Phygital heritage: an approach for heritage communication

Physical heritage objects and assets are related to a vast amount of
digital information of different kinds, which are challenging to be communicated to visitors in understandable and engaging ways. Yet recent technological
advances promise new opportunities to more tightly merge the digital with the
physical world. This paper therefore introduces the concept of “phygital heritage”, the integration of digital technology ‘into’ physical reality, as a potential
medium for more enriched and playful communication of heritage values and
qualities. We propose that phygital heritage should enable the exploitation of
typical advantages of both digital and physical reality, and that distinct categories of phygital can be recognized based on: 1) the level of physical affordance;
and 2) in how far the technology is integrated into the physical reality. The paper also opens the discussion about the potential challenges and concerns which
future explorations, scientific resea