Embodied Transmission: Preserving Intangible Cultural Heritage through Procedural VR Experience-A Case Study on Chinese Shadow Puppetry

DOI

10.2991/978-2-38476-541-6_32How to use a DOI?

Keywords

Virtual Reality; Intangible Cultural Heritage; Shadow Puppetry

Abstract

Intangible cultural heritage, especially traditional crafts like Chinese shadow puppetry, faces a crisis in transmitting its tacit knowledge and procedural skills, which are difficult to articulate and often lost in conventional preservation. Existing digital methods, such as video recording and 3D scanning, primarily capture static forms but fail to convey the embodied experience of making and performing, leaving learners as passive observers. This paper proposes a new paradigm, “Embodied Transmission,” grounded in Embodied Cognition theory and supported by Virtual Reality (VR). Unlike static archiving, this approach enables active, immersive skill acquisition. Using the VR application Shadow Play of Time and Space as a case study, we analyze how the system deconstructs shadow puppetry into interactive tasks: carving and coloring, assembling, and performance, supported by sensorimotor feedback.

Through examining its design, interaction mechanisms, and pedagogical logic, we argue that VR fosters presence, agency, and embodiment, which promote procedural memory and tacit knowledge acquisition. This research highlights VR’s potential to revitalize endangered heritage while contributing new perspectives to digital humanities practice.

Copyright

© 2026 The Author(s)

Open Access

Open Access This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits any noncommercial use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.

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TY  - CONF
AU  - Wanxi Chen
AU  - Yuxuan Guo
PY  - 2026
DA  - 2026/02/26
TI  - Embodied Transmission: Preserving Intangible Cultural Heritage through Procedural VR Experience-A Case Study on Chinese Shadow Puppetry
BT  - Proceedings of the 2025 5th International Conference on Culture, Design and Social Development (CDSD 2025)
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 272
EP  - 278
SN  - 2352-5398
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/978-2-38476-541-6_32
DO  - 10.2991/978-2-38476-541-6_32
ID  - Chen2026
ER  -