Digital hybridity and relics in cultural heritage: using corpus linguistics to inform design in emerging technologies from AI to VR

This paper employs corpus linguistics to analyze the evolving linguistic representation of relics from Early Modern to contemporary texts, aiming to inform the ethical design of hybrid technologies like AI and VR that balance enhanced accessibility with the preservation of authenticity and cultural sensitivity.

The Gist

Imagine you have a very old, precious family heirloom. Maybe it's a broken sword from a great-grandfather, a piece of jewelry from a saint, or even just a worn-out letter. This object isn't just "stuff"; it holds a story, a feeling, and a kind of magic that connects the past to the present.

Now, imagine trying to put that object into a computer. You take a 3D scan, you write a description, and you put it in a Virtual Reality (VR) museum. You've created a digital twin. But here's the big question: Does the digital copy still have the same "soul" as the original?

This paper is a team of experts (from English, Computer Science, Law, and Languages) trying to answer that question. They are asking: How do we turn physical, sacred, or historical objects into digital ones without losing their meaning or offending people's feelings?

Here is the breakdown of their journey, explained simply:

1. The Detective Work: Reading the "Word Clouds" of History

To understand how people feel about these objects, the researchers didn't just guess. They acted like linguistic detectives. They used a tool called Corpus Linguistics.

Think of this like a giant, magical magnifying glass that scans millions of books and websites. They looked specifically at the word "Relic" (an object kept because of its historical or religious importance).

• The Past (Old Books): They scanned books from the 1500s to 1800s.
  • What they found: People were arguing a lot! Some said relics were holy and powerful; others said they were fake, "popish" tricks, or just old bones. The word "relic" was often surrounded by words like false, rotten, precious, idolatrous, and sacred. It was a battlefield of beliefs.
• The Present (Modern Websites): They scanned the internet from 2021.
  • What they found: The arguments changed. Today, "relics" are often just history. We talk about "Roman relics," "WWII relics," or "museum relics." We also use the word for things that are just old and useless, like a "dusty relic" of a 1990s computer game.
  • The Shift: In the past, a relic was a bridge to God. Today, a relic is often a bridge to history, or sometimes just a metaphor for something outdated.

2. The Problem: The "Aura" is Hard to Copy

The authors talk about something called "Aura." Imagine you are in a cathedral looking at a real, ancient cross. You feel a shiver of respect, a sense of awe. That feeling is the "aura."

If you look at a 3D model of that cross on a screen, the "aura" is gone. It's just pixels.

• The Analogy: Think of a live concert. The energy, the smell of the crowd, the vibration of the bass—that's the "aura." A Spotify recording of the same song is perfect, but it's not the same experience.
• The Risk: If we turn sacred or culturally important objects into digital files, we might accidentally strip away the very thing that makes them special: their connection to faith, memory, and human touch.

3. The Solution: A "Responsible" Digital Mix

The paper suggests that we can't just let AI or VR designers do whatever they want. We need to mix Humanities (history, religion, language) with Technology.

They propose a few rules for building these "Digital Relics":

• Don't Hide the Truth: If you make a digital copy, tell people it's a copy. Don't pretend it's the original. Be honest about where it came from.
• Let People Choose: In the past, you couldn't touch the relic; it was behind glass. In VR, you can touch everything. But maybe not touching is part of the respect. Let the user decide how they want to engage.
• Show Many Sides: A relic might be "holy" to a Catholic, "fake" to a Protestant, and "cool history" to a tourist. A good digital exhibit should show all these different viewpoints, not just one.
• Watch Out for "Fake News": Just like people in the 1500s worried about fake relics, we need to worry about digital forgeries. If a digital relic can be copied a million times, how do we know which one is the "real" digital version?

4. Why This Matters for AI and the Future

The authors are worried that Artificial Intelligence (AI) often gives us simple, one-size-fits-all answers.

• The AI Problem: If you ask an AI about a relic, it might just say, "It's an old object from 1200 AD." It might miss the fact that for some people, it's a miracle; for others, it's a symbol of oppression.
• The Human Fix: By using the "detective work" of linguistics (looking at how people actually talk about these things), designers can build AI and VR that understands the nuance. They can build systems that respect the "soul" of the object, not just its shape.

The Big Takeaway

Turning physical history into digital history is like trying to capture a ghost in a bottle. You can get the shape, but getting the feeling is hard.

This paper is a warning and a guide: Don't just digitize the object; digitize the story, the controversy, and the emotion behind it. If we do that, we can use cool new tech (like VR and AI) to help people connect with the past, rather than accidentally turning sacred history into just another video game item.

Technical Summary

1. Problem Statement

The paper addresses the challenge of responsibly digitizing cultural heritage, specifically relics (both sacred and secular), using emerging hybrid technologies (AI, VR, Mixed Reality).

• The Core Issue: While digital technologies (VR, digital twins) offer enhanced accessibility and preservation, they risk stripping objects of their "aura" (authenticity, sensory experience, and spiritual weight) and oversimplifying complex historical narratives into generalized, one-dimensional views.
• The Gap: There is a lack of transdisciplinary understanding regarding how to translate physical, faith-based, or culturally significant objects into digital formats without losing their nuanced meanings, ethical contexts, or the "trust" associated with them. Current AI and design approaches often fail to account for the multifaceted, evolving, and sometimes contradictory nature of human belief and historical interpretation.
• Research Questions:
  1. What do historical and contemporary texts reveal about the changing status and values attached to relics?
  2. What lessons can be learned to navigate an ethically driven shift into digitization regarding faith, trust, and autonomy?
  3. Can humanities-based methods (specifically corpus linguistics) inform the design of digital cultural heritage?

2. Methodology

The authors employ a Corpus Linguistics approach to analyze the linguistic representation of the word "relic" across two distinct time periods. This quantitative and qualitative method allows for the extraction of patterns in usage, evaluation, and context.

• Data Sources:
  • Historical Corpus: The Early Historical Books (EHB) collection (1473–1800), comprising Early English Books Online (EEBO), Eighteenth Century Collections Online (ECCO), and Evans-TCP. This represents Early Modern English perspectives.
  • Contemporary Corpus: enTenTen21 (2021), a massive web-sourced corpus of English, representing current attitudes and informal engagement.
• Technical Process:
  • Search Strategy: Used Sketch Engine software to identify statistically salient modifiers (collocates) of "relic" and its historical spelling variants (e.g., relick, relicque, relyke).
  • Analysis: Extracted the top 100 modifiers for each corpus. These were manually classified into semantic categories: Evaluation, Relational Status, Item, Religion, Condition, Age, Culture, War, Politics, and Classification.
  • Qualitative Review: Examined concordance lines (contextual examples) to interpret the "discourse prosody" (positive/negative meaning) and metaphorical usage of the term.

3. Key Contributions

• Methodological Innovation: Demonstrates the practical application of corpus linguistics as a design tool for AI and VR developers. It bridges the gap between the Humanities and Computer Science, showing how linguistic analysis can inform the ethical design of hybrid technologies.
• Transdisciplinary Framework: Proposes a framework for "responsible research and innovation" that integrates theological, linguistic, and historical perspectives into the technical development of digital heritage.
• Conceptual Shift: Reframes the digital representation of a relic not merely as a "digital twin" (a real-time mirror) but as a "future relic"—a new layer of representation that captures a specific moment of time and requires careful management of authenticity and agency.

4. Key Results

The analysis revealed significant shifts in how "relics" are perceived and framed between the Early Modern period and the present day:

A. Historical Representations (Early Modern English, 1473–1800)

• Dominant Themes: Relics were heavily framed through religious and political conflict.
• Evaluation: High frequency of critical modifiers like false, counterfeit, idolatrous, popish, and superstitious. The discourse was often Protestant, critiquing Catholic practices and questioning the authenticity of relics.
• Religious Context: Modifiers like holy, saints, blessed co-occurred with skepticism. Relics were seen as tools of control, commodities, or objects of deception.
• Metaphorical Use: "Relic" was used to describe remnants of decay (e.g., miserable relics of ruined buildings) or moral degradation (strong relics of sin).

B. Contemporary Representations (Web-sourced, 2021)

• Dominant Themes: A shift toward cultural heritage, history, and obsolescence.
• Secularization: While religious terms (holy, saintly) remain, there is a massive increase in secular usage. "Relic" frequently describes obsolete technology (useless, dusty, rusty), war memorabilia (battlefield, WWII, Cold War), and museum artifacts.
• Classification: Modern texts frequently use technical classifications (first-class, second-class, third-class) derived from Catholic canon law, even in secular contexts, though the Vatican has moved away from these terms.
• Negative Semantic Prosody: In secular contexts, "relic" often carries a negative connotation of being outdated or irrelevant (e.g., Jim Crow relic, Cold War relic).
• Digital Context: "Relics" appear in gaming contexts (e.g., Elder Scrolls, Transformers), indicating a shift toward digital significance.

C. Synthesis

• Continuity: Both eras view relics as fragments of the past that hold identity and memory.
• Divergence: Historical discourse focused on authenticity and spiritual power (is it real? is it holy?), whereas contemporary discourse focuses on historical value and obsolescence (is it old? is it useful?).

5. Significance and Implications for Design

The paper concludes with five "lessons learned" for designing hybrid technologies (AI/VR) for cultural heritage:

1. Balance Perspectives: Digital renderings must acknowledge both historical origins and contemporary significance, sensitively balancing conflicting viewpoints (e.g., religious vs. secular).
2. Transparency: Users must be provided with clear, transparent information regarding the origin, "authenticity," and sources of digital relics to maintain trust.
3. User Agency: Users must be enabled to engage with digital relics autonomously. The design should not dictate a single interpretation but allow for individual exploration, mirroring the autonomy found in physical engagement.
4. Avoid Exploitation: The commodification of digital relics (e.g., selling "digital drops" of sacred items) must be avoided to prevent the exploitation of cultural or personal beliefs.
5. Multivocality: Digital spaces must provide room for multiple perspectives to prevent exclusionary biases and honor the diversity of values surrounding an object.

Technical Recommendation:
To achieve this, the authors suggest utilizing technologies like photogrammetry for 3D capture, AI-driven OCR for transcribing inscriptions, and blockchain/digital watermarking to secure data integrity and prevent falsification. The ultimate goal is to create "hybrid" experiences that are not just visual replicas but ethically grounded, immersive narratives that respect the "aura" of the original object while expanding access.