About - 華人文化元宇宙研究中心

About Research Center for
Chinese Cultural Metaverse in Taiwan

Origin and Mission

Taking the research results of the “Research Center for Chinese Cultural Subjectivity in Taiwan” – a Specialized Area Research Center in the first phase of the Higher Education SPROUT Project as basis for further development, our center will further deepen and explore new ideas in the research of aspects and patters of Chinese cultures. Accordingly, we propose a more innovative, groundbreaking, and sustainable “Research Center for Chinese Cultural Metaverse in Taiwan” that can develop a more innovative and effective digital humanities research of Chinese cultures coupled with cultural dissemination models by focusing its research on transforming cultural content into digital content and presenting it in a further step into metaverse digital curation. Apart from academic research into Chinese culture, we also emphasize the nurturing and recruitment of Early Career Researchers, as well as an increase of the use of our research outcomes for governmental, social, and educational organizations, the general public, school education and Chinese people around the world. Thereby we hope to increase the value and social impact of our work.

Our center focuses on the developing Sinophone cultures against the background of Taiwan’s ethnic diversity and cultural contexts. This includes the local Chinese culture of Taiwan that has emerged from cultural interactions throughout history with Taiwanese indigenous people, various colonizers, and the new immigrants of the present day. In addition, we focus on the Chinese cultures developed by Chinese groups who migrated to different parts of the world, integrated with local communities in different regions and experienced localization.

As a major area of research, our center will dedicate itself to exploring the interaction, exchange, and competition that historically happened between Chinese and other cultures, as well as the “new Chinese cultures” that have emerged under the ideas of interactivity, cross-regionality, and transformation. We hope that through the research initiated by our center, the “new Chinese cultures” that are led by their continued inheritance and localizations of roots in Taiwan, as well as the development of the integration of diverse ethnic groups will be universally recognized by Chinese people around the globe, and will become a mainstay in the development of Chinese culture. This will also allow Taiwan to become a major base for the nurturing of global Chinese culture.

Development Goals

1. Developing a Chinese cultural metaverse ecosystem to support digital humanities research

Through the creation and installation of digital curation of Chinese culture, utilizing digital governance and virtual digital economy built on block chain, promoting interaction between researchers or curators and visitors, we will form an orderly metaverse ecosystem for digital creation of curation of Chinese culture, dissemination of Chinese culture, and stimulation of research issues. By using interactive history records, artificial intelligence, machine learning, and feedback from history analysis results, a field analogous to the real world can be established, allowing researchers or curators to make adjustments based on analysis feedback, and to continuously optimize the planning and content of their own Chinese culture digital curatorial installation, the positive feedback loop for the digital twin can be attained. This will further improve the goal of a continuous optimization and positive feedback loop of the Chinese Cultural Metaverse Ecosystem, and lay a good foundation for the development of an innovative Chinese cultural digital humanities research and cultural dissemination model.

2. Developing innovative digital humanities research methods for investigating Chinese Culture issues

All netizens who have joined the Chinese Cultural Metaverse Ecosystem can make use of the voice, video, and text interactive functions of the Chinese Cultural Ecosystem Platform to freely interact and engage in discussions with others during the exhibition viewing process. Researchers or curators may also be present on the platform to interact with visitors, and they can further conduct questionnaire surveys, interviews, and fieldwork in the Chinese Cultural Metaverse virtual world to collect data for their research. In addition, the user experience recorded by the platform provides more direct and accurate information for user research. In addition, through the digital humanities curatorial module, we can let visitors have a more comprehensive understanding and exploration of the curatorial theme, and we can further deepen and refine the research content on Chinese culture through big data recording and analysis of visitors’ interactions, participation, and behaviors.

3. Breaking through the boundaries of Chinese cultural dissemination and connecting with the international community

Through effective digital curation content creation, management, and curatorial incentive mechanisms of digital governance and virtual digital economy of the Chinese Cultural Metaverse, a Chinese Cultural Metaverse Ecosystem based on a continuous positive feedback loop interaction can be formed. Utilizing the networking capability of the metaverse to transcend the boundaries of Chinese culture dissemination to connect with the international community, it will be developed to be the most important virtual-reality integrated metaverse ecosystem environment for global Chinese culture research. By combining the physical and virtual approaches, we will bring academic research to the general public, create a public digital humanities, and innovate the cultural dissemination modes of Chinese culture.

Specific Objectives

Specific objectives of our Center are to develop the “Chinese Cultural Metaverse Ecosystem”, and – based on it – to innovate and develop Chinese culture digital curation creation, Chinese cultural digital humanities research, and Chinese cultural dissemination models. Our overall research consists of three research components: “Chinese Culture”, “Technology”, and “Crowd”. Among these, the Chinese Culture research component consists of three main research axes: “Historical Memory”, “Religious Practices”, and “Mass Culture”. The Technology research component focuses on the development of the “Chinese Cultural Metaverse Ecosystem” as its main research axis, and includes the three research directions of “Metaverse Curation Tools”, “Blockchain & NFT”, and “Digital Humanities Research Mode” in particular. The Crowd research component takes the development of “Chinese Cultural Metaverse Digital Governance” as its main research axis, and includes the three research directions of “Digital Curation Creation”, “Digital Economy”, and “Digital Governance” in particular. Between these components, the intersection of Chinese Culture and Technology aims to transform Chinese culture into digital curation, and, through the use of the metaverse, to implement the “Metaverse Curation Mode”. The intersection of Chinese Culture and Crowd explores the different aspects of “Chinese Identity Recognition” expressed through “Historical Memory,” “Religious practice,” and “Mass Culture.” The intersection of Technology and Crowd aims at the “Information Behavior” displayed by public crowds while viewing Chinese cultural digital curation in the metaverse.