Key Takeaways:
- The cultural significance of Fujian Tulou lies in its unique blend of architectural, cultural, and spiritual elements, which can be preserved and transmitted through metaverse technology.
- The Cultural Visualization Degree Assessment Model (CV) provides a quantitative framework for evaluating the effectiveness of cultural visualization, considering technical parameters, cultural salience, and cost.
- The application of VR technology in cultural visualization can significantly enhance users’ cultural understanding and interest, as demonstrated by the case study of Fujian Tulou.
- The metaverse can provide an immersive and interactive platform for cultural preservation and transmission, allowing users to engage with cultural heritage in a more experiential and memorable way.
- The study highlights the importance of balancing technical investment with content development and identifying the optimal cost range for cultural heritage digitization projects.
Introduction to Fujian Tulou
The cultural significance of Fujian Tulou, a unique example of mountainous rammed-earth architecture, has been a subject of contention between design teams, local communities, and local governments. While technical teams focus on the architectural forms and defensive marvels, local governments emphasize the economic benefits of the "World Heritage" brand. However, local Hakka clan members insist on the spiritual core of "ancestral teachings-feng shui-family." Existing research often oversimplifies Tulou’s cultural value, lacking a comprehensive evaluation system to balance academic depth and practicality.
Cultural Significance of Tulou
Tulou is not only a residential structure but also a trinity of "family-feng shui-state" belief systems. Its circular or square layouts serve as defensive strategies and physical manifestations of the Hakka cosmological concept of "round heaven and square earth." The spatial logic of Tulou embodies a cosmic diagram, where the circular outer wall symbolizes "heaven," the central courtyard represents "earth," and the ancestral hall along the central axis signifies "humanity." The ancestral hall serves as the sacred zenith of the entire space, where ancestral tablets stand alongside the "Heaven, Earth, Sovereign, Ancestor, and Teacher" altar, forming a vertical historical axis.
Cultural Visualization Degree Assessment Model (CV)
The CV model aims to quantitatively evaluate the effectiveness of cultural visualization, providing a scientific foundation for multimodal experimental research on Fujian Tulou. The model considers technical parameters, cultural salience, and cost, introducing quantifiable parameters to achieve a leap from subjective qualitative description to objective quantitative analysis. The formula for CV is: CV = (Σ(Ti × Si)) / Ct, where Ti represents the i-th technical parameter, Si denotes the i-th cultural salience, and Ct signifies the total cost.
Application of VR Technology in Cultural Visualization
The application of VR technology in cultural visualization can significantly enhance users’ cultural understanding and interest. A case study of Fujian Tulou demonstrated that volunteers who used VR technology showed higher scores in cultural comprehension and interest compared to those who only experienced Tulou culture through traditional imaging technology. The CV model revealed the quantifiable performance level achievable by this technical solution under given costs.
Metaverse for Fujian Tulou Preservation
The metaverse can provide an immersive and interactive platform for cultural preservation and transmission, allowing users to engage with cultural heritage in a more experiential and memorable way. The integration of Fujian’s cultural tourism with metaverse technology creates immersive touring experiences that transcend the conventional detached "object-subject" relationship and overcome temporal-spatial limitations. The metaverse can enable interactive engagement between users and virtual spaces, transforming passive cultural indoctrination into active role-playing scenarios featuring time-space traversal.
Experimental Preparation and Procedure
The study employed a three-stage recruitment method to involve stratification, randomization, and matching. The VR group’s 30-min baseline phase incorporated standardized procedures to establish reliable pre-intervention measurements. The 40-min intervention phase engaged participants in carefully designed activities to facilitate immersive learning, including a guided tour mode, construction task, and cultural quiz. The 60-min evaluation phase comprised comprehensive assessments, including questionnaires, physiological data collection, and eye-tracking data analysis.
Data Acquisition and Processing
The study utilized a comprehensive 257-field data dictionary and an automated data quality control pipeline to ensure standardization and interoperability for data sharing and reuse. The EEG preprocessing employed a combined ASR and ICA denoising approach, and Morlet wavelet transforms were applied for time-frequency analysis. The study systematically investigated users’ cognitive behaviors in virtual environments through multimodal data analysis, including eye-tracking scanpath models, density-peak-based dynamic ROI partitioning, and joint ICA analysis of multimodal data.
