Immersing into the Past: an Augmented Reality Method to Link Tangible and Intangible Heritage

Abstract

The current IT and digital technologies such as Mobile Augmented Reality (MAR) enable the overlap of digital and real world information in relation with a topic, in an engaging and efficient manner, and therefore can be used to store intangible heritage and to study it in the context as well. The current paper refers to such an augmentation of cultural information, performed at the Kallatis site, whose ruins, at present mostly covered by the modern town, do not offer sufficient information on the complexity of the Greek civilization. The implementation of a MAR application consisted in defining several points of interest of the important local archaeologic discoveries, which can trigger, for the visitors using our application, an augmentation of the historical site with images and videos. With the current research work, the authors propose and demonstrate that a mobile MAR application can constitute a modern method for providing visitors with an immersive and holistic experience for understanding the local material and intangible heritage.