Genius Loci and Cultural Heritage

Abstract

One of the main challenges of cultural heritage is to enhance the visit to ancient ruins, in which what remains is difficult to interpret. For this reason, the authors designed an alternate reality game by making use of tangible devices to improve the experience of wandering around the ruins of Egnatia (Fasano, Brindisi, Italy). They tried to evoke the “Genius Loci,” the sacral spirit of a territory, that is analysed according to its dimensions in the field of human-computer interaction. Those dimensions are enchantment, ambiguity, bodily experience, topology of the place, the dialogue between the past and the present, and the perceptual gestalt.