Unlocking a multimodal archive of Southern Chinese martial arts through embodied cues
Abstract
Purpose
Despite being an authentic carrier of various cultural practices, the human body is often underutilised to access the knowledge of human body. Digital inventions today have created new avenues to open up cultural data resources, yet mainly as apparatuses for well-annotated and object-based collections. Hence, there is a pressing need for empowering the representation of intangible expressions, particularly embodied knowledge within its cultural context. To address this issue, the authors propose to inspect the potential of machine learning methods to enhance archival knowledge interaction with intangible cultural heritage (ICH) materials.
Design/methodology/approach
This research adopts a novel approach by combining movement computing with knowledge-specific modelling to support retrieving through embodied cues, which is applied to a multimodal archive documenting the cultural heritage (CH) of Southern Chinese martial arts.
Findings
Through experimenting with a retrieval engine implemented using the Hong Kong Martial Arts Living Archive (HKMALA) datasets, this work validated the effectiveness of the developed approach in multimodal content retrieval and highlighted the potential for the multimodal's application in facilitating archival exploration and knowledge discoverability.
Originality/value
This work takes a knowledge-specific approach to invent an intelligent encoding approach through a deep-learning workflow. This article underlines that the convergence of algorithmic reckoning and content-centred design holds promise for transforming the paradigm of archival interaction, thereby augmenting knowledge transmission via more accessible CH materials.
Keywords
Acknowledgements
This project is part of the longitudinal research effort of the Hong Kong Martial Arts Living Archive, a longitudinal research collaboration between the International Guoshu Association (IGA), Hong Kong, the Laboratory for Experimental Museology (eM+), EPFL and the City University of Hong Kong. The authors would also like to acknowledge the masters and scholars who shared insights with this research, amongst a long list of names to thank: Mr Hing Chao, Master Oscar Lam and Master Gam Bok Yin, for their extensive support.
Citation
Hou, Y., Seydou, F.M. and Kenderdine, S. (2023), "Unlocking a multimodal archive of Southern Chinese martial arts through embodied cues", Journal of Documentation, Vol. ahead-of-print No. ahead-of-print. https://doi.org/10.1108/JD-01-2022-0027
Publisher
:Emerald Publishing Limited
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