Preserving cultures in the digital age raises serious questions about access to technology and authenticity.
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Professor Amareswar Galla is concerned about preserving cultures in a digital age.
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If it’s bangles you want, you could do worse than venture to the markets of Hyderabad. Since the times of the Qutub Shahi and Mughal rulers, the bazaars there been known for the quality of the wrist attire on sale. These glittering prizes have made India’s fifth largest city one of the most desired destinations on
the subcontinent.
More recently it’s bandwidth - not bangles - that has been setting the city apart. A short drive from the markets of medieval Hyderabad lie the gleaming offices of national and international technology companies, including giants like Infosys and Microsoft. This part of the city has surfed the blue chip revolution to great prosperity, leading some to rename it as ‘Cyberabad’.
Hyderabad, where traditional and modern cultures sit side by side, was a fitting venue for the second International Conference on Technology, Knowledge, and Society. The gathering last December brought together more than 250 academics from around the world to discuss how digital technologies are impacting upon and being taken up by different societies. For co-organiser and chair of the conference Professor Amareswar Galla, who heads up the Graduate Studies in Sustainable Heritage Development (GSSHD) program at ANU, it was another step in a larger effort to safeguard the practices, artefacts and beliefs of traditional cultures.
“This is about using digital technologies in heritage preservation, the continuity of heritage values, whether it is digitising collections, providing access through web pages, using geographic information systems or interpreting through information kiosks,” Galla says.
“In the case of existing collections, you’ve already got your heritage resources, so digital technologies have become a means to create inventories, research, and ensure preservation and communication between different stakeholders.”
Under discussion at the conference, and part of the ongoing work of the GSSHD program, is the effort to impart digital know-how to cultural workers from developing nations. Technologies such as the Internet, databases, and 3D computer graphics can then be used to create lasting records for museums and cultural centres. In this way, collections of important objects or oral histories are easily stored and can be accessed widely.
“We are now developing a project with the Indian Government, researchers from various universities, the British Museum and all the other relevant museums in the world to bring together the famous Amaravati sculptures and the site together. The sculptures were removed during colonial times from what was the birthplace of Nagarjuna, the founder of Mahayana School of Buddhism. In future, a farmer or a local school pupil from the villages near Amaravati could access the displays and collections at the British Museum through a kiosk in the site museum at Amaravati in rural India and a visitor to the British Museum could virtually travel down the river Krishna and visit the source communities and places.”
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“Digital globalisation is here, there is no avoiding it. Any kind of technology is only as good as the control you have over it. If indigenous people around the world have control over a technology, they can make best use of it."
Professor Amareswar Galla
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The practice of cultural preservation could also become problematic when the things being safeguarded are created in a digital format using a specific technological platform. Galla says that digital voice recordings of indigenous peoples are generally agreed to be authentic cultural documents, as they can be regarded as primary sources. Similarly, he points to digital art works in the National Museum of Technology of Osaka in Japan as primary expressions of a particular culture at a particular time. But what happens if the storage technology itself needs to be updated?
“The problem is, even if there are a few changed pixels in the artwork, it’s no longer the authentic artwork,” Galla says. “For the Japanese curators, they have to conserve the artwork in the format that it’s created. You can imagine the problems this is going to create in 20 years time.”
While there were no fast answers to such difficult questions at the Hyderabad conference, there was much discussion of how digital technologies grant autonomy to indigenous cultures. Galla says the prime example of this is the Zapatista movement, which formed as a revolutionary army in the impoverished Mexican state of Chiapas in the mid-1990s. The group garnered international attention through the savvy use of the Internet and satellite phones to communicate its objectives with the world. It also raised funds through e-commerce, selling local artefacts over the Internet.
On the flipside to the relative success of the Zapatistas is the common fear that digital technologies lead to cultural colonisation, through, for example, the broadcasting of Hollywood movies or monocultural content from dominant groups. For Galla, the difference between digital technology as a means of empowerment or enslavement is a question of sharing control in developing and managing the content.
“Digital globalisation is here, there is no avoiding it. Any kind of technology is only as good as the control you have over it. If indigenous people around the world have control over a technology, they can make best use of it.
“In Vietnam, for example, there is an official policy position. Globalisation by itself; you can’t criticise that. It’s here, it’s happening. But Vietnam wants to build its institutional capacity to maximise the opportunities provided by globalisation, and at the same time minimise the negative impacts. The GSSHD Program through its Heritage Action Field School is working with Vietnamese museums to explore ways of protecting the cultural diversity of the country in the face of the accelerated pace of globalisation.”
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"It’s very easy for us to sit in comfortable, well-to-do Western countries and talk about the digital divide. But it’s another thing to sit in developing countries where the bandwidth is so thin, and engage with realities."
Professor Amareswar Galla
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But it’s not just indigenous or minority cultures that stand to win or lose depending on how they interact with digital technologies. During discussions focussing on the UNESCO Digital Heritage Charter in Seoul at a major seminar co-convened by the International Council of Museums and ANU, the French delegation argued that digital technology is not necessarily the best for conveying the visceral, emotional reaction to cultural histories and narratives.
“Their whole argument is that you’ve got to use digital technologies, but you’ve got to give some regard to the feelings of human beings,” Galla explains. “They argue that if you’re bombarded with certain messages, then you become numb to the message. How do you evoke human feelings when you’re using digital technologies?”
This question has taken on particular pertinence for Galla and the program he leads. ANU will host the next International Conference on Technology, Knowledge, and Society, the event incorporating what Galla describes as “the equivalent of the Golden Globes for digital heritage preservation.” Plans are underway to develop a telecast of the event, which Galla hopes will raise awareness about the field of digital heritage.
“It’s very easy for us to sit in comfortable, well-to-do Western countries and talk about the digital divide. But it’s another thing to sit in developing countries where the bandwidth is so thin, and engage with realities. That is why we are convening think tanks in different cultural and economic contexts of the Asia Pacific - from Hanoi to Seoul, from Apia to Hyderabad,” Galla says.
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ANU Reporter
Autumn 2006
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