Abstract
This thesis explores how artificial intelligence, and immersive technologies can be used to preserve and activate cultural heritage using textual archives. The project centers on Bibliografía Extremeña by Manuel Pecellín Lancharro, a literary catalog documenting the intellectual production of the Extremadura region from 1990s to 2023 and reimagines it as a digitally enhanced immersive experience. The research addresses a central question: how can a text-based archive be transformed into an interactive environment that fosters cultural reflection/exploration and user participation? Using a research-creation approach, the project combines theoretical analysis with practical implementation. It draws from literature on immersive experiences, presence, narrative design, and generative AI, culminating in the design of a proposal for an interactive installation titled Sueños de Extremadura. A key contribution of the project is the development of Cplex-AI, an agentic AI system responsible for structuring, enriching, and interpreting the data. In the proposed installation, four conceptual installations are designed, signaling the different degrees of continuation and separation that the used technologies afford in relation with the original, textual source of the project. Each of them, titled respectively Realidad, Ensueño, Fantasía and Infancia, were created to emphasize different aspects of Extremadura’s cultural identity, including literature, landscape, and memory. The result is a fully text-driven immersive experience that demonstrates how archives can be brought to life through technology. This thesis offers a replicable model for cultural institutions seeking to engage contemporary audiences with historical content.
