Digital Making for Inheritance and Enlivening Intangible Cultural Heritage: A Case of Hairy Monkey Handicrafts

(CHI 23)Guanhong Liu, Xianghua(Sharon) Ding, Jinghe Cai, Weiyun Wang, Xinyue Wang, Yuting Diao, Jin Chen, Tianyu Yu, Haiqing Xu, and Haipeng Mi.

We explore digital making as an approach for both the inheritance and innovation of ICH handicrafts. Taking Hairy Monkey craftsmanship as an instance, we conducted a workshop with 15 groups of makers, teaching them the traditional Hairy Monkey craft and subsequently enabling them to create innovative works with digital technologies in their own time. As revealed by our interviews with these participants, ICH brings cultural inspiration to digital making, and digital making rejuvenates ICH through innovative art forms and its positive influence on participants. As demonstrated in this paper, digital technologies can be deeply integrated with ICH through making to revitalize ICH from the core through living transmission.