VR Video storytelling for intangible cultural heritage preservation

Interactive digital storytelling has become a popular method for virtual cultural heritage presentations. Combinations of stories and 3D virtual reconstructions are attractive for the audience and have high edutainment values. In this paper we investigate if 360° VR videos further contribute to user immersion in the preservation of intangible cultural heritage. It describes a case study of the Mostar bridge diving project, aimed to present and preserve the bridge diving tradition from the Old Bridge in Mostar, Bosnia and Herzegovina. It is a virtual reality application which enables the user to virtually jump off the bridge after watching 360° video stories about its history and the bridge diving tradition and upon successfully completing the quiz evaluation of the knowledge gained from the stories. The user experience evaluation study shows that our method was successful in preserving a form of intangible heritage and posits suggestions that can be used in developing an intangible heritage preservation framework.