Contemporary realities have posed significant challenges to the preservation of cultural heritage, while at the same time opening up possibilities that were not available in previous decades. Armed conflicts occurring in various parts of the world, along with climate change, have created serious obstacles to heritage preservation, while also necessitating the development of new protection strategies.

Among these emerging strategies, those employing the technologies of the Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR), as defined by Klaus Schwab, have become particularly prominent. These technologies have not only transformed social and economic spheres—thereby indirectly affecting culture understood in a narrow sense—but have fundamentally reshaped culture itself, understood as the mode of human existence and functioning as such, beyond mere species affiliation.

These transformations have significantly affected the ways in which cultural goods are created, exist, preserved, and disseminated, as well as the ways in which individuals participate in culture. Consequently, reflecting on cultural heritage and its preservation for future generations has raised a series of ontological, technological, social, and economic questions. These have included, among others: What is a work worth preserving, and what should it be made of? How are cultural goods created, through which technologies, and by whom—who owns these technologies? How do cultural goods and their technological reproductions influence individuals and societies, and how can this influence be shaped? In what ways can technologies be used for preserving cultural heritage, and when should they not be used? How can history and heritage be taught in ways appropriate for contemporary audiences beyond professional circles?

The proposed workshop did not aim to provide definitive answers to all these questions, although it sought to open space for discussion and reflection. Instead, it presented selected examples of contemporary strategies based on virtual and augmented reality technologies, as well as gamification, applied to the preservation of both tangible and intangible cultural heritage and to related educational practices.

The presented examples were based on the author’s experience gained within the CAPHE project – Communities and Artistic Participation in Hybrid Environments (MSCA SE HE, grant agreement no. 101086391). These included:
– visual virtualization of objects (artefacts and architectural structures), such as the virtualization of Bazeos Tower on the island of Naxos in Greece (by Jose Manuel Revez) and sculptures by Kenyan artists;
– visual and acoustic virtualization of structures designed for auralisation (Bazeos Tower, by a team led by Alessandra Montali and Bogna J. Gladden-Obidzińska);
– levels of immersion achieved in gamification strategies within virtual environments (Çatalhöyük Digital Education Kit, ARSINOE);
– gamification using mobile technologies and augmented reality (the Athenian Agora and Kraków; Narratologies and Trawell).

The first part of the workshop took the form of an interactive lecture based on a presentation incorporating photographic and video documentation of selected case studies.

The second part consisted of a live demonstration of selected virtual environments, presented both on a computer and through VR headsets (Meta Quest 2).