主 题：Developments in Digital Cultural Heritage：A personal survey including Digital Dunhuang and the Mogao Caves
主讲人：Jonathan Bowen（ Emeritus Professor of Computing at London South Bank University）
主持人：林节思（中希文明互鉴中心博士后）
时 间：5月18日（星期一）15：00
地 点：中希文明互鉴中心201学术报告厅
讲座提要
Cultural heritage has traditionally been concerned with analogue physical objects. However, it is increasingly the case that heritage resources have associated digital information. Traditionally, this metadata has been generated by human curators. However, the rapid recent developments in Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI), not to mention improvements in Virtual Reality (VR) and related technologies, including the Metaverse, as well as vast cloud resources for online data storage, mean that information technology can increasingly help in producing and maintaining this associated data. This talk explores how we reached the current state-of-the-art and possible directions for future developments. Examples from around the world will be presented that may be helpful as inspiration for projects in China and elsewhere. As a more detailed case study, we consider the Mogao Caves at Dunhuang in Gansu, China, which represent one of the most important cultural heritage sites along the Silk Road. Facing environmental degradation, visitor pressure, and challenges of long-term conservation, the Dunhuang Academy has launched the Digital Dunhuang initiative to create high-fidelity archives of murals, sculptures, and associated materials. This talk reviews the scope and methodology of Digital Dunhuang, highlights its achievements and challenges in preservation and conservation, and situates it within global practices. We include a comparison with Harvard University’s Digital Gandhara project on various Buddhist sites. Through this comparative lens, the talk identifies some converging strategies and lessons for sustainable digital heritage preservation.
报告人简介
Prof. Jonathan Bowen, MA Oxon, FBCS, FRSA, is an Emeritus Professor of Computing at London South Bank University, Chair of Museophile Limited, a museum and IT consultancy company that he founded in 2002, and an Adjunct Professor at Southwest University. He has been a visiting scholar/professor at a variety of institutions, including the Israel Institute for Advanced Studies (Jerusalem), King’s College London, and the Pratt Institute (New York). Previously, he has held academic/research posts at Birmingham City University, the University of Reading, the Oxford University Computing Laboratory, and Imperial College London. Jonathan’s research interests range from computer science, and particularly software engineering, through to the history of computing, museum informatics, and digital culture and heritage. He contributes to Wikipedia on cultural, heritage, and computing-related topics. In 2017, he co-authored The Turing Guide on the computing pioneer Alan Turing, and in 2019, he co-edited the book Museums and Digital Culture. A follow-on co-edited book on The Arts and Computational Culture was published in 2024.
