From Cultural Genes to Digital Regeneration An AHP-Based Study on the Creative Transformation of Liaonan Shadow Puppetry Cultural Heritage

Abstract

Intangible cultural heritage (ICH) safeguarding increasingly requires methods that connect cultural interpretation with contemporary forms of participation rather than reproducing heritage as isolated visual symbols. This study develops an integrated Cultural Gene-AHP-Digital Regeneration framework for the creative transformation of Liaonan shadow puppetry. Cultural resources were coded into material, behavioral, and spiritual gene layers, and an Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) model was used to evaluate their relative priorities and corresponding design-transformation factors. Eighty questionnaires were distributed and 53 valid responses were obtained. At the criterion level, spiritual cultural genes received the highest weight (0.4041), followed by behavioral (0.3191) and material genes (0.2768). At the global level, carving technique (0.1828), performance manipulation (0.1363), cultural spirit (0.1313), and folk belief (0.1113) emerged as the four most influential cultural factors. These results were translated into an AIGC-assisted, human-screened digital regeneration workflow and examined through a practice-based case: an interactive night lamp for parent-child storytelling. The case is treated as methodological validation rather than a commercial proposal, demonstrating how weighted cultural factors can be traced into form, interaction, narrative, and visual generation decisions. The study contributes a reproducible decision structure for moving from cultural interpretation to design action while retaining human review of culturally sensitive AI-generated content. It also identifies limitations related to sample composition, fieldwork documentation, and the absence of longitudinal user evaluation.