India's cultural heritage

The speech explores the seminal role of Digital Management of Arts for promoting the ICCR's mission of trans cultural diplomacy. It discusses the enlargement of the scope of ICCR's contribution for harnessing ex situ storage and display of arts for in situ revitalization of lost memories and languages. This will help in the recovery of the inclusive Indian cultural consciousness and in the fortification of its catalytic role in community regarding sustainable development. The article speaks of the substitution of the real by virtual spaces in the Pandemic as an opportunity to use digital arts for reinvigorating state community links.

Water has fascinating, multifaceted roles in the heritage of the Indian subcontinent (Jain-Neubauer 2016; Wescoat 2013). Few pre-modern water systems continue to operate, but they still capture the imagination in ways that lead one to aspire to hear old fountains play again, see pools filled to the brim, and restore ancient wells that lifted cool groundwater for diverse human wants. Across South Asia, there are efforts to restore historical water systems to working conditions. In parallel with these sentiments are the concerns of conservation architects to waterproof structures in ways that minimize the damaging effects of water – wicking, rot, and mold (Wescoat
2007). Water simultaneously has life-fulfilling and destructive powers.
Even damaging events like floods have long-term ecological and cultural significance. To move toward an integrated approach toward water heritage management, it is useful to begin with a broad conceptual framework for water-conserving design. The first part of this chapter reviews the major components of a conceptual model of water-conserving design to set the stage for the emphasis here on a conservation case study of Indo-Islamicate water experience. The term ‘Indo-Islamicate’, coined by Marshall Hodgson (1975/2009, vol. 3, p. 87), refers to cultural engagement and exchange between Muslim and non-Muslim cultures in South Asia, like the Mughal-Rajput case study in this chapter.

The ambitious Kashi Vishvanath Corridor in Varanasi (India) was inaugurated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in March 2019. Set to turn the site into a ‘world-class’ pilgrimage destination, the project entails the construction of a monumental path that connects the Ganges river to the city’s main Hindu temple. In the middle of the area under ‘beautification’, stands the Gyanvapi mosque – a longstanding target of Hindu nationalist campaigns to ‘liberate’ supposedly originally Hindu places of worship from Muslim presence. By combining ethnographic material collected through longitudinal research with a critical analysis of local Hindi newspapers, I trace the genesis of the Corridor as a ‘heritage project’. I suggest that, through it, a new heritage regime is being put forward to suit, and provide evidence for, current Hindu nationalist projections of India as a Hindu nation. However, I also argue that this regime is not just the result of a top-down agenda, but originates from a counter-intuitive process: bottom-up mobilisations of heritage by residents (who were eventually evicted) seem to have informed, if not provoked, subsequent official narratives and the branding of the Corridor as heritage.

In the present article, the author intends, through the presentation of some cases (Portugal, Libya, India, Nigeria, Mozambique) that occurred recently, of patrimonial destructions - focusing on the Portuguese case, to demonstrate the need for an International Regulatory Authority, which defends the Heritage itself, but also all of its Professionals. Work that is currently being carried out by the ICCIRA Board of Directors and by hundreds of its Volunteer Ambassadors spread across the four corners of the world.

No artigo presente, o autor pretende, através da apresentação de alguns casos (Portugal, Líbia, Índia, Nigéria, Moçambique) ocorridos recentemente, de atentados patrimoniais - centrando-se no caso Português, demonstrar a necessidade de uma Autoridade Reguladora Internacional, que defenda o Património em si, mas também todos os seus Profissionais. Trabalho que se encontra a ser efectuado presentemente pelo Conselho de Directores da ICCIRA e por centenas dos seus Embaixadores Voluntários espalhados pelos quatro cantos do Mundo.

Recently, museums and historic sites have begun reaching out beyond their traditional audience groups, using more innovative digital display technology to find and attract a new audience. Virtual, mixed, and Augmented Reality (AR) technologies are becoming more ubiquitous in our society and "virtual history" exhibits are starting to be available to the public. There are numerous studies focusing on AR, however a scant amount of research is being done at historical sites. An initial experiment used repeated measures (ANOVA) to compare and rank three different types of AR devices used at a site of cultural heritage. A further experiment was then undertaken to observe participants using two different AR devices with and without sound to determine if which device used or the presence of sound impact the usability of the device, or the user's satisfaction/preference of specific devices. Several surveys, including demographic and usability surveys, were provided in order to collect a range of user data. A two-way repeated measures (ANOVA) were used to analyze the quantitative data gathered. No significant effects were observed based on the quantitative data provided by the surveys, indicating that all devices were equally usable and satisfactory, and that sound did not have a significant impact in this instance. However, the qualitative data indicated that users may prefer using AR technology on a smartphone device and preferred to use this device paired with sound.