Rebecca Ferguson

The Open University: 22 March 2010

Recontextualising &

Reworking our Past:

Heritage in

Second Life

Why heritage is important.

How virtual worlds can extend our experience of heritage.

What is heritage?What are virtual worlds?

What is heritage?

Heritage: making selective use of

the objects and practices of the

past in order to create a context.

"Heritage has very little to do with the past, but is actually more about how we contextualise the future."

Rodney Harrison

What is heritage?

http://www.onlineschools.org/blog/unbelievable-wow/

Timeline of virtual worlds

Why heritage is important.

How virtual worlds can extend our experience of heritage.

What is heritage?What are virtual worlds?

Heterotopias• Every culture has them• They sit outside the day-to-day mainstream• They juxtapose several places in one place• They are both isolated and penetrable• Their meaning is not fixed – it shifts over time• They serve a function in relation to the real

Foucault, M. Of Other Spaces, 1967, 1984 translation by Jay Miskowiec.

Heterotopia

a location that holds a mirror up to the society around it and, in so doing, challenges, neutralises or inverts sets of relations within that society.

Relationship to heritage1. Reproducing items in order to aid

understanding and accessibility

2. Moving visitors outside real space

3. Moving visitors outside real time

4. Privileging certain interpretations

of the past

5. Using heritage to establish continuity

1. Reproducing items in order to aid understanding and accessibility

2. Moving visitors outside real space

3. Moving visitors outside real time

4. Privileging certain interpretations

5. To establish continuity

Ferguson, R., Harrison, R., & Weinbren, D. (2010). Heritage and the recent and contemporary past. In T. Benton (Ed.), Understanding Heritage and Memory. Manchester University Press.

Why heritage is important.

How virtual worlds canextend our experience of heritage.