions and tools developed for dealing adequately
with them.
Thirdly, interpretative communities are for long recognised as the primary
agents of the collaborative production of meaning between cultural heritage
institutions and their visitors.5 Interpretation of one’s own heritage, or of that

5Hooper-Greenhill, Eilean (1992), Museums and the shaping of knowledge. London ; New York:
Routledge); idem (1994), Museums and their visitors. London ; New York: Routledge.

© 2004 Costis Dallas <cdallas@panteion.gr>. Some rights reserved.

 INTERACTIVE LIVING HERITAGE 9

of others, is, obviously, an assertion of identity, and an appropriation of a spe-

cific segment and view of heritage as belonging to one’s self. The collective
nature of user-based heritage interpretation, and its dependence and focus on
establishing links with group identities, is evident. In addition, interpreta-
tions by visitors (readers, users) feed upon prior interpretations, and give rise
to further interpretations by others in a never-ending cycle. One need only
listen to a discussion between film buffs after a showing, or one between art
critics after viewing a controversial exhibition, to understand the types of in-
teraction that take place among members of cultural interpretative communi-
ties. Interactions can be highbrow and intellectual, but they can also be affec-
tive and personal; some participants may be more vocal and central to the life
of the community, while others are more peripheral. In a sense, the issues and
challenges faced at this level are similar to those encountered in the broader
field of applications for digital virtual communities.
The form of interactions among interpretative communities depends on the
medium. In technology-enhanced cultural heritage applications, we could
think of developing domain-specific models and formalisations of the proc-
ess of interaction between people, based on current work on collaborative
work support. We should also note the rising importance of collaborative
writing tools, such as Wikis, and of the mechanisms and practices of citation,
quotation and referral used in the vastly popular blogger community. More
intuitive tools and applications, as well as support for multimedia content
and interactions of users with it, are necessary.
Finally, an interesting notion regarding interpretative communities concerns
user presence. We know that visitors to real cultural heritage places present
themselves to others in a specific fashion, manifesting their public identity;
we also know that, before the conservation ethic took hold and banned such
behaviour as vandalism, travellers would often mark their visit to important
monuments by inscribing their name. Initial studies on interaction between
users equipped with mobile devices in cultural heritage places indicate that
such interaction plays a notable part in shaping up the social aspects of the
experience, even if, admittedly, interaction does not focus on the actual exhi-
bition seen. People are interested to know where others have been, or what
they did at a specific point. Avatar technologies provide an interesting virtual
surrogate of real presence, but my feeling is that what is needed urgently is
not so much providing more believable, moving, photorealistic semblances of
human beings in artificial virtual environments (although I would welcome
that) but, mainly, more persuasive and appropriate models of avatar behav-
iour and interaction. The issue does not concern just high-end, expensive, vir-
tual and mixed reality systems, but also more traditional application types
such as MOOs and the Eliza interactive agent, which for some reason were
abandoned or, at least, are very peripheral to current work. A particular chal-
lenge in that respect is language, an area where any advances to produce be-

© 2004 Costis Dallas <cdallas@panteion.gr>. Some rights reserved.

 10 COSTIS DALLAS

lievable dialogues between artificial characters and, potentially, real people,

would be greatly welcome.

“Living”
I now turn to the middle name of “interactive living heritage”. The term “liv-
ing” emphasises an important aspect of the concept of heritage, i.e. that it can
be seen like a living organism, as a form of life. As I noted briefly above, heri-
tage is related to our knowledge about the past; the fruits of historical, an-
thropological, archaeological or art historical research, the narratives and ex-
planations we have about past events, societies, cultures and the material re-
cord they have produced, are re-expressed in forms amenable to public
communication by cultural heritage institutions or other mediators (such as
those who create historical documentaries, produce popularisation publica-
tions, or conceptualise and develop interactive multimedia titles about the
past). Users of heritage – visitors, readers, users – contribute to the interpreta-
tive cycle, filling the gaps and participating in shaping up the cultural heri-
tage presented to them. Their commentaries, sometimes conflicting interpre-
tations and accounts of heritage – in the form of descriptions, narratives or
arguments – become part of the heritage record. While the past can be said to
be immutable, heritage, due to its dependence on user-driven interpretation
and use – symbolic, economic or other – remains always mutable and con-
tested.
Accepting this notion of cultural heritage has some implications for IST re-
search. Firstly, it opens up a perspective of viewing heritage resources not as
static data objects, but as dynamic components of an integrated meaning-
producing system, continuously enhanced by annotation, versioning and re-
combination. Important information for cultural objects, such as “Creator” or
“Date”, need to be seen, in this perspective, not as data, but as assertions,
linked with specific acts of attribution or dating. Documentation becomes
knowledge representation.
While we have some modelling work in this area in the context of the Con-
ceptual Reference Model of CIDOC/ICOM,6 an international standard on the
representation of cultural heritage information currently at the stage of ISO
committee draft, there is little effort, still, to produce domain- and function-
specific applications and tools that make it possible for normal cultural insti-
tutions without PhDs in artificial intelligence, or for their online audiences, to
benefit from specific services and applications that make use of such an ap-
proach. Innovative applications of a simpler nature, such as the a.k.a. limited-
area, thesaurus-assisted search engine trialled by the Getty Information Insti-

6 Doerr, Martin (2003), 'The CIDOC Conceptual Reference Model: An Ontological Approach
to Semantic Interoperability of Metadata', AI Magazine, 24 (3), 75-92.

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 INTERACTIVE LIVING HERITAGE 11

tute a few years back, unfortunately do not find parallels in our brave new
world of web services, ontologies, topic maps etc. Forces are joined to estab-
lish common policies and practices for digitisation, and long-term digital
preservation of cultural heritage collections is now a priority, but still the im-
portance of adequate knowledge representations and knowledge-assisted
tools and applications to enable their use is not fully acknowledged.
Existing efforts on knowledge representation have concentrated on produc-
ing authoritative models of domain knowledge in (mostly) the material cul-
ture disciplines. Indeed, it is no accident that CLIO, the semantic cultural in-
formation system produced by the Institute of Computer Science of FORTH
in Crete, is presented as a tool for “scientific documentation”. But, as I sug-
gested above, heritage is about the evolving, living interpretations of the past
by audiences and users. I should add that it is, also, about different, dynamic
aspects of the heritage record itself, such as narratives – a genre underlying
the logic of novels, of historical exhibitions, and of films – performances – ap-
parent in theatre, dance and music – and, finally, user experiences – apparent
in the trail followed by visitors in an exhibition, in the bookmarked or other-
wise annotated nodes of a web hyperdocument traversed by users, etc. As
these aspects of heritage are also crucial for its marketing and management –
through the possibilities of up-selling and cross-selling, and through the
whole field of audience relationship management – advances in this area will
have a real impact on the field of cultural heritage institutions. A particularly
challenging area of technology research, stemming directly from the nature
of living heritage as an autopoietic, living organism, is, thus, to develop con-
ceptualisations, models, and applications making use of the emerging seman-
tics of user interaction with heritage.

“Heritage”
I come now to the final term of my enquiry: heritage itself. The intrinsic con-
tradiction that many arts and humanities people sense about the relationship
between heritage and the information society may lie, to a certain extent, on
two notions. Firstly, that heritage is about a sense of place; “the past is a for-
eign country”, as Lowenthal, a fierce critic of heritage, has put it in the title of
the most famous of his books.7 On the contrary, information society, through
ubiquity and virtuality, creates a nowhere-place, a utopia, which bears no rela-
tion to the physical, embedded traditions and histories linked with a physical
environment. Secondly, in the eyes of many humanists, the record of the past
(in the form of monuments, art works, writings etc.) are there for unmedi-
ated, immediate access by people; heritage is an ambience, with an atmos-
phere of its own, interwoven seamlessly in the landscape. The involvement of

7Lowenthal, David (1985), The past is a foreign country. Cambridge; New York: Cambridge
University Press.

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 12 COSTIS DALLAS

a technological medium, on the other hand, introduces a mediator, that

stands, in their mind, between heritage and its audiences.
The need to provide for unmediated, seamless digital experiences is well-
known among specialists in human-computer interaction. In the now famous
words of Marc Weiser, the visionary of ambient intelligence, “there is more
information available at our fingertips during a walk in the woods than in
any computer system, yet people find a walk among trees relaxing and com-
puters frustrating. Machines that fit the human environment instead of forc-
ing humans to enter theirs will make using a computer as refreshing as tak-
ing a walk in the woods”. 8
Viewing digital heritage as an seamless ambience poses additional R&D chal-
lenges for the IST community, along the lines of the vision illustrated above.
It opens up the field of enhancing heritage places with ambient intelligence
for interpretation, visitor orientation and learning support, using smart label
– smart card technologies, intelligent agents, sensors and voice technologies
to create smart environments for an intuitive and accessible interface between
heritage and its publics. It raises the need to conceptualise and develop plat-
forms and testbeds for cultural services accessible through a variety of de-
vices (including mobile handsets and digital TV), using intuitive interfaces
going beyond the GUI paradigm, and based on integrating knowledge portal
technologies, personalisation, location awareness, broadband networking,
voice technologies, CRM and collaboration support solutions. Finally, it
opens up heritage to the community, possibly through a concept o connected
personal information systems, integrating personal storage devices, digital
cameras, digital recording equipment with wireless networking and 3G+
mobile phone technologies as channels for preserving and providing interac-
tive access to the individual and collective memories of European citizens.

Conclusion
The objective of our vision of working towards an interactive living heritage
in the information society can be stated operationally in the following terms:
“To create and provide access to an inclusive, ubiquitous, personalized, mul-
tilingual, enriched community through interoperable and ubiquitous local
cultural services”. The challenge, thus, for cultural heritage-related research is
to provide adequate mechanisms and tools to unlock the creative potential of
the European citizen, and of diverse cultural organisations, large and small
(including libraries, museums and archives), as interactive creators of the so-
cial and cultural memory of a changing Europe, as participants of a living
and sustainable cultural virtual community spanning geographic and cul-

8 Weiser, Marc (1981) The computer for the 21st century. Scientific American, September 1981
(http://www.ubiq.com/hypertext/weiser/SciAmDraft3.html).

© 2004 Costis Dallas <cdallas@panteion.gr>. Some rights reserved.

 INTERACTIVE LIVING HERITAGE 13

tural boundaries, and as users of digital cultural experiences delivered

through a variety of channels and devices, giving rise to new business mod-
els and services for the production, use and exploitation of cultural assets.
Key objectives that research priorities would have to address are summarised
by the triad of interactivity, creativity and engagement, leading to the devel-
opment of cultural heritage resources and experiences that combine learning
and educational value with fun and enjoyment.

© 2004 Costis Dallas <cdallas@panteion.gr>. Some rights reserved.