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K-Pop To Catalonia: How The Metaverse Can Turn Local Culture Global

Glitchy online museum tours are a thing of the past. From Barcelona to Bollywood, the metaverse is bringing immersive cultural experiences right into our homes.

K-Pop To Catalonia: How The Metaverse Can Turn Local Culture Global

A metaverse experience at the Mobile World Congress 2022 in Barcelona

Rozena Crossman

Between environmental costs, COVID and criticisms of digital nomads hurting local economies, the world is questioning the magic of travel — and increasing the time spent in front of screens. Although the meager form the metaverse has taken today can’t replace the smells, tastes, or exact luminescence that make discovering new corners of the world so thrilling, it may soon be dropping local adventures from far away lands into our living rooms.

While the guided tours of museums and online concerts that we all tested out during lockdowns were often glitchy and underwhelming, the beginning of 2022 has seen regional cultural initiatives from around the world flocking to the metaverse, a virtual reality world where people can interact and have experiences as they do in the real world.


“One of the qualities we have in virtual reality is embodiment, that sense of being present in a different environment,” said Louise Claassen, an executive fellow at Henley Business School Africa, to Forbes. “Your body is responding to where your mind believes that you are. There are all sorts of very interesting opportunities that this convergence into the metaverse present.”

From learning the Catalan language to Bollywood performances, here are three breaking examples of cultural institutions developing projects that offer the kind of total digital immersion in their community’s art and heritage — experiences that were, until now, accessible only by boat, train or plane.

Promoting Catalan language and culture virtually

This autonomous region in Spain is famous for its die-hard investment in keeping its language and traditions alive. Now, the government of Catalonia and the Barcelona Chamber of Commerce are launching a virtual world to promote the Catalan language and its culture.

Spanish daily La Vanguardia reported on the launch of the Catalan metaverse, named “CatVers,” in January. CatVers is a digital space where avatars can go to art galleries, concerts and even attend university classes. It all happens exclusively in Catalan.

For the first two months, entry to this digital Catalan world will be free of charge. But organizers hope they will soon be able to offer accessible rates, and they eventually hope to have their own currency within the Catalan metaverse.

Bollywood's next big move is virtual

Looking for a new way to engage audiences and fans, India’s renowned Bollywood industry is making moves in the metaverse, reports The Economic Times of India.

Pooja Entertainment, one of the country’s leading movie companies, paid over $5,000 for a plot of virtual land in the metaverse. They subsequently made the first-ever Indian film announcement within the metaverse for BadeMiyan ChoteMiyan, its upcoming film, which will be an immersive experience.

Meanwhile, actors such as Deepika Padukone and Kamal Haasan have created metaverse avatars, and NFTs of film art for upcoming Indian movies from major production houses are about to drop.

South Korea hopes to become a Metaverse superpower

In January, the South Korean Ministry of Science and ICT announced an investment of $7.5 billion into developing both AI and its own metaverse. Culture is very much a part of the program, as the space will include a Korean language institute.

With the aim of becoming the fifth largest metaverse market in the world within the next five years — which seems plausible, given that they currently harbor the fourth biggest video game market — the government is clearly hoping to export Korean culture en masse with the “K-metaverse”.


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Geopolitics

Iranian "Justice" At Work: Executions For Protesters, Leniency For Honor Killings

After brutally hanging four anti-state protesters, Islamic Iran's judiciary decided, not for the first time, to give a short jail term to a man who murdered his "unruly" wife last year. Meanwhile, young protesters against the regime are being executed by the state.

A veiled woman is walking along a guardrail in Tehran

An veiled woman walks around in the old main bazaar of Tehran, Iran.

Rouzbeh Fouladi/ZUMA Press Wire
Editorial

-Editorial-

Iran's regime has no qualms about executing those it deems the "undesirables" of the nation: political opponents, criminals and most recently anti-state protesters, often using the courts to issue extravagant charges against those it sends to be hanged.

And yet the same judiciary has recently given an eight-year jail sentence to a young man who murdered his wife in 2022. This was a notorious case of "honor killing" reported in February that year in the southern city of Ahwaz.

The convict, Sajjad Heidarnava, became a figure of macabre evil on social media when he was shown smiling and displaying his 17-year-old wife's severed head as a trophy in the neighborhood. His victim, Mona Heidari, had married Heidarnava, her cousin, some years earlier but insisted on a divorce before being killed.

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