Old art in a digital era

So far, the VR museum has been taken to Austria and Germany, among others.

Ma says: "I'm proud that we could use the VR project to show the world the Dunhuang grottoes and spark foreign interest in China's cultural heritage."

Kong Cuiting, 26, also finds it fun to design interactive media that can impart knowledge to children.

"The challenge is how to add both depth and color to the installations," says Kong, whose work is to create digital exhibits for the Confucius Museum in Qufu, Shandong province.

To complete the task, Kong says that they first checked historical records and discussed issues with experts in archaeology, before figuring out a way to put the background knowledge into installations, such as a scroll painting of the ancient sage.

Zhang Lie, Kong's mentor and the director of Tsinghua's Interaction Media Institute, says he is expanding his team by recruiting students who studied history, cultural heritage and archaeology.

"Before we seek to work with other institutions and universities, we should first build up our own team," says Zhang.

"Then we can work together on the varied possibilities of each project."

The exhibition also displayed the works of students which, in Wang Zhigang's words, "were experimental" and could provide new perspectives of how digital protection of cultural heritage is viewed by the younger generation.

"I hope the exhibition changes people's ideas about China's cultural treasures, and these innovative installation techniques are more widely applied," says Wang.