Withers, Simon ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0203-359X (2025) Curating Adventure Spaces: designing large digital heritage models where heritage is an active, open-ended process of meaning-making and the point cloud becomes not just a model of heritage but a space of heritage-making in its own right. In: Bianchi, Pamela and Meuris, Wesley, (eds.) Exhibition Matters: Contemporary Displays and Exhibition-Making Practices. Bloomsbury Visual Arts, London, pp. 148-166. ISBN 978-1350575547 (doi:10.5040/9781350575578.ch-009)

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Abstract

Digital models of heritage sites tend to conform to the modelled site, 'to shape after' the original. The digital model is understood as a relation to the original, so in some way it replicates its precedent's spatial and historical characteristics. And in doing so, it inevitably models the past. This chapter proposes that the original heritage site, rather than being the subject of the model, may counterintuitively be considered the foundation for novel spatial speculation and invention. If digital models of heritage sites now become digital shadows - projections, however distorted, of the original heritage site - they gain a vivacity and possess a latent potential to become active, open-ended processes of meaning making. These sites of curiosity could be freely accessible as catalysts for spatial imagination, inspiration and invention. Suppose we experience the physical heritage site as visitors (to see, to view). Why not take the opportunity to engage all our senses with the digital shadow as curators, designers and heritage-makers in our own right? Captivate approaches curation as designers, using point clouds to create and test novel spatialities. This chapter proposes that the digital model is now the heritage site or site of heritage-making, and the original, the physical site, is a necessary foundation for new, active and open-ended meaning-making. We call these new spaces of heritage-making 'Adventure-Spaces'.

Item Type:	Book Section
Uncontrolled Keywords:	points clouds, heritage site, LiDAR, 3D scanning, digital heritage model
Subjects:	N Fine Arts > N Visual arts (General) For photography, see TR N Fine Arts > NC Drawing Design Illustration Q Science > QA Mathematics > QA75 Electronic computers. Computer science
Faculty / School / Research Centre / Research Group:	Faculty of Law, Arts and Social Sciences Faculty of Law, Arts and Social Sciences > Centre for Sound and Image Faculty of Law, Arts and Social Sciences > School of Design and Creative Industries
Last Modified:	05 May 2026 15:26
URI:	https://gala.gre.ac.uk/id/eprint/53333

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