Proceedings of the 9th International Conference on Research in Humanities and Social Sciences
Year: 2024
DOI:
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Diffracting Intangible Cultural Heritage (Ich) Education: Synthetic Folklore as an Alternative Pedagogy
Ning Chen
ABSTRACT:
This research reimagines folk art as the pulsating core of intangible cultural heritage (ICH), a multidimensional confluence of ancestral echoes and speculative futures, where it is understood as a living, rhizomatic network—an assemblage in which cultural intelligence unfurls from the Gesamtkunstwerk of Romanticism to the fragmented, pluralistic aesthetics of postmodernity. In this vision, future ICH inheritors emerge as myth-weaving poets and intergalactic travelers, whose inherited crafts fuse legacy with radical foresight. Departing from linear, human-centered paradigms of authenticity, the work embraces a “synthetic folklore” pedagogy, utilizing AI technologies to reconceptualize ICH’s relational and spatial contexts.Reinterpreting Deleuze and Guattari’s three ontogenetic syntheses of “desiring-production,” the study identifies three key syntheses: ① parodic collisions symbolizing a “fourth state of matter,” ② atlas mappings that juxtapose cultural anomalies, and ③ immersive, formless encounters with ICH materials and spaces. To embody these principles, three innovative ed-tech tools are proposed: ① Atlas of ICH for 3D mapping of evolving ICH territories; ② Polytale, which generates non-linear, multimodal ICH hybrids; and ③ Cynocephalia, an immersive platform for crafting personalized mythologies in educational spaces. A speculative syllabus, “Sowa Rigpa: A Synthetic Folklore of Body– Mind–Environment,” unfolds as a blueprint for ICH’s fluid materiality, where phytospheric alliances and cultural synesthesia weave together ethnobotany, sensory landscapes, and digital innovation. Advancing a transgressive manifesto for a borderless, pluralistic folk art, this research envisions a cosmic entanglement that disrupts entrenched ICH narratives, celebrating the vibrant, improvisational flux of its posthuman creativities.
keywords: AI algorithms; Cultural Synesthesia; Ed-Tech Apparatus; Pluralized Creativities; Posthuman Transdisciplinarity