Article: Exploring New Connections between the Physical and Digital for Future Heritage Interpretations

New forms of connections between information and the physical world create opportunities for novel activities around heritage. This paper analyses a technological progression from linking data and content to locations, towards data captured by and linked to everyday objects.

Authors: Tim Coughlan, Michael Brown, Robert Houghton, (Horizon Digital Economy Research) and Glyn Lawson (Human Factors Research Group)

Published in CHI 2012 Workshop: Heritage Matters, 5-10 May 2012, Austin, Texas.

Open access: http://oro.open.ac.uk/33674/1/Coughlan_Brown_Houghton_Lawson.pdf

ABSTRACT - New forms of connections between information and the physical world create opportunities for novel activities around heritage. This paper analyses a technological progression from linking data and content to locations, towards data captured by and linked to everyday objects. The former is exemplified by a study which explored community-based inquiry activities at a historical cemetery site. To explore the latter, we are developing a series of scenarios and visualisations to analyse peoples’ interpretations of contextual footprints – current and historical data gathered through the Internet of Things.