This €2 million Interreg Northern Periphery Area funded project aims to transform people’s experience of outdoor heritage sites through technology, building on the idea of “museums without walls”.
New digital interfaces such as augmented reality, virtual world technology, and easy to use apps will bring the past alive and allows users to visualise the effects of the changing environment on heritage sites, and help us to imagine possible futures. In one such project, titled the ‘Spirits of St Catherine’s’, Ulster University created an immersive virtual reality experience that takes players into a historical reconstruction of a 15th-century church in Ireland and was placed as finalist in the recent 7th International Educational Games Competition in Denmark.
The collaborative digital heritage project is shared between 9 partners and 10 associated partners from Norway, Iceland, Ireland, Northern Ireland, and Scotland. Ulster University in particular work closely with Donegal County Museum to raise awareness for the local landscape and its natural and cultural heritage, in order to protect and enable sustainable environmental management.
The Ulster University research team is represented by the School of Computing, Engineering, and Intelligent Systems who have had a key role in the development and installation of Virtual Reality technologies on the Irish sites. On the 5th of November 2019, international research partners will travel to Ulster University’s Magee Campus to meet to discuss the impact of the project in partnership with Donegal County Museum with a public event on 7th November.
To register for the event visit https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/cine-presents-immersive-technology-for-sustainable-management-of-natural-cultural-heritage-tickets-74048136971.
Joan Condell, Senior Lecturer in School of Computing, Engineering and Intelligent Systems said:
“The CINE project has provided excellent opportunities to bring our local and regional stakeholders together, with Virtual and Augmented Reality community co-creation and ICT at the heart of the project in the development of initiatives linked to virtual tourism.”
Niall McShane, Research Assistant in the School of Computing, Engineering and Intelligent Systems spoke about the project:
“CINE has three main project objectives; to protect, develop and promote natural and cultural heritage, to improve accessibility to valuable heritage information and also to strengthen identities of remote areas by knowledge transfer.”
For more information visit http://cine.interreg-npa.eu/