Whose Digital Heritage?

Abstract

3D scanners and printers offer a relatively inexpensive means of preserving threatened, destroyed, or lost cultural artifacts. At the same time, the digital reproduction of this heritage (which now increasingly results in physical replicas) resonates with a public that wants to experience historical monuments and objects first-hand. This article examines recent artistic projects that use this technology to produce 3D scans of highly charged artifacts and monuments that originate from the Middle East. Through the unauthorised and open dissemination of this data, these works critically intervene in cultural heritage discourses. As I will argue, these practices offer a productive space to explore questions of colonial dispossession, the commodification of heritage, and public access that go beyond a more narrowly legal argument about the restitution of cultural property.