Using Serious Games for Intangible Cultural Heritage (ICH)

Education: A Journey into the Canto a Tenore Singing Style

Francesca Maria Dagnino, Francesca Pozzi, Giacomo Cozzani and Luca Bernava

Institute for Educational Technology, Italian National Research Council, Via De Marini, 6, Genoa, Italy

Keywords: Intangible Cultural Heritage (ICH), Serious Games, Game Based Learning, Innovation.

Abstract: Serious games are being increasingly adopted to sustain teaching and learning in a variety of educational

fields (school education, etc.); the cultural heritage field does not make an exception, especially as far as

tangible heritage is concerned. More recently, even in the field of ICH, games have started to be used to allow

learning of intangible cultural expressions or traditions (Yilmaz et al. 2015). In the frame of Intangible

Cultural Heritage (ICH), ITD-CNR has developed the “Canto a Tenore game”, a mixed 2D/3D adventure

game, aimed at supporting learning of the basics of this rare singing style, which originated and is still

practised in Sardinia (Italy). The idea behind the game is to involve the player in an engaging journey, where

s/he has to help the main character, who is currently living abroad, to find his roots in Sardinia. The

comprehensive integration of contents in the gameplay, as well as the immersive nature of the 3D

environments, allow the user to learn the basics of the Canto in an engaging way. In this paper the authors

discuss the main strong points, challenges and criticalities of adopting such technologies.

1 INTRODUCTION

In recent years, the growing potential of technologies

has started to be exploited in the Cultural Heritage

field. Tangible artefacts, as well as intangible heritage

expressions, have been digitized with the scope of

safeguarding them and making them available for a

wider public (Sotirova et al., 2012). These efforts

have allowed the creation of large and important

repositories, like Europeana, but, also, many Cultural

Heritage institutions such as Galleries, Libraries,

Archives, and Museums (or GLAM) have started

making use of digital resources.

From digitized records to 3D models and

applications, technologies are opening new

opportunities for Cultural Heritage exploration and

fruition: nowadays users can browse digital

repositories and see images of artefacts, can visit

virtual museums (Styliani et al., 2009) or interact with

treasures of the past through virtual reality (Gaitatzes

et al., 2001). Recently, the adoption of cutting-edge

technologies, like sensors and 3D modelling, have

also made the digitization and modelling of Intangible

Cultural expressions possible (Yilmaz et al., 2015).

Among technologies, a further step ahead has

been taken by digital games and in particular serious

games (namely games developed with an educational

purpose) which offer fun and engaging experiences

during which the user is motivated to keep interacting

with the game and therefore its contents (Mortara et

al., 2014). Moreover, games are recognized as an

appropriate media for both tangible and intangible

expressions, considering that they are grounded on

several elements – among which interactivity,

adaptivity and narrative (Prensky, 2001) – supporting

an interactive and situated experience (Bontchev,

2015).

Considering all these aspects, ICTs open up

interesting possibilities in the field of Cultural

Heritage education. As Ott and Pozzi (2011) state,

ICTs allow personalized and inquiry-based

approaches, where learners can discover at their own

pace and not just “being taught”. Moreover, they

support situated learning experiences, since learners

can use multiple devices and networks, while they are

exploring environments (pervasive and ubiquitous

learning). Last but not least, technologies give the

possibility of supporting informal learning

opportunities, namely outside a formal education

setting. Therefore, institutions like Museums for

example, now have the capacity to involve visitors of

all ages in interesting and meaningful learning

experiences.

Dagnino F., Pozzi F., Cozzani G. and Bernava L.

Using Serious Games for Intangible Cultural Heritage (ICH) Education: A Journey into the Canto a Tenore Singing Style.

DOI: 10.5220/0006347004290435

Serious games present additional advantages in

terms of learning experience: besides supporting

constructive, experiential and situated learning, they

are able to promote self-regulated learning and

collaboration among learners (Dagnino et al., 2015).

Starting from these considerations, in the

framework of the i-Treasures project (Dimitropoulos,

2013) a serious game has been developed about Canto

a Tenore. The game has the scope of introducing the

basics of Canto a Tenore in a playful and engaging

way.

Canto a Tenore is a four-part form of polyphonic

singing that is orally transmitted and practised in the

central areas of the island of Sardinia in Italy.

A Canto a Tenore choir is composed of four

singers with different roles: a soloist (the “ boghe” ),

who sings the text of a poem, and three accompanying

voices (“su bassu, sa contra and su mesu boghe”)

who support the soloist usually using nonsense

syllables (Pozzi et al, 2013). This tradition is fairly

well-known and appreciated in the area in which it is

spread, but not outside Sardinia and even less around

the world. In 2005 it was included in the

“Representative List of the Intangible Cultural

Heritage of Humanity”.

In the following, first of all the i-Treasures project

is described, in order to give an idea of the context in

which the game has been developed. Afterwards, a

short introduction is provided to serious games in

cultural heritage. Then, the game development

process is presented and discussed, so as to highlight

the main challenges encountered.

2 THE i-TREASURES PROJECT

With the UNESCO convention (UNESCO, 2003) the

safeguarding of Intangible Cultural Heritage has

become clearly a priority. Several initiatives have

been carried out with this aim, also involving

technologies, but most of them were aimed at creating

digital archives or inventories of materials, with

documental purposes. This effort, which is certainly

a starting point, will otherwise have limited impact.

The i-Treasures project is an Integrated Project

co-financed by the EU under the ICT theme of the

FP7th; this project has the scope of going beyond the

current attempts at safeguarding ICH through

technologies and going towards ICT-enhanced

dissemination and not the mere digitization of cultural

contents. The i-Treasures project is developing “an

open and extendable platform providing access to

ICH resources enabling knowledge exchange

between researchers and contributing to the

transmission of rare know-how from Living Human

Treasures to apprentices” (Dimitropoulos, 2013).

With this platform, the project aims to provide new

contents and learning opportunities by analysing and

modelling the different ICHs and making this specific

knowledge available through innovative tools and in

structured educational paths (Dagnino et al., 2016).

I-Treasures makes use of cutting-edge ICT

technologies in order to capture “hidden” experts’

knowledge in a number of cultural expressions in the

fields of dancing, singing, music composition and

craftsmanship.

Using a multi-sensor technology (e.g. 2D/3D

optical sensors, inertial sensors, ultrasound sensors,

microphones, electroencephalograms, etc.) the data

related to the basic features of the cultural expressions

considered were captured, then analysed and merged

so as to identify specific patterns (e.g. postures,

gestures, audio, affective states, etc.) in ICH

performances. These data serve as input to create 3D

models of the performers and use them for teaching

and learning purposes: recognizing the great potential

of games, the project introduced innovative game like

applications aimed at teaching sequence of the steps

or sounds of different cultural expressions (Yilmaz et

al., 2015).

Moreover, in the project framework a game aimed

at delivering theoretical information and developing

listening competences in users has been developed:

the Canto a Tenore game.

3 SERIOUS GAMES FOR

CULTURAL HERITAGE

The use of games in Cultural Heritage was first

explored by Anderson and colleagues (Anderson et

al. 2010) and recently sketched by Mortara and

colleagues (2014), and Bontchev (2015). While the

first two contributions are specifically oriented to

serious games, the third includes both entertainment

and serious games.

As for entertainment games, Bontchev (2015)

highlights the existence of some titles belonging to

the group of documentary games, like “History Line:

1914-1918” (developed by Blue Byte in 1992) or

“Great Battles of Rome” (developed by Slitherine

Strategies in 2007), that are able to realistically

represent historical events like battles or wars.

Moreover, he highlights that other popular games,

despite being developed for fun purposes, are able to

convey accurate information. Among them, he

presents the example of the “Assassin’s Creed II”

game, which includes a number of key elements

proper to virtual heritage applications (Granström

2013) and is able to represent the Renaissance period

in Italy with great accuracy and realism.

As for Serious Games (SGs), Anderson et al.

(2010) describe the following categories:

a) Interactive Virtual Museums - virtual

museums incorporating exploration and

specific tasks (e.g. quizzes, reassembling

tasks) and b) Prototypes and demonstrators –

games that are based on 3D technologies to

reconstruct historical sites.

Applications like “ThIATRO” (Froschauer et al.

2011) belong to the first category. This is a 3D virtual

environment, where the player acts as a museum

curator, having to collect paintings from different

museums in order to prepare an exhibition.

Applications like “Roma Nova”, an SG based on

the “Rome Reborn” model (Vourvopoulos 2013),

belong to the second category. This game is

conceived to support exploratory learning by

immersing the learner/player in a virtual

environment; the main aim of the game is to help the

player learn, by interacting with autonomous

characters in a cultural heritage environment,

different aspects of history through their interactions

with a crowd of virtual authentic Roman avatars.

In addition to these two categories, Bontchev

(2015) identifies another two categories:

c) Games for acquisition of cultural knowledge

and intangible heritage (for cultural skills and

language training) like “Second China”, a

web - based multimedia repository and an

island in Second Life designed to mimic

cultural and visual aspects of China

(Henderson et al., 2008) and “Icura”

(Froschauer et al. 2010) in which the player

learns about Japanese culture and etiquette;

d) Social tagging and knowledge acquisition

games – games conceived to encourage

players to submit cultural information about

cultural artefacts. Among these, “One-Up” is

a multi-round mobile app game in which

players score points for submitting single-

word tags (Flanagan et al. 2013).As for the

game type, according to Mortara et al (2014),

in the field of CH, SGs of different kinds have

been adopted: from trivia, puzzle and mini-

games to mobile applications for museums or

sightseeing, (e.g. ‘Muse-US’ (Coenen et al.

2013), ‘Tidy City’

) to simulations (e.g. the

‘Battle of Waterloo’

), to adventures and

roleplaying games (e.g. ‘the Priory

Undercroft’, Doulamis et al. 2011).

http://totem.fit.fraunhofer.de/tidycity

http://www.bbc.co.uk//history/british/empire seapower /laun

ch gms battle waterloo.shtml

The Canto a Tenore game presented in this paper

can be included in the third category cited by

Bontchev (2015), i.e. games for acquisition of

cultural knowledge and intangible heritage, since its

aim is to spread the Canto a Tenore tradition. It is

worth saying that the game appears to be innovative

in the field since, to the best of our knowledge, the

existing games are more oriented to cultural

awareness, rather than to presenting specific cultural

expressions.

As for the game type, it clearly belongs to the

category of adventure games, since the player is

immersed in the main character’s search for his

origins.

In the following, the game is described, with

particular attention to the design process that is

clearly a core phase in the development of a game. All

the aspects considered in this phase are presented and

discussed.

4 THE CANTO A TENORE GAME

As said above, the Canto a Tenore game is an

adventure game in which the player/learner acquires

a basic theoretical knowledge, as well as some

listening skills, in this singing expression, by helping

the main character, Andrea. Andrea is a young man

living in Argentina, who has a very limited

knowledge of his origins until he finds an audio tape

belonging to his grandfather (containing the

recordings of a group of men singing a cappella) and

a picture (where his grandfather appears in a group of

four people, apparently singing together). Andrea

decides to find out more about his origins and starts

his search for possible relatives in Italy.

In the following, the game is described, according

to the guidelines and principles adopted in i-Treasures

to develop all the games of the project (Yilmaz et al.

2015), namely in terms of: 1. Pedagogical aspects; 2.

Game structure and 3. Score and performance

evaluation (Dagnino et al., 2015).

4.1 Game Design

4.1.1 Pedagogical Aspects

In line with the literature in the field (Habgood, 2007;

Ulicsak and Wright, 2010) the contents related to

Canto a Tenore are totally integrated in the gameplay,

because the information needed by the player/learner

to solve the mystery of Andrea’s origins are strictly

intertwined with the information about the Canto a

Tenore itself.

Therefore, while the declared scope of the game

is to find out where Andrea’s grandfather was born

and whether his relatives are still alive, this objective

can be reached only by learning about Canto a Tenore

singing. In this way, the player doesn’t feel forced to

read or listen to singing excerpts, as everything is

functional for him/her to solve the game.

Being conceived for youngsters and adults with

no previous knowledge of Canto a Tenore, the

educational objectives of the game are related to

knowledge acquisition and listening competence

development, while singing competences are not

addressed. At the end of the game the player is

expected to have acquired a basic knowledge of

Canto a Tenore and to have developed basic listening

skills.

A map of the contents to be addressed in the game

was drafted with the help of a group of experts in this

cultural expression and then the contents distributed

in different scenes of the game, so as to be balanced

and well-integrated into the narrative and the

gameplay. In particular, the theoretical knowledge,

mainly related to the historical, geographical and

technical aspects of this singing tradition, is delivered

through dialogues with the game characters and

information retrieving by the main character.

Listening competences are trained through listening

tasks, aimed at highlighting the main characteristics

of this singing style (e.g. the features characterizing

the four voices, the different forms of the chant and

local variations).

While theoretical knowledge is mainly delivered

during the first two scenes, the listening tasks are

proposed in the second and third scenes.

In the game the main educational strategies are

active (Bonwell and Eison, 1991) and experiential

learning (Kolb, 1984), as the player is called on to

find and elaborate information to proceed with the

game.

Assessment does not imply separate quizzes or

tests, but knowledge and skills are assessed through

tasks that are perceived as part of the game (the player

writes e-mails and a diary at the end of each scene).

Feedback about correctness is provided

immediately: the e-mails and the diary are structured

as “fill in the blank” tasks, therefore, when the player

makes a mistake in his/her text, the system corrects

him/her by pointing directly to the resource where the

correct information was originally given.

As for the advances in the game, when the player

takes a wrong decision, one of the other characters

intervenes to help him/her to change his/her mind.

4.1.2 Game Structure

As for the general organization in scenes/sessions and

the rules guiding the progression from one to the

other, The Canto a Tenore game is structured in two

main scenes and is placed in two different locations:

Argentina and Sardinia. The transition between one

scene (location) and the other is done through videos,

explaining what the following expected steps are.

An introductory video is also included, to

introduce the player to the game plot and to make

him/her aware of the scope of the game.

Score and performance evaluation.

The Canto a Tenore game is mainly conceived as

a game to be played individually and – as such -

doesn’t include any mechanism oriented to

competition or collaboration.

In this game the player’s motivation is expected

to be boosted by the solution to the enigma of

Andrea’s grandfather.

Besides, since the game was mainly conceived as

a non-formal or informal learning experience, the

player’s progress is not evaluated in the strict sense,

but s/he gets feedback about the correctness of his/her

answers and decisions. As said above, feedback is

provided immediately after each task (emails and note

writing or decisions taken at crossroads) thus helping

the player to find the correct answers or to make

correct decisions.

4.2 Game Development

The development of the Canto a Tenore Game was

carried out using a rapid prototyping approach:

several prototypes were developed before reaching

the final stage. Initially the game was conceived as a

2D application, but in order to make it more appealing

and interactive it was developed with both 3D and 2D

scenes, using the Unity3D platform

In the three-dimensional scenes the user can guide

Andrea in his exploration of the environments (Figure

1).The two-dimensional scenes are used for Andrea’s

interactions with other characters (Figure 2) or where

the user has to assess his/her knowledge of

information collected during the game, in the form of

e-mails or notes (Figure 3).

https://unity3d.com

Figure 1: A 3D scene in which Andrea explores the city of

Buenos Aires.

Figure 2: Andrea interacts with the music school teacher.

Figure 3: Andrea’s notes.

The interactions between the three-dimensional

objects and the management of the user interfaces are

implemented using scripts written in C# language.

A great effort was applied to manage the graphic

aspects of the Canto a Tenore Game. Indeed, to

accomplish the three-dimensional view, some

standard assets directly downloaded from the official

Unity asset store site have been joined with some

assets created ad hoc for this game. In particular, the

main character of the Canto a Tenore Game is a

combination of the outputs given by Autodesk 123D

Design, to develop the main structure of the 3D

object, Adobe Fuse CC, to manage the animations of

the character, and Sculptris Alpha 6 to create the

facial expressions.

To create the 2D textures, which represent the

main features of the dialogue interactions and of the

educational and interactive aspects inside the Canto a

Tenore game, a combination of Adobe Photoshop and

Adobe Illustrator was used to build the whole images

and some particular details of the scenes.

4.3 Main Challenges in the Canto a

Tenore Game Design and

Development

The process of designing and developing the Canto a

Tenore game posed several challenges mainly at

design level.

The first is related to the objectives and contents

of the game. It is worth saying that, like many other

traditional cultural expressions, Canto a Tenore is not

formally taught. Aficionados and apprentices acquire

knowledge about it and skills spontaneously listening

to the performance of singers and speaking with them.

Therefore, the objectives and the contents were

necessarily agreed with experts depending on the

potential users of the game. This required consistent

interdisciplinary work involving experts in cultural

expressions, educational technologists and

developers.

Secondly, in order to avoid a detachment between

the contents to be addressed and the game itself, as

sometimes happens in educational games, great effort

was put into conceiving tasks and integrating them in

the gameplay. Indeed, every learning task is

functional to progress in the game: information is

given in the form of clues and assessed in the form of

notes (having a notebook is quite common even in

commercial games) or decisions to be taken; the

scope is to avoid the player feeling s/he is being

taught or assessed with quizzes or something similar,

that can hamper the flow.

Last but not least there was a challenge linked

with the game development. SGs usually face the

limit imposed by a low budget; compared to

commercial ones, they are often perceived as less

appealing at graphic and interface level. The same

issue was faced for the Canto a Tenore game: the

game needed ad hoc drawn assets (the main character,

the Sardinian village, etc.) not allowing us to use just

the ones already available on the Unity website.

Therefore, as said above, the small developers’ group

put a consistent effort into preparing the 3D and 2D

assets with the limited resources available. This effort

resulted in fairly good quality characters and

environments that of course don’t reach the level a

player can find in a commercial game but were

considered satisfactory.

5 CONCLUSIONS

Several authors have clearly stated that digital games,

and in particular SG, per se present important

advantages that make them useful tools in the specific

field of CH. As highlighted by Mortara et al. (2014)

and Bontchev (2015), in recent years, the

development of games also in the area of ICH has

been increasing; this may certainly be due to the

advances at technological level. In this contribution,

the process of design and development of an SG for

ICH education was presented. This game appears to

be innovative in the genre, because it is oriented to

teaching about a specific cultural expression and not

languages or traditions. In the paper particular

attention has been paid to the guidelines followed to

produce a sound product at educational level and, at

the same time, to provide the user with a playful

experience. Following these guidelines faced the

design group with several challenges that were briefly

discussed.

Future research would be of course advisable in

the field, so as to exploit the potential of games to

develop meaningful applications, especially in the

area of Intangible Heritage.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This work is funded by the European Commission by

the i-Treasures project (Intangible Treasures -

Capturing the Intangible Cultural Heritage and

Learning the Rare Know-How of Living Human

Treasures FP7 – ICT – 2011 – 9 – 600 – 676 – i-

Treasures). It is an Integrated Project (IP) of the

European Union’s 7

Framework Programme ‘ICT

for Access to Cultural Resources’

REFERENCES

Anderson, E.F. et al., 2010. Developing serious games for

cultural heritage: A state-of-the-art Review. Virtual

Reality, 14(4), pp.255–275.

Bontchev, B., 2015. Serious Games for and as Cultural

Heritage. In Proceedings of the International

Conference “Digital Presentation and preservation of

Cultural and Scientific Heritage” (DiPP, 2015).

Bonwell, C.; Eison, J. (1991). Active learning: creating

excitement in the classroom information analyses -

ERIC Clearinghouse Products.

Coenen, T., Mostmans, L. & Naessens, K., 2013. MuseUs:

Case Study of a Pervasive Cultural Heritage Serious

Game. Journal on Computing and Cultural Heritage,

6(2), pp.1–19.

Dagnino, F.M. et al., 2016. Designing learning paths in the

field of intangible cultural heritage (ICH): a new

methodology. In Proceedings of the 10th International

Technology, Education and Development Conference,

INTED 2016, pp.

Dagnino, F.M. et al., 2015. Serious Games to Support

Learning of Rare “Intangible” Cultural Expressions. In

Proceedings of the 9th International Technology,

Education and Development Conference, INTED 2015,

pp.7184–7194.

Dimitropoulos, K., et al. 2014. Capturing the intangible -

an introduction to the i-Treasures project. In

Proceedings of the 9th International Conference on

Computer Vision Theory and Applications,

VISAPP2014.

Doulamis, A. et al. 2011. Serious games for cultural

applications. In D. Plemenos, G. Miaoulis (Eds.),

Artificial Intelligence Techniques for Computer

Graphics, Springer.

Flanagan, M. et al., 2013. Citizen archivists at play: game

design for gathering metadata for cultural heritage

institutions. In Proceedings of DiGRA 2013:

DeFragging Game Studies., pp.1–13.

Froschauer, J. et al., 2010. Design and evaluation of a

serious game for immersive cultural training. In

Proceedings of the 16th International Conference on

Virtual Systems and Multimedia, VSMM 2010, pp.253–

260.

Froschauer, J. et al., 2011. Towards an online multiplayer

serious game providing a joyful experience in learning

art history. In Proceedings of the 3rd International

Conference on Games and Virtual Worlds for Serious

Applications, VS-Games 2011, pp.160–163.

Gaitatzes, A., Christopoulos, D., Roussou, M., 2001.

Reviving the past : Cultural Heritage meets Virtual

Reality. In Proceedings of the conference on Virtual

reality, archaeology, and cultural heritage, pp.103–

110.

Granström, H., 2013. Elements in Games for Virtual

Heritage. MSc Thesis, Univ. of Skovde. Available at

http://his.diva-portal.org/smash/get/diva2:627227/

FULLTEXT01.pdf.Accessed 02/01/2017

Habgood, M.P.J., 2007. The Effective Integration of Digital

Games and Learning Content. Available at:

https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/10385/1/Habgood_20

07_Final.pdf.

Henderson, P. et al, 2008, Immersive Learning Simulation

Environment for Chinese Culture. In Proceedings of

Interservice/Industry Training, Simulation, and

Education Conference. paper 8334.

Kolb, D (1984). Experiential Learning as the Science of

Learning and Development. Englewood Cliffs, NJ:

Prentice Hall.

Mortara, M. et al., 2014. Learning cultural heritage by

serious games. Journal of Cultural Heritage, 15(3),

pp.318–325.

Ott, M., Pozzi, F., 2011. Towards a new era for cultural

heritage education: Discussing the role of ICT.

Computers in Human Behavior, 27(4), pp.1365–1371.

Pozzi, F., Alivizatou, M., Ott, M., Dagnino, F.M., Antonaci,

A. 2013. D2.1: First report on user requirements

identification and analysis, [online] Available at:

http://www.i-treasures.eu/content/deliverables-0.

Prensky, M., 2001. Fun, play and games: what makes

games engaging. digital game-based learning, pp.1–31.

Available at: http://www.autzones.com/din6000/

textes/semaine13/Prensky(2001).pdf.

Sotirova, K. et al., 2012. Digitization of cultural heritage –

standards, institutions, initiatives, in K. Ivanova et al.

(Eds). Access to Digital Cultural Heritage: Innovative

Applications of Automated Metadata Generation,

Styliani, S. et al., 2009. Virtual museums, a survey and

some issues for consideration. Journal of Cultural

Heritage, 10(4), pp.520–528.

Vourvopoulos, A., 2013. Brain-controlled serious games

for cultural heritage. International Journal of

Education and Information Technologies, (December),

pp.291–298.

Ulicsak, M., Wright, M., 2010. Games in education:

Serious Games. Available at: http://media.futurelab.

org.uk//resources/documents/lit_reviews/Serious-

Games_Review.pdf.

UNESCO. 2003. Convention for the safeguarding of the

Intangible Cultural Heritage. Paris.

Yilmaz, E. et al., 2015. Novel 3D Game-like Applications

Driven by Body Interactions for Learning Specific

Forms of Intangible Cultural Heritage. In Proceedings

of the 10th International Conference on Computer

Vision Theory and Applications VISAPP2015, pp.651–

660.