Presentation of New Ways of Preserving Heritage - Particle

Our assignment in Liepaja was to work on the concept of “New ways of preserving heritage”. We started out by reflecting on the proposal made in the previous edition of MC2020 that included the use of augmented reality to make heritage sites more interesting and appealing.

However, during our discussions we arrived at the conclusion that there are more cons than pros to the project since it would require huge amounts of new content to be created and wouldn't necessarily solve anything.

Therefore we decided to look for new ways of preserving heritage and were struck by the idea that heritage is not only architecture or art but actually anything that is man made and that we leave behind for the future generations.

That's how we began thinking about our environment - first of all, if we don't protect our environment, there will be no heritage for our future generations to enjoy. According to a report made by the European Commission, atmospheric pollution is one of the main reasons responsible for the disappearance of movable and immovable heritage.

But isn't pollution our heritage as well? It's definitely not something that we should strive to preserve but it's still a result of our actions and it's our legacy and responsibility towards the future generations.

The environmental issues can only be solved if everyone of us takes action, therefore our goal was to come up with a project that would raise awareness of the environmental issues that we're facing.

Our concept - Particle - is an interactive 3d projection, an art installation that can be both enjoyable and informative. It would visualise our relationship with the various invisible elements that surround us, such as the chemical contents of the air we breathe. Since it's a projection, the user isn't required to have any sort of gadgets with him / her, the user can simply step in the projected box and interact with the particles, get important information on how the elements affect us and our environment, what is the percentage of that element in the air, is it excessive, etc.

Team: Jungsoo Moon, Zanda Puče, Ojärs Saulitis, Odrija Heinrihsone, Jiaqi Huang

With the help of this installation we could reveal how we're affected by our environment as well as how the environment is affected by us. We hope that experiencing our installation would lead people to reconsider the importance of environment issues. It would change the way we are used to see natural environment and how we treat it.

Presentation
Video

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FEEDBACK:
The feedback statement to the team presented by René Lansink in the feedback discussion, last day plenary:

Project 3 Particle
This project focused on using augmented reality to visualize ‘cultural heritage’ in the  environment. The project group as a start used a great deal of their time to discuss and redefine their concept of ‘heritage’. Being an evidence or trace of the past, the concept of heritage can refer to ‘hidden’ artifacts in our natural environment. Traces from the past we normally cannot see, but which can be made visible by the use of new technology…. The end of this conceptual exercise was to focus on environmental pollution (air, water, soil), hence the project title ‘Particle’.

In a very clear and visually convincing worked out user scenario the use of augmented reality to visualize ‘invisible’ pollution in a urban and more natural environment was worked out. The object of the application was to raise awareness of the status of the ‘heritage’ i.e. ‘pollution’ in the environment.

The very strong aspect of this project was that they focused on a specific real life problem (pollution) using the right technological concept, i.e. augmented reality & holographic projection to make things visible you normally cannot see!

Summary of comments by other lecturers
Totally new concept. They had to think about the initial idea again to redefine the concept of heritage, that made very clear the whole design. The concept is very strong. It's global but you made it local and it llok really stron, visualizations were very clear and helped to understand the concept. The research on data gave them the idea of visualizing data. Clarity, focus and good taste for design also having the future partners clear was good. The bad thing was the length of the presentation. It's the project that EU would like most.