doi.org/10.15198/seeci.2020.52.29-47
RESEARCH
THE TIME OF DIGITAL HUMANITIES: BETWEEN ART HISTORY, CULTURAL HERITAGE, GLOBAL CITIZENSHIP AND EDUCATION IN DIGITAL SKILLS
EL TIEMPO DE LAS HUMANIDADES DIGITALES: ENTRE LA HISTORIA DEL ARTE, EL PATRIMONIO CULTURAL, LA CIUDADANÍA GLOBAL Y LA EDUCACIÓN EN COMPETENCIAS DIGITALES
O TEMPO DAS HUMANIDADES DIGITAIS: ENTRE A HISTÓRIA DA ARTE, O PATRIMÓNIO CULTURAL, A CIDADANIA GLOBAL E A EDUCAÇÃO EM COMPETÊNCIAS DIGITAIS
María Magdalena Ziegler Delgado1
1@SeHablaArte. Venezuela.
[1] María Magdalena Ziegler Delgado: Art historian, PhD in cultural history, academic and educational advisor at @SeHablaArte, designer of e-learning experiences for CAF-development bank of Latin America. buzonziegler@gmail.com
ABSTRACT
Digital Humanities pose a field of research, teaching and creation of great challenges. When disciplines such as art history are projected in preservation, study and dissemination of Cultural Heritage, the main obstacle in the current times may be the lack of mastery of digital skills that allow effective use of the tools that are available to global citizens They, in their double role of info-citizens and cyber-activists, require adequate training to beneficially impact on cultural heritage. Art History could play a leading role if it assumes the use of digital tools such as Google Arts & Culture, thus embracing the potential of Digital Humanities on whose site it could be registered. Proper information management, including its effective dissemination, is vital for the protection of cultural heritage. That is why the benefit that can be obtained, on the grounds of the disciplines traditionally associated with the study and dissemination of cultural heritage, from the digital tools available is very valuable. Analyzing the possibilities of Google Arts & Culture from the perspective of Digital Humanities would open a bouquet of possibilities for the new global citizen who is in the search for participation channels that may allow him to express himself, connect and get to know the world around him better.
KEYWORDS: Cultural Heritage, Art History, global citizenship, digital skills, Digital Humanities, Art Education
RESUMEN
Las Humanidades Digitales plantean un campo de investigación, enseñanza y creación de grandes retos. Cuando disciplinas como la Historia del arte se proyectan en la preservación, estudio y difusión del Patrimonio Cultural, el principal obstáculo en los tiempos que corren puede ser la carencia de dominio de competencias digitales que permitan el provecho eficaz de las herramientas que están disponibles para el ciudadano global. Éste, en su doble papel de info-ciudadano y ciber-activista requiere de la capacitación adecuada para impactar benéficamente al patrimonio cultural. La Historia del arte podría tener un papel preponderante si asume el uso de herramientas digitales como Google Arts & Culture, abrazando así el potencial de las Humanidades Digitales en cuyo predio podría inscribirse. La apropiada gestión de la información, incluyendo su eficaz difusión, resultan vitales para la protección del patrimonio cultural. Es por ello que el provecho que puede obtenerse, en predios de las disciplinas tradicionalmente asociadas al estudio y difusión del patrimonio cultural, de las herramientas digitales disponibles en de altísimo valor. Analizar las posibilidades de Google Arts & Culture desde la perspectiva de las Humanidades Digitales abriría un ramillete de posibilidades para el nuevo ciudadano global que se encuentra en la búsqueda de canales de participación que le permitan expresarse, conectarse y conocer mejor el mundo que le rodea.
PALABRAS CLAVE: Patrimonio Cultural, Historia del Arte, ciudadanía global, competencias digitales , Humanidades Digitales, Arte, Educación
RESUMO
As Humanidades Digitais representam um campo de pesquisa, ensino e criação de grandes desafios. Quando disciplinas como História da arte se projetam na preservação, estudo e difusão do Patrimônio Cultural, o principal obstáculo nesses tempos pode ser a falta de domínio de competências digitais que permitam a utilização eficaz das ferramentas que estão disponíveis para o cidadão global. Este, em seu duplo papel como cidadão da informação e ativista cibernético requer a capacitação adequada para impactar beneficamente o patrimônio cultural. A História da arte poderia ter um papel preponderante se assumisse o uso de ferramentas digitais como Google Arts & Culture, abraçando assim o potencial das Humanidades Digitais nas quais sua história poderia ser plasmada. Uma apropriada gestão da informação, incluindo sua difusão eficaz, é vital para a proteção do patrimônio cultural. É por isto que as vantagens que podem ser obtidas nas disciplinas tradicionalmente associadas ao estudo e difusão do patrimônio cultural das ferramentas digitais disponíveis, é de altíssimo valor. Analisar as possibilidades de Google Arts & Culture desde a perspectiva das Humanidades Digitais, abriria um leque de possibilidades para o novo cidadão global que se encontra procurando canais de participação,que lhe permitam, se conectar e conhecer melhor o mundo ao seu redor.
PALAVRAS CHAVE: Patrimônio Cultural, História da Arte, cidadania global, competências digitais Humanidades Digitais, Arte, Educação
Received: 13/09/2019
Accepted: 24/09/2019
Published: 15/07/2020
How to cite the article:
Ziegler Delgado, M. M. (2020). The time of Digital Humanities: between Art History, Cultural Heritage, global citizenship and education in digital skills. [El tiempo de las Humanidades Digitales: entre la Historia del Arte, el Patrimonio Cultural, la ciudadanía global y la educación en competencias digitales]. Revista de Comunicación de la SEECI, (52), 29-47.
doi: http://doi.org/10.15198/seeci.2020.52.29-47
Recovered from http://www.seeci.net/revista/index.php/seeci/article/view/619
1. INTRODUCTION
To appreciate our cultural heritage, or in other words, those times, places and people that have made us what we are today through the paths of history is equivalent to understand the extraordinary cultural diversity that engrosses humanity.
Art historians have always been very close to the cultural heritage, but since some time it is not possible to seclude and stay alienated in the academic world. They must be active in the digital world in which we all live today, as can be seen from Calderón Garrido, Gustems Carncier and Duran Castells (2016) or Sánchez Rodríguez (2012). Even if we talk about Duchamp, Giotto, Monet or Bernini, art history has a challenging field before it because students need (and demand) to understand that these artists and their works are part of the cultural heritage they must grasp, protect and spread.
Art history cannot just tell stories, it has to give a sense to the artistic past in terms of what we are today. And today we are very different from the way we were 30 or 50 years ago. Digital humanities are here and mark the way. The sensible thing is to listen to them.
Digital Humanities can be defined as a kind of virtual network that synthesizes traditional Humanities with digital technology, achieving fabrics that would have previously been impossible to get. In them, the new technological tools are applied to the traditional and well-known problems of Humanities. Contrary to what one might think, they do not intend to replace the accumulation of knowledge that we have accumulated over many centuries and which, certainly, is and will remain being fundamental for all.
Digital Humanities have their own identity, although still under construction. Take the example of handling Big Data. Today it is essential and its management, analysis and ordering is the task of Digital Humanities in broad levels of understanding. Without the current digital technology or without the traditional tools that Humanities have always used, Big Data analysis would be impossible. How could consumption patterns identified in Big Data be identified or understood, for example, without the attention of psychologists, sociologists and anthropologists?
Within Humanities, Art History is one of the disciplines that could benefit most from the alliance with new digital technologies. We are not referring to the mere digitization of images that would be, in any case, just one more resource in research in the field of art history. We refer to the possibilities of better understanding the creative processes, inquiring through innovative ways about the qualities of images or even the great diffusion power that new digital technologies make available to historians.
2. THE CASE OF GOOGLE ARTS & CULTURE
Obviously, a historian of professional art in these times should be soaked in the possibilities of his discipline in Digital Humanities, such as those pointed out by Viñuela Suárez (2015) but what about those who want to learn, what about those who seek in art a way of understanding themselves and the world around them, even more, what about the curious who previously bought art books to satisfy their concerns.
Today it is already common that, when we have at hand the necessary response to a concern, we turn to Google. However, although Google is known as the undisputed giant of the searches on the Internet, it is much more than that. It is one of the companies created in the past 20 years that has shown more concern for the necessary global interconnection and the increased access to as much information as possible.
Without wishing to beatify Google here, we want to focus on one of the more relevant and original initiatives of the cultural world in recent times. We refer to Google Arts & Culture. Its story is quite known. From a relatively small alliance with 17 museums in the world2, Google Art project is born. Today the alliance reaches more than 150 museums in 40 countries.
In 2011, when this project was launched, Amit Sood (2011), director of Google Cultural Institute, wrote on Google official blog that all came from the initiative of a small group of art enthusiasts who wanted to find a way to make technology help museums to make their collections more accessible. The key for them was its accessibility and quality.
To date Google Arts Project has evolved very much. Even its name has changed, currently known as Google Arts & Cultural (GAC). In its digital files freely available online, GAC shows about 32,000 works from 46 different museums. Originally, Street View and Picasa technology was used to virtually recreate the rooms of the participating museums, which allowed the user to have a virtual tour. However, Google quickly realized that this technology, which is not created for the purpose of working with artworks, should be refined and adapted to meet the standards of museums in terms of fidelity in digitizing (Google, 2011).
Since its inception, GAC sought to use the most advanced technology. So the works have been digitized and arranged with a resolution of more than 7 trillion pixels, which is more than 1000 times detailed than what an average digital camera can capture. With the vast digital collection of works of art made available to users from anywhere in the world, Google filled its mission as expressed on its website: “Our mission is to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful” (Google, 2019).
There is no doubt that, after GAC, a good amount of essential works in art history became more accessible to everyone with a computer and a connection to the Internet. Anyone could then see a work of Vermeer with such a level of detail that even seeing the work face to face in the museum could not match it.
But not only accessibility to the works was possible but also accessibility to the available information on the works increased, the possibilities of sharing and preserving it multiplied. Then, it was not only about access but about immersive, interactive and social access, which was made possible by digital technology. This undoubtedly transcends what André Malraux proposed in 1947 in his imaginary Museum.
Nevertheless, the criticism would soon arrive. The digital giant has been accused of throwing museums into the trap of “virtuous exhibitionism” (Herrera, 2012). Some like Pau Waelder (2011) insist that GAC covers the artworks with a double decontextualization, because both museums and works themselves end up removed from the real world, being artificially enhanced, since the extreme detail that is offered escapes from the natural capacity of the human being.
Waelder (2011) considers that the works exposed to high definitions become too visible or even diffuse when they are scrutinized in such a level of detail with no greater meaning for the majority of users than just the possibility to explore each of their millions of pixels. This author was almost absolutely skeptical about the real possibilities of GAC, except perhaps for the use that contemporary artists might make of it.
Furthermore, Waelder (2011) has criticized GAC user's freedom to create their own virtual collection, which deprive museums of any authority to cure the way the works should be displayed. The institutionalization of art is a problem much debated in the twentieth century, but the advent of GAC com portals seems to be changing the paradigm that has set the standard in such discussion. The anonymous and a lot more global user now has a prominent place in this debate, the technology has given him a voice and you have to listen to him.
However, GAC has mistakably been the center of a problem that is remotely in the hands of Google. Alana Bayer (2014), for example, concentrates her criticism on GAC in what she calls “the myth of accessibility”. To Bayer, GAC was designed assuming that most of its users would know “the rules of art”.
At least three elements to be considered spring from the above. First, Bayer demonstrates a clear lack of familiarity with the process of conception and design of any digital tool or application. Second, his presumption that the intention of Google is to make art more accessible by force of decree is absurd. And, thirdly, it is even more serious that this author considers that, as viewers or users, our relationship with art has to follow predetermined and universal rules.
We think that this is much clearer to Google than what critics have allowed themselves to admit. Providing accessibility does not automatically translate into making something accessible. GAC is, among many other initiatives, an invaluable contribution to accessibility in the art world has gone as far as technology has enabled it. In fact, in GAC we can see that the quality of the tours through the rooms of some museums and historical sites is still technologically poor. But it is much better today than 5 years ago and surely in 5 years it will be much better than it is today.
A website like Web Gallery of Art3, created in 1996 and whose intention has never gone beyond being an online catalog of Western (European) art, has made it very clear that it is intended only to be a virtual museum and a digital database, seeking the creation of a collection as understandable as possible.
At present, this website brings together more than 47,000 digitized works of medium to high resolution, its structure being basically static HTML with additions in JavaScripts and CGI Scripts. The creators of Web Gallery of Art, Emil Kren (from the Central Institute for Physical Research in Budapest) and Daniel Marx (from the Hungarian Academy of Sciences) have tried to keep it with a simple and easy to use interface.
But if we apply criticism parameters that have been used against GAC to Web Gallery of Art, this website would end up being scarcely less than offensive, which would be neither fair nor adjusted to reality. In both cases, they are digital tools and, as with any tool, you have to learn how to use them to get the best and most benefit from them. To make use of any tool, knowledge is required. Even a hammer requires minimal notions to be used correctly and efficiently. Why should the case of digital tools be different?
Google, for example, as well as no software company can ever create the perfect application for the universal user. Trying this not to be like that is absurd. Bayer (2014) insists that, because not everyone approaches art in the same way, democratizing culture is not taking art collections to a web portal. This is true, but at no time Google has tried to dictate the last word around artistic interpretation, because it is only a digital tool.
However, to authors such as Bayer, accessibility is linked to a political strategy that would in turn be associated with questions of class, economy, history and, of course, power. What does not seem to be understood, in any case and we insist on it is that GAC is only a tool and also is not sponsored by any government. So, the bizarre theorizations of Pierre Bourdieu (1984) that Bayer wields so much to dismiss GAC cannot be applied to this tool. At least, not as some have tried.
Some refuse to acknowledge any revolutionary aspect in GAC, insisting that it shows just a narrow vision of the arts, accusing it of lacking depth in topics relating to non-Western art. The truth is that GAC cannot show a universal vision of art, because that vision is not possible. Art and culture are diverse in their essence and, although GAC has been started from a Western vision of art, we must accept that it had to have a starting point to expand.
On the other hand, Bayer (2014) is right to point out that the digitizing initiatives do not magically eradicate the problems of the offline world, while highlighting the linear vision of art history presented by GAC. However, academicians such as Bayer (2014), who has pointed to this as a major flaw in GAC, should direct their criticism to the academies that have kept art history as a discipline with a rigid structure, anchored in the past and in principles that have already expired, not at all adapted to this global world in which we live.
Martin Irvine (2017), for his part, appreciates the information that GAC has placed online available on a broad spectrum, because this is changing the way knowledge is produced around art and cultural heritage, as well as how it is managed. This author acknowledges that, when using an online environment, it is much more difficult for institutions to have control over how individuals relate to works of art. To him, GAC is reformulating the experience of art in the digital age and he points out that, instead of praising or denouncing Google's efforts in the field of arts and culture, we should focus on studying how technology is being used. to preserve, organize and promote the dissemination of cultural knowledge (Irvine, 2017). In this, obviously, Digital Humanities and the breakthrough they have lived in the past 10 years have a lot to do.
When Malraux marveled at his time about the possibilities of reproducing works of art to create our own museum in the midst of our daily lives, he did so without imagining how much digital technology and social networks would contribute to it. To Nancy Proctor (2011), GAC offers a new context for encounters with art, since the scanning in gigapixels through which the images are rendered in digital data allow intimate encounters with them in visual depths that would not be possible even at the museums that protect the works.
However, GAC is a more powerful tool than the imaginary museum of Malraux. GAC is a dimension of cultural encounter. Not only does it provide an intimate and digitally detailed look, accompanied by valuable information about works of art in celebrated museums around the world, but also fashion, facts and historical figures, gastronomy and other cultural elements are the object of attention of GAC. We can say then that this tool is a curated version of Google for culture.
It is clear that GAC is just beginning to explore and exploit the world of possibilities for the registration, study and dissemination of world culture. However, we insist, it is not GAC who should carry out all these actions. The global, digitally educated citizen is the one who has the duty and responsibility to act in accordance with the tools that have been placed within his reach.
[2] These initial museums were: Alte Nationalgalerie, Freer Gallery of Art, Gem ä ldegalerie, Frick Collection, Museum Kampa, Metropolitan Museum of Art, MoMA, Queen Sofia Museum, Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum, National Gallery (London) Palace of Versailles, Rijksmuseum, Hermitage Museum, Tretyakov Gallery, Tate Britain, Uffizi Gallery, Musei Capitoline Museum and Van Gogh Museum.
[3] Available at http://www.wga.hu/
3. DIGITAL GLOBAL CITIZENSHIP
The matter regarding access to information, its management, study, dissemination and human development (Tamayo and Rincón, 2017) is nodal in our times. The global citizens thrive on it and the different tools and digital media has enabled them to expand their range of action and their level of effectiveness. When it comes to cultural heritage, it should be noted that private initiatives are numerous, but efficiency, in terms of achievement of objectives, is not so great. Citizens are concerned about the state of conservation of their cultural heritage and expect their governments to do something about it. They use social networks to report damage, but their digital information management skills may not allow them to act as true info-citizens.
But what is an info-citizen? Let us see some things about it. Citizenship, in a multicultural and intercultural environment, is an issue that has generated debates and controversies of all kinds for a long time. Given the individual identity, the necessary plural identity arouses some concern in some people, because it is not easy to live in diversity. Carmen Aranguren (2012) has indicated that “never as in the present, societies have experienced the anguish of resolving this apparent “antagonism” between being oneself and being us-others; in other words, between the individual oneself and the collective oneself” (p. 10). To this author, this is absolutely necessary to reorder identities, because “it favors the acceptance of heterogeneity within the framework of our culture, assuming diversity as cultural pluralism” (Aranguren, 2012, p. 10).
In order to achieve true intercultural relationship, Silverio González (2005) has pointed out that communication is an important hub since “is prepared of what makes him think with his words, objects, structures, symbols and what he feels with his pictures, feelings, passions, meanings” (p. 51). Therefore, real intercultural citizenship would entail “interaction and dialogue among different actors and cultures, based on ethical principles where dignity and respect are reaffirmed by the different modes of cultural expression and identity patterns” (Aranguren, 2012, p. 10).
This is not an immediate or short-term process. On the contrary, citizenship itself is the result of a complex historical process that points, after many contradictions and conflicts, to the formation of a system based on a particular identity that recreates customs, traditions and opinions. At the same time, this is what shapes the cultural fabric that allows citizens to be protagonists in the public space of socialization. Today, this public space of socialization has changed and is found (for many exclusively) in cyberspace, in social networks, in those no places of virtuality.
Social networks, for example, offer an interesting space for the exercise of citizenship. In fact, they generate a mechanism of citizen collaboration unprecedented in history. A retweet or a similar one becomes a tremendously powerful tool to support, spread and visualize problems in the world. This has been called cyber-activism, a term used as early as the 1990s in the early years of the Internet. In general, cyber-activism has been defined as the use of digital information and communication technologies to create and operate social activism processes or campaigns of any kind. Today, as we have seen via social networks, any individual can create groups with similar interests, disseminate messages and stimulate the fight for a cause.
However, criticism of cyber-activism, of course, has been felt. De Pew (2004) has argued that Internet-based organizations such as MoveOn.org allow “sofa activism”, questioning whether new technologies really help to deliberate on the democratic project in the world. De Pew (2004) wonders if we would not be buying pre-packaged political positions online. However, it is worth mentioning that organizations like MoveOn.org, created in 1998 in the United States, has pioneered the organization and development of techniques of defense of social causes that are now standard in the so called cyber-activism.
Of course, there is always the fear of manipulation of the goodwill of the people and the ethical problems here must keep the involved community always on the alert. Jaber (2016) warns about the constant possibility of this manipulation in favor of personal interests or exploitation of charitable causes for illegal gains, which exposes an ethical implication around cyber-activism that has originally been proposed transformation of society.
On the other hand, the term more closely accompanying active global citizenship in the digital world is info-citizenship. Broader access to the information coming from Internet, and more specifically social networking, has brought, since its arrival at the end of the first decade of the new millennium, a substantial empowerment of the interests of citizens that does not always coincide with governmental and / or institutional interests.
The way in which the common citizen of any part of the world communicates today is very different from that existing only 20 years ago. This implies an accelerated change in the possibilities of exercising citizenship based on management information as a core. Social networks have created a new dimension for the exercise of citizenship with global quality. Certainly, governments and institutions also have migrated much of their services to the digital world, which allows citizens to have a greater and more timely access to information such as budget management, expenditure levels, etc. What citizens can do on their own initiative to promote a cause, for example, is practically limited only by their ability to manage and access technology.
Thus, global citizenship, cyber-activism and the information society are the new actors in the global dynamic thanks to or despite governments. It would be a reconfiguration of functions, a re-semantization of values and the generation of new fields of action from those already known. We are in the process of theorizing about what to be a global citizen would really mean, but surely the fact that today we can not only be informed of the destruction of the Syrian cultural heritage by Daesh but also begin and be part of awareness campaigns on damages, rescue and restoration of this heritage effectively and efficiently thanks to social networks and possibilities of digital technology, it means that we are not only citizens of our town but also of the world.
This, of course, makes us active global cyber-citizens and this exercise is possible because we are also citizens of information. This non-place that is the Internet allows a citizen to exercise qualities derived from traditional citizenship, but it is not limited to them and creates their own. For example, info-citizenship implies a constant deliberative exercise thanks to social networks, in which the debate never stops, never ceases and constantly feeds on new perspectives. Access to these debates is much broader and, although this may mean that even those who have nothing to say participate too, it would always be worse if they could not.
Obviously, this requires a citizen preparation different from the traditional one, because the exercise of info-citizenship covers unconventional spaces. Being a global citizen implies accepting cultural diversity, respecting and defending it; Being a cyber-activist means bringing that citizen essence to cyberspace. Being a global citizen involves mastering skills that could still be considered disruptive but allow us to separate the wheat from the chaff in terms of information management. In other words, the info-citizen is an expert in information management: he knows where to obtain it and read it, how to classify it, organize it, analyze it, synthesize it and, what is more important, he knows how and when to disseminate it effectively.
This is a new very powerful citizen because, with a smart phone and internet access, they could get their hands on the lever that Archimedes required as the only thing needed to “move the world”. For this reason, the advance in digital technology, the infrastructure necessary for its consolidation and expansion, as well as general access to it, have become true political problems throughout the planet.
In this sense, when it comes to cultural heritage, it is essential to understand that it should not be kept separate from the exercise of the global citizen. On the contrary, it should be included in the agenda of info-citizenship and generate cyber-activism in accordance with this new global citizenship that we are all required to exercise in the 21st century.
3.1. Cultural heritage in sight
When it comes to cultural heritage, it should be noted that particular initiatives are numerous, but efficiency, in terms of achieving objectives, is not so great. Social networks are used to report damages, but it is possible that the citizens involved do not have the optimum level necessary in their digital competencies, which would not allow them to act as true info-citizens. In such a way that their concern for the state of conservation of cultural heritage could be visible, but their actions lack effectiveness.
Certainly, cultural heritage, due to its own elements (although not intrinsic), will always arouse social interest. However, this interest will not always translate into programs for the conservation, study and / or spread of its values. In a global world, with information from everywhere, this situation tends to get worse. Jorge Espinosa (2017) has clearly indicated that, in this context, “the past and the present constantly overlap, therefore, the cultural heritage cannot be understood as static (a time that only seeks the consumption of the object) but is found in a continued mutation”. (p. 134).
The temporality alternative to that of globalization that cultural heritage has and its unquestionable link with memory are elements to consider when cultural heritage becomes the focus of interest of anyone in the 21st century. At the same time, this makes cultural heritage relevant as a means to anchor to everyday life (past and present), to the traditional meaning of an origin within a social group, even to a sense of belonging in an increasingly cosmopolitan sphere This is what keeps alive the curiosity that cultural heritage still arouses in many.
Roland Recht (2014) rightly believes that cultural heritage does not require audiences crammed on a list reduced to places but a number of curious and motivated visitors that can constantly grow in benefits for patrimonial assets. Undoubtedly, cyber-activism related to cultural heritage could be of great help, especially in dissemination work with a global sense. This, of course, will require citizens well educated in digital skills.
However, the latent fear that globalization has standardized forms of tourism, for example, has raised alarms about the possible patrimonial uniformity, which would rather be in the consumption4 of the assets than in their presentation. Tourism itself is based on the diversity and variety of elements that each place has to offer. In this sense, globalization has not contributed to reducing the relevance of the local scale. On the contrary, the exoticism offered by each place ends up being extremely attractive and generally triggering tourist flows. In fact, the so-called "local flavor" is usually one of the most seductive factors when it comes to tourism.
Monica Rotman (2003) explains that “while the cultural heritage acts inside a country, articulating experiences and identities, it also acts abroad as a 'showcase' of the nation and, together with practices and expressions anchored in 'what is local', it makes up a powerful resource for tourist attraction” (pp. 260-261). That is, this interest for the local things requires stimuli and also caring citizens who can successfully monitor access to cultural heritage. But it also requires citizens committed to knowledge and dissemination of information on that cultural heritage that is close to them and, of course, one that geographically (and even culturally) is not so much but is part of the range of cultural diversity that nests in the concept of global citizenship.
When it comes to knowledge of cultural heritage and global citizenship, you can start from what is local, but what is global should not be left out. Just as what is local cannot become invisible to what is global. The necessary balance is imperative and everything points to the new digital information and communication technologies as key pieces. This brings us, again, to the term repeated many times in these pages: accessibility.
For more than two decades, museums have tried to have a presence on the web. This need has forced them to digitize their works and make them available online. Museums, in their digital versions, have tried to offer additional services and resources to those offered in their traditional places. With more or less success, they have even tried to make available to users educational elements, didactic materials and information on the cultural heritage they house. But museums are due to their collections and this frames them in a much more limited range of action if we compare them with the possibilities of an initiative like Google Arts & Culture.
To GAC, the possibilities of working with cultural heritage are practically unlimited, because it is not linked to any particular collection or to any specific nation or social group. This also extends, obviously, to the potentially interested audience. The use of resources GAC gives to users can be used in more versatile ways from far more pluralistic viewpoints because they belong to a single sector, do not respond to uniform interests and have different cultural contexts. Therefore, at the scene of cultural heritage, GAC is a fascinating tool to discover different realities and wonder what others have done in different eras and latitudes.
But, in terms of cultural heritage, in the face of private initiatives such as GAC and also in the face of global citizenship, we must ask ourselves both who is actually responsible for its registration, study and preservation and who is responsible of the propagation of all this information. Much of the work is done by government agencies (local or global), but it is not their exclusive function. In fact, without the participation of citizens, the function of these organizations is gradually diluted. To Josep Ballart and Jordi Tresserras (2001), globalization will bring a new awareness of the importance of cultural heritage as part of local identities. Cultural diversity grows every day with more strength on the values it represents and it deserves to be preserved.
Globalization has internationalized trends, but it has also made the value of cultural, tangible or intangible heritage global. Increasingly,
there is a growing knowledge of foreign cultures, a knowledge that is an indispensable starting point for the knowledge of culture itself. We know each other and confirm what we are, as we relate to others (Ballart and Tresserras, 2001, p. 167)
Therefore, real global interconnection will be possible if and only if we are able to recognize ourselves in our differences and understand and accept what is different.
Cultural heritage plays a very important role in globalization because, although it is true that the global citizen is called to defend, study and disseminate it to preserve it, it is also true that cultural heritage is what will give that global citizen the cosmopolitan substance that is in his true essence. So global citizenship and cultural heritage must be allies. This alliance should be made within the framework of Digital Humanities.
It is no secret that in recent years the destruction of Syrian cultural heritage in cities like Aleppo and Palmira has worried thousands of people in the world. Surely, most of them lack the economic possibilities to visit Syria, but a retweet or a like has served them to feel close, to express their affliction for the destruction of works that were clear vestiges of the extraordinary creative capacity of the human being. Damage to these cultural heritage sites has meant to them weakening of their sense of global citizenship and, although many do not know, via social networks they found a way of raising the claim of citizenship. All this voluntarily, without anyone telling them what to do or how to do it.
Unesco, for example, has taken advantage of its own digital presence. Its official Twitter account in English has more than three million followers worldwide. In March 2015, Irina Bokova, director general of the organization, launched a social media campaign that sought to raise awareness among young people about the protection and safeguarding of cultural heritage in places where extremist groups threatened it. This campaign was called Unite4Heritage, also using the # symbol to make a hashtag easy to remember and transmit. According to Unesco official website (2015), this campaign has reached millions of people around the world and has warned about the need to safeguard and celebrate cultural heritage and diversity.
In addition, the # Unite4Heritage campaign has its own website5, where you can find information not only about it but also about conventions and documents related to cultural heritage issued by Unesco, it presents news on illegal traffic of heritage assets, actions for their preservation and it provides an opportunity to share all the information through social networks, as well as a section for donations allowing the program to be sustainable. The site is presented in English, Spanish, Arabic, French, Chinese and Russian, which makes it even more accessible.
Unesco has realized that, without the active participation of global citizenship, the preservation and protection of cultural heritage is not an attainable goal. Its knowledge of the cultural area, combined with new technologies and linked to the interests of young people, make this Unesco program a role model and a hope for the future. The work should be done daily and should cover more and more people around the world. Therefore, far from ruling out initiatives such as GAC, it is necessary for the global citizen to appropriate them as a contribution to what institutions such as Unesco contribute.
[4] When talking about consumption, we are not referring to a physical wear and tear of the patrimonial asset merely. We talk about the experience itself of interacting with the heritage asset (tangible or intangible). We consume flamenco when attending a presentation of this beautiful dance, as well as we consume something from the Vatican when visiting the Basilica of San Pedro. In both cases we live the experience of both assets. In this sense, experiences tend to become uniform in their presentation so that the consumer (the tourist) should manage a somewhat more universal form of access to the heritage asset.
[5] The website is: www.unite4heritage.org
4. THE CHALLENGES IN THE SCENARIO OF DIGITAL HUMANITIES
At least three fundamental requirements would be necessary for the exercise of global citizenship, broad cyber-activism and info-citizenship related to Cultural Heritage:
First, the digitization of Cultural Heritage could be very useful for the exercise of global citizenship. But just digitizing it and putting it online will not protect cultural heritage. No matter how many facilities for accessibility to the material it shows an initiative like GAC may grant, it will not materialize access itself if the digital information and communication infrastructure of the developing countries does not grow and consolidate soon.
Here, the solutions would be fundamentally in the hands of the governments of the world to make the necessary public investments and create incentives for private investments to make their contribution. If, for you, access to GAC, for example, is limited, consider whether it is due to the terrible Internet connection provided by your local infrastructure and how great is your government's responsibility for quality, for example.
Accessibility is key to the exercise of citizenship and only empowered citizens could require local governments to fulfill their duties in this matter. And since this escapes the range of reflection of an article like this, we must focus on the following two requirements that could reinforce future demands on governments.
Secondly, we must bear in mind that just as the paperback did not make most people literate, the Internet does not make all people digital literate automatically. In addition, a person can be highly educated, but absolutely illiterate in digital terms. For this reason, the generation of digital skills is basic.
To understand what a tweet is and its scope with or without labels; to understand what a blog is and its possibilities, for example, is fundamental. It is imperative for a global citizen to learn to manage information via the digital media, using digital tools, and thus become an info-citizen, a condition sine qua non cyber-activism would be inefficient and initiatives such as GAC would not go on from being just a curiosity or a diversion.
Finally, thirdly, citizens are not born, they are trained and educated. And they must be educated in freedom, with knowledge of the laws, of the rules of coexistence (local and global). An info-citizen and cyber-activist, as we have just seen, must cultivate essential digital skills for the exercise of global citizenship. They are part of the necessary knowledge for any global citizen.
Understanding the processes of human creation from any moment and place makes us more respectful of diversity, makes us less fearful of otherness and makes us more comprehensive in the global. Digital Humanities provide a space of great value for the use of new digital tools with a fully meaningful purpose.
But even in the grounds of Digital Humanities, it must be kept in mind that any digital tool, including GAC, is useless without previous training of the user. So, in order to really get something useful out of GAC, the user must be trained in digital skills, as they are the ones that determine the quality of their experience with the tool and the actual advantage they can get from it.
The object of this short paper is not to examine in detail the multiple options offered by GAC to the user, but to demonstrate the relationship between the domain of digital skills within the framework of Digital Humanities and their impact on the preservation, study and dissemination of cultural heritage. Traditional disciplines such as Art History must embrace the potential of digital tools to advance the construction of knowledge and understanding of the art experience (past and present). In doing so, they will foster a better and wider interaction with the artistic heritage (local and global).
Clearly, the universe of possibilities of registration, study, knowledge and digital communication of culture in the world is just beginning to be exploited. And neither on GAC nor on any other digital tool should we put the responsibility for all these actions. The global citizenship now has a duty to act accordingly, using the digital tools available. Cultural heritage plays a key role in globalization, because the global citizen is called to defend, study and disseminate it to preserve it, but, in addition, the cultural heritage is what gives the global citizen cosmopolitan substance that is, In the end, its true essence. Between cultural heritage and global citizenship beats a natural alliance.
So the final question would be: Where are the concerned and educated global citizens to build bridges between them and their cultural heritage? What is art history doing to help train those citizens from Digital Humanities? In short, cultural heritage must be included in the agenda of the global citizen of the 21st century. Is Art History ready to face the challenge that stands today on its way?
AUTHOR
María Magdalena Ziegler Delgado
Bachelor of Arts, with higher studies in History and Theory of Plastic Arts (Central University of Venezuela); Master in History of the Americas and PhD in History (Andrés Bello Catholic University); She also has advanced studies in Theology (Institute of Theology for Religious - UCAB). She was professor of Art History and Culture for the Humanities Department of the Metropolitan University (Caracas, Venezuela) from 2003 to 2017. She has specialized in the study of Art History as cultural history and has emphasized Christian religious art. and Cultural Heritage. She is the author of Art, Society and Religiosity in the Mantua Caracas of the XVIII (Unimet, 2011) and El Siglo XX in her own words (Unimet, 2013), in addition to numerous academic articles in peer-reviewed journals. She is currently an international advisor and consultant for Se Habla Arte (sehablaarte.com).
mziegler@unimet.edu.ve
ResearchGate: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Maria_Ziegler