Xinhuanet Wuhan, May 15th. On May 14th, the 2025 World Digital Education Conference opened in Wuhan. At the Hubei Higher Education Digital Achievement Exhibition "Training to See New Realm and Intelligently Opening the Future" Digital Achievements Exhibition, the Wuhan Conservatory of Music's teaching case "Digital Chime Immersive Virtual Performance Teaching Platform" was officially unveiled as a case of higher education on-site observation of the 2025 World Digital Education Conference, showing the school's innovative development in inheriting Chinese traditional music culture to international organizations, universities, research institutions and leading enterprises in many countries and regions around the world.

  Data picture: Suizhou Zenghouyi chime bell shot at the Hubei Provincial Museum on April 17, 2025. Photo by Xinhua News Agency reporter Xiao Yijiu

  As the pinnacle of China's pre-Qin ritual and music civilization, Zeng Houyi chime bells have shocked the world since it was unearthed in Suizhou, Hubei in 1978, with its magnificent shape and the acoustic mystery of "one bell and two tones". This set of bronze heavy objects carrying 3755-character musical inscriptions is not only a historical witness to the "twelve-character" music system of Chinese civilization, but also an important carrier for the academic inheritance of Wuhan Conservatory of Music for more than 40 years.

  Since Wuhan Conservatory of Music participated in the research work after the unearth of Zeng Houyi chime bells in 1978, it has formed an indissoluble bond with chime bells. The school has carried out a series of replication, research, creation, performance and promotion activities around chimes, making it an important cultural symbol in the school's development history. On this basis, Wuhan Conservatory of Music specially set up chime performance and ancient Chinese ritual and music culture courses, committed to inheriting and promoting this precious cultural heritage. In order to promote teaching performance practice, the school used modern scientific and technological means to digitally transform traditional chimes and successfully developed the "digital chime immersive virtual performance teaching platform".

Digital Chime Immersive Virtual Performance Teaching Platform

Live performance

  The platform takes motion capture technology as the core, integrates advanced technologies such as force feedback somatosensory technology and high-precision 3D modeling, and restores the real scenes of chime performance in all aspects. It builds an immersive virtual performance experience, effectively overcoming many limitations such as the previous single-person experience, such as the previous similar projects being limited to single-person experience. In terms of chime performance teaching, the platform solves the core problems of traditional chimes with high cost, large size and scarce practice opportunities, allowing chimes to move from museum display cabinets to daily classrooms. Through this platform, students can feel the charm of chimes more intuitively and deeply understand the cultural connotation behind them, so as to better inherit and promote ancient Chinese ritual and music culture.

  Li Pengyun, the project leader and professor of the composition department of the school, said, "From bronze inscriptions to digital codes, from archaeological sites to virtual classrooms, the digital chime project not only builds a bridge between traditional rituals and music and modern technology, but also creates a new paradigm for digital teaching of intangible cultural heritage. This cultural dialogue spans 2,400 years is composing the melody of the era of inheritance and innovation of Chinese civilization."

[Editor in charge: Wang Qi]