AVimmerse: Heritage, Technology & Place
An authority archive exploring how digital tools reshape the way we discover, interpret, and connect with the past.
Intention
The intention of this archive is to explore how digital tools reshape the way we discover, interpret, and connect with the past. At the heart of this work is a belief in the power of connection through stories, shared experiences, and how we choose to see the world. Tools, or technology in this case, are things we use to help us achieve those goals.
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This talk sets out the framing questions behind the Heritage and Technology series.
Overview
A long-standing fascination of mine is how we discover the past, and how we can use tools and technology for this purpose.
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As someone deeply interested in exploration, new places, history, and ideas, it was inevitable that my work with game engines, immersive media, and digital storytelling would eventually turn towards heritage. There is little point in learning new crafts if they are not turned towards something meaningful. My goal here is not to recreate the past as spectacle, but to better understand how technology can help us interpret it, how it allows us to see differently, listen differently, and ask new questions of familiar landscapes.
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At a fundamental level, this raises a simple question. How can technology make the past more accessible and connect people to stories?
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The conversations collected here grew out of that curiosity. They were conceived as an opportunity to listen to practitioners working at the intersection of heritage and technology, archaeologists, artists, researchers, and technologists who are using digital tools not as an end in themselves, but as a means of inquiry.
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Across these discussions, a consistent theme has emerged. Technology, when used with care, is not simply a delivery mechanism for heritage. It becomes a lens, one that can reveal sound where silence remains, structure beneath the ground, memory embedded in landscape, or stories that sit outside dominant historical narratives.
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This archive brings those conversations together as a long-term reference point. It is not a record of events, but a curated body of thinking focused on method, ethics, and interpretation.
Conversations & Symposia
The conversations collected within this archive were shaped by a belief that meaningful progress in heritage and technology comes through dialogue, not declaration.
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Rather than presenting finished answers, these symposia were designed as spaces for shared inquiry, bringing together practitioners from archaeology, heritage research, the arts, and emerging technology. Alongside invited contributors, I participated in these discussions as a practitioner, using them as an opportunity to listen, reflect, and test ideas in dialogue with others.
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Many of the methods discussed within these sessions, including aerial survey, LiDAR analysis, and immersive interpretation, have since been applied and explored further in practice.
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The videos are presented in their original, long-form format. This is a deliberate choice. The complexity of heritage work, particularly at the intersection of technology, place, and memory, does not always lend itself to summary or extraction. These recordings are offered as documents of thinking in motion, capturing uncertainty, nuance, and evolving perspectives rather than finished positions.
How to use this archive
This archive is not intended to be consumed in sequence or in full. The conversations are designed as reference points, returning to them as questions arise rather than as content to be completed. Some visitors may explore a single session in depth, while others may dip into specific methods or themes that relate to their own work. Both approaches are valid.
Conversations
New Ways of Looking for the Past
An exploration of how emerging digital tools are reshaping the discovery and interpretation of heritage, with a focus on method rather than technology alone.
What Lies Beneath: Visualising and Interpreting Submerged Landscapes
A discussion examining how digital visualisation enables engagement with landscapes that are hidden, submerged, or otherwise inaccessible.
Preserving Indigenous Cultural Heritage Through Videogame Technology
A conversation focused on community-led storytelling, ethics, and responsibility in the use of interactive and immersive technologies.
Using Scale Modelling to Assess the Prehistoric Acoustics of Stonehenge
A methodological case study exploring sound, scale, and the reconstruction of intangible heritage.
Cillíní Sites in Ireland: VR and Shared Experiences of Infant Loss
A sensitive examination of how immersive and aerial methods can approach sites of memory, absence, and loss with care.
An Introduction to XR Technology in Heritage
A reflective introduction linking immersive methods, interpretive practice, and real-world application.
Methods & Ways of Seeing
Alongside the conversations, this archive includes contextual essays that situate the discussions within a wider field of heritage practice and research.
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These essays provide interpretive lenses rather than summaries, helping frame the archive as part of a broader conversation.
The conversations within this archive share a concern with method. Not simply what technologies are used, but how they alter the act of seeing, listening, and understanding the past.
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Technology shapes perception. It frames what becomes visible, what remains hidden, and which questions are considered worth asking.
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These conversations form part of a wider recorded series exploring heritage, technology, and interpretation. The full collection is available as a curated video archive on Vimeo.
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Seeing beneath the surface
LiDAR and artificial intelligence allow researchers to detect traces of past human activity invisible at ground level, challenging established methods, democratising access to investigation, reshaping narratives, and revealing layered histories.
Seeing from above
Aerial perspectives offered by drones reframe landscapes as connected systems, revealing patterns, relationships, and spatial contexts that are difficult to perceive from the ground.
Immersion and embodiment
XR and game engines enable embodied encounters with the past, supporting interpretation through experience rather than explanation.
Contextual Essays
Pioneers in XR: Immersive Heritage Technology
An essay exploring the emergence of immersive technologies in heritage practice, focusing on people, ideas, and responsibility rather than tools alone.
From Archive to Practice
The thinking within this archive informs applied work that engages directly with place, community, and heritage interpretation.
Immersive Heritage
Applied work exploring experiential engagement and interpretation through immersive media, grounded in care, ethics, and context.
PastTwin
A place-based digital storytelling platform emerging from the archive’s emphasis on method, responsibility, and community-led heritage practice.
From tools to places
Over time, this way of thinking has shifted away from individual tools and towards places.
Rather than asking what technology can do, the more interesting question became what stories are already embedded in the landscape, and how digital tools might help people notice them.
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That thinking led to the development of the Castle Series. A long term exploration of overlooked historic sites, particularly Norman and medieval castles, using a mix of field visits, mapping, drone surveys, archival research and digital storytelling.
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The Castle Series is not about spectacle or novelty. It is about slowing down, paying attention, and using technology carefully to reconnect people with the history beneath their feet.
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In many ways, it brings together everything discussed above. Community learning, critical use of technology, and a focus on place over platform.
For Partners & Institutions
This archive is intended as a reference point for heritage professionals, institutions, and collaborators seeking thoughtful approaches to digital heritage.
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It offers insight into methods, values, and thinking prior to any formal collaboration, and invites informed dialogue rather than immediate solutions.
Closing Statement
This archive reflects a commitment to curiosity, care, and long-term thinking.
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It stands as an invitation to continue exploring how technology shapes our understanding of place, memory, and history.