Workshop promotes digitisation, heritage preservation via apps
SIBU: The Digitisation of Indigenous Knowledge for Extended Reality and Culture (DIKE) Summer School/ Workshop was held from March 3 to 12 at Borneo Cultures Museum in Kuching, the second largest museum in Southeast Asia.
The event was hosted by the University of Technology Sarawak (UTS) and run in collaboration with the Humboldt University zu Berlin (HU) and the Berlin University of Applied Sciences (HTW).
In a press release here yesterday, UTS said the event gathered a group of 50 students, academic staff members, facilitators and content providers from Malaysia, Indonesia, the Netherlands and Germany.
The aim of the workshop was to promote the digitisation and preservation of cultural heritage through production of apps for smartphones that will augment users’ experience with digital contents, it said.
“The DIKE Summer School was a wonderful opportunity, which welcomed students from local and international institutions including Sarawak Information Systems Sdn Bhd (Sains), Borneo Laboratory, Universiti Kuala Lumpur, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia, Universiti Malaysia Sarawak and University of Technology Sarawak, the Humboldt University zu Berlin (HU) and the Berlin University of Applied Sciences (HTW).
The participants of the school were from diverse academic disciplines, including Architecture, Computer Sciences, Arts and Humanities.
“During the 10-day summer school, participants developed Extended Reality (XR) applications for four cultural heritage entities and practices, namely the ‘Old Museum of Kuching – A Museum Time Machine’; ‘Pua Kumbu – Dream Weaving’, ‘Silat – Warrior Techniques’ and ‘Manai Uwi – The Art of Traditional Rattan Weaving’,” the press release said.
Vice chancellor of UTS Prof Datuk Dr Khairuddin Ab Hamid said culture and technologies were among the niche research areas of the UTS’ Advanced Centre for Sustainable SocioEconomic and Technological Development (Asset).
“Preserving cultural heritage is an arduous task, and without integrating it into modern digital and communication technologies, it becomes even more challenging to sustain it,” he added.
“The DIKE Summer School opens new possibilities and builds local capacity to ensure the preservation of Borneo culture and it’s accessibility for future generations,” Khairuddin said.
Prof Dr Dr h.c. mult. Jürgen Sieck, professor at the University of Applied Sciences in Berlin and co-organiser of the Summer School, meanwhile, said the questions and problems worked on in the summer School are closely related to the goals of the Cluster of Excellence ‘Matters of Activity’ of the Humboldt-University zu Berlin (HU).
“The cooperation between community groups, universities, museums and industry is a best-practice-example for developing new design strategies in the interplay of materials and structures for both, the real and the digital world,” he said.
“New and traditional materials as well as new and traditional design techniques are also being experimented with to develop innovative applications. It was impressive to see how interdisciplinary collaboration is organised.”
Prof Dr Verena Metze-Mangold, professor for Intercultural Communication, co-facilitator of the Summer School and former president of the German Commission for Unesco, said: “After all, we debated about future, the future of mankind as well as the professional and scientific one in global networks like University Twinning and Networking Programme (Unitwin).
“We explored the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (Unesco)-concept of World Heritage and the reciprocity of past and future. If the greatest problems of the world are of global nature the greatest challenge facing us is the human mind-set: the ability to think things through and act accordingly.
“This ability gets trained in international summer schools. It was impressive to see how interdisciplinary collaboration was organised.”
The DIKE Summer School 2023 provided an opportunity for participants to exchange knowledge, explore new ideas and collaborate in a multicultural setting.
The organisers hoped that the event would continue to foster cooperation among institutions and individuals and contribute to the development of cultural heritage preservation through technology.
The summer school was generously funded by the German Academic Exchange Service as well as by the HTW, the HU and the UTS.