Page - 252 - in Limina - Grazer theologische Perspektiven, Volume 3:2

252 | www.limina-graz.eu Chiara Zuanni | Heritage in a digital world ronese’s painting Nozze di Cana, whose high-quality replica in its original location, the refectory of San Giorgio (Venice), allows an experience that is now completely lost in front of the original at the Louvre. Drawing on their work, Stuart Jeffrey (2015) argued that moving beyond the technicali- ties and working with communities could open up new ways of address- ing values and experiences of authenticity. The ACCORD (Archaeological Community Co-Production of Research Resources) project examined how co- design and co-production using digital methods affected the relationships between communities, 3D models of heritage, and authenticity (Jeffrey 2015; Maxwell 2017). The ethnographic research in the project led to the argument that, although digital models lack the sensory qualities of herit- age artefacts, they allow “new ways of seeing and experiencing” the object (Jones et al. 2018, 345) and the creation of new sets of relationships with the original, which suggest “a partial if limited migration of aura” (Jones et al. 2018, 349). Furthermore, the making of 3D models is in itself a crea- tive process, informed by the identity and intention of their creators, and as such “3D models also acquire new forms of authenticity”, authority and aura “in relation to the networks of relations involved in their production” (Jones et al. 2018, 349). The key conclusion emerging from an ethnogra- phy of the ACCORD project was therefore that “a pre-occupation with the virtual object – and the binary question of whether it is or is not authentic – obscures the wider work that digital objects do” (Jones et al. 2018, 350). A second characteristic of these objects is their existence as assemblages of physical and digital components, tangible and apparently intangible features. These objects are assemblages of hardware, software, and digi- tal networks that define a new form of experiencing and sharing lives, emotions, and knowledge. Jane Bennett has argued that “[a]n assemblage owes its agentic capacity to the vitality of the materialities that constitute it” (Bennett 2010, 34). Also social media platforms can be described as in- formed by interconnections of human users and non-human components, which influence each other, as argued also in the previous section. As Ben- nett reminds us, “Humanity and nonhumanity have always performed an intricate dance with each other. There was never a time when human agency was any- Digital objects exist as assemblages of physical and digital components, tangible and apparently intangible features.