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The rhetoric of reproduction: built heritage in a digital age
Conference paper   Peer reviewed

The rhetoric of reproduction: built heritage in a digital age

Amy Clarke and Ashley Paine
Digital cultural heritage: Future Visions, pp.112-130
UQ Architecture Conference - digital cultural heritage: Future Visions (Brisbane, Australia, 19-Apr-2017–20-Apr-2017)
University of Queensland, Architecture Theory Criticism and History
2018
url
https://digitalculturalheritageconference.files.wordpress.com/2018/04/12_clarke.pdfView
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Abstract

Cultural Studies digital heritage replication Palmyra Tutankhamen
In recent years, digital heritage has emerged as an important new field of research and practice, with an implicit ambition to record, conserve and even reconstruct culturally significant sites and artefacts threatened by war, climate change, natural disasters, development and neglect. Digital heritage initiatives have been enthusiastically promoted and adopted by government bodies, institutions and philanthropic organisations from around the world. Despite its allure, the application and utility of preserving, managing and reproducing built heritage via digital technology remains largely untested, and carries with it risks that may ultimately undermine the practice altogether. Drawing from recent examples such as the Institute of Digital Archaeology (IDA)'s replica Palmyra Arch, and Factum Arte's facsimile of Tutankhamen's Tomb, this paper identifies some of the particular challenges raised by the physical replication of heritage using digital technologies. Issues such as the quality of reproduction, the motivations for such projects, and unintended outcomes (e.g. neglect, complacency) are considered, as are more philosophical questions such as the revision of history. As such, the paper takes on a critical and provocative future vision of digital heritage technology and its use in replication, by highlighting some of the threats such practices may pose to the very cultural heritage it aims to protect.

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