Virtual reality: The use of images for the interpretation and experience of culture and heritage

Abstract

Much of our understanding of our world is via images, images which we see with our eyes and those which are formed in our minds as a consequence, and all these occur through our bodily actions within the context and the spaces in which we move and act. In the present, we manipulate information via gestural actions, accessing objects through screens of various sizes pervading our lives, which contributes to our action on and the understanding of our worlds. In the academia too and increasingly within the data-science oriented industry, interactive visualisation used within research and corporations has become part of the process rather than the product. It seems that the greater part of our existence has been saturated with digital representations and that we have been herded into digital worlds, although incompletely. Now that Virtual Reality is ready, the means to a fuller immersion and experience in terms of spatial-temporal awareness, self-awareness, and embodied action has become accessible, we need to ask what the phenomenological implications in our interpretation and experience of culture and heritage are? And how will this transform the way we conduct our research? This communication explores our transition from the real into the virtual, and presents perspectives from various projects at the NVIDIA Joint-Lab on Mixed Reality.