The Immersive Archive as Transferable Protocol

This working paper introduces the immersive archive as a transferable protocol: a theoretical, methodological, and ethical framework for designing digital-physical devices capable of organizing multimodal records of indigenous peoples' memories into sensory and performative experiences consistent with the original forms of transmission of those memories. The protocol is structured across four dimensions: epistemological (grounding the archive in the community's own categories of knowledge), methodological-ethical (distinguishing protocol decisions from situated content decisions, and applying CARE and FAIR principles for indigenous data sovereignty), technical (low-cost open hardware, spatial audio, embedded sensors, non-linear interaction), and governance (community co-design, cultural custodianship, access protocols). The protocol is presented as a case-independent model. AMUTUY: Sensory Sanctuary — an interactive installation linking the kultrún (sacred Mapuche drum) with embedded sensors and territorial soundscapes — is described as its first design instantiation. A comparative validation horizon with communities of other indigenous traditions is identified as a potential line of future work. The concept of the immersive archive is offered not as an unprecedented term but as a specific synthesis: the contribution of this paper lies in combining, within a single transferable protocol, four elements usually developed separately — indigenous cosmovision as system architecture (not as content), low-cost open-hardware implementation, transferability across communities through an explicit protocol/content distinction, and community authorship as governance. This synthesis is proposed as a contribution to Latin American Digital Humanities, addressing a global problem: conventional archives preserve indigenous memories under logics that flatten their constitutive multimodality, reducing oral, bodily, ritual, and territorial expressions to static and decontextualized formats. Version 2.0 (July 2026) corrects the AMUTUY technical stack description and adds a Spanish-language version, aligned with the paper presented as "Archivo inmersivo decolonial: diseño, corpus sensorial-ritual y co-diseño comunitario en AMUTUY (Comarca Andina del Paralelo 42)" at the VII Congreso Internacional de la Asociación Argentina de Humanidades Digitales (AAHD), Universidad Nacional de Río Negro, Sede Atlántica, Viedma, November 11–13, 2026.