Research serving intangible cultural heritage
How can intangible heritage be preserved without freezing it in time? CNRS research teams are developing a series of tools to address issues ranging from biological storage to digital platforms.
Key takeaways to action
- DNA storage, a new cutting-edge technology developed by French researchers, has proven its effectiveness by preserving a new translation of the Gospel according to Saint Mark.
- This innovation complements the digital and multimedia tools that scientists have been using for decades to preserve intangible cultural heritage, at a time when many human rituals around the world are under threat.
The Romain-Gary Heritage Library in Nice has been home to an unusual artefact since September 2026 –nothing less than a ‘DNA Gospel book’! This is actually a unique copy of the Gospel according to Mark, one of the New Testament’s four canonical Gospels, with the text printed in the original Greek and in French. It is accompanied by a version encoded in synthetic DNA contained within a capsule the size of a gelatin capsule. This biological technology is capable of preserving the whole document for centuries or even millennia.
Using DNA for long-term preservation
Ancient DNA has the amazing capacity of withstanding the test of time. As an example, fragments of hominid genomes survived for hundreds of thousands of years before scientists discovered and sequenced them. So, what if research were to reverse this perspective now by deliberately encoding a part of our history into DNA, rather than just uncovering traces of the past? “What actually fascinates me the most about DNA storage is the possibility of projecting a message for generations yet to come that are far beyond our own lifetimes”, explains Pascal Barbry, a CNRS research professor working at the Institute of Molecular and Cellular Pharmacology1.
Pascal Barbry’s meeting with a Dominican priest eventually led to the Markos project which led to the Gospel according to Mark being encoded in synthetic DNA in Greek and French. This experiment was carried out in the framework of the PEPR MoleculArXiv programme which explores new, quicker and cheaper DNA synthesis methods.
The principle used in this work is similar to that of computer science. A computer translates each character into a sequence of 0s and 1s whereas a combination of DNA is written using its bases, A, T, C and G. The researcher explains that “here each character is encoded using a sequence of four bases”. In this way, that the Greek text and its translation were transcribed into around ten thousand DNA fragments, before being synthesised and then verified by sequencing. The result of the researchers’ work is now sealed in a glass capsule protected by a stainless-steel casing. To retrieve the text, the capsule just needs to be opened before the DNA strands are resequenced using a sequencer.
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CNRS / Inserm / Université Côte d’Azur.
The project culminated in a symbolic gift presented to Pope Leo XIV when he visited France in September 2026 but the original idea of converting a religious text into DNA was by no means obvious at the outset. Pascal Barbry and his colleagues had already encoded other texts, photographs and videos. “DNA can serve as a medium for memory capable of spanning generations but we quickly found ourselves wondering which content we should encode into it. I think this particular choice goes beyond our role as researchers”, says the biologist.
Preserving life
The long-term preservation of a record is a particular challenge for intangible cultural heritage but it is of great importance because recording a language, song, ritual or craftsman’s gestures means the memory of practices that might evolve, disappear or be reappropriated can be safeguarded. “It’s important to maintain archives but that’s not enough on its own. Above all, intangible heritage is a living heritage that only survives because it’s still practised”, explains Thomas Mouzard, a project officer at France’s Ministry of Culture.
“Preserving this heritage also means ensuring it’s passed on so it can be practised and reinvented from one generation to the next”, he adds. Researchers in disciplines like ethnomusicology and linguistics contribute to this process of transmission because they help document practices, study how they change and make these records accessible to the societies they derive from.
Turning archives into a resource
Since 1991, the ethnomusicologist Dana Rappoport has been recording little-documented ritual songs and music in the islands of the Indonesian archipelago1. “I take a very ‘micro’ approach to trying to understand the place of music in their lives”, explains the CNRS research professor at the Centre Asie du Sud-Est2 who has built up a vast collection of sound archives over the last 35 years. This repository of memory now serves both research and the communities the material originates from.
In fact, Dana Rappoport particularly observed instances of reappropriation among the Toraja people who live in the south of the island of Sulawesi. She explains that“political and social upheaval led some people to turn to the recordings I’d made to rediscover or reinvent their traditions1”.
Clearly then, reappropriation depends on people having easy access to the archives, which is why Dana Rappoport and the CNRS research engineer Joséphine Simonnot2 developed Pratinada. This platform was launched in 2024, having grown out of a European project to decolonise the sound archives of South-East Asia3. Since the colonial era, many recordings have been kept in European institutions but were not necessarily readily accessible.
Pratinada is a multilingual website that is open to all and accessible via mobile phones. It enables users to explore the archives by collection, collector, language, population group and location. “The aim is to facilitate access for the communities interested in these archives, without them having to travel to Europe or wait for a response from an institution that’s thousands of kilometres away”, explains Dana Rappoport.
When archives engage in dialogue
However, these archives do not just serve to revive or pass on a tradition. They can also inspire new research, as the case of the old magnetic tapes recorded by French scientists on the island of Timor in the 1960s and made available online by the Centre for Research in Ethnomusicology clearly demonstrates. “I found two-part songs in these archives that were almost identical to those I’d recorded on the island of Flores. Previously I’d thought these were unique to that island. So, this means we have two examples of this polyphonic tradition among populations that speak languages with completely different linguistic backgrounds – Papuan and Austronesian”, explains the researcher.
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Part of these archives is available on Penanian, a website dedicated to Toraja ritual music.
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Ms. Simmonet works at the Perception, Representations, Image, Sound and Music Laboratory (Aix-Marseille University / CNRS).
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DECOSEAS Project – Decolonizing Southeast Asian Sound Archives, ANR Joint Programme Initiative – Cultural Heritage (2021–2025).
This type of connection is a good illustration of what Thomas Mouzard expects from ethnology, the “key scientific discipline” in the area of intangible cultural heritage. “Its contribution involves shifting the focus and drawing comparisons, or, in other words, relating a practice to others that are similar or to other contexts to study and understand it more effectively”, he explains. This enriches our understanding of what constitutes heritage.
The digital paradox
Digital technology is now widely used to transmit intangible cultural heritage. “This is the way forward if we want to reach as many people as possible”, explains the project officer at the Ministry of Culture. And yet, its long-term viability is already an issue, with the Pratinada platform’s case a good illustration of this. Hosting and maintaining the platform requires IT skills that are not always present within research teams and the issue is by no means unique to this platform. “You need hardware, engineers and people capable of maintaining the systems over time for a site to be truly sustainable”, emphasises Dana Rappoport.
This situation is now leading scientists to ask what happens to a resource that is considered useful for transmission when the infrastructure that supports it is no longer maintained? Also, as well as this technical constraint, who is ultimately going to decide what can still be passed on? Societies decide themselves what constitutes cultural heritage but, of course, research organisations and cultural institutions also have a share of responsibility for this. Their choices as regards hosting and funding will determine what can still be passed on in the future.
Further reading
