This paper takes the non-heritage craft material Shenyang walking horse lantern as an example of cultural gene extraction and digital reconstruction. Firstly, the explicit genes (shape, pattern, color) and implicit genes (cultural connotation, folk activities) of the walking horse lanterns are extracted by collecting literature, field research, visiting the non-genetic inheritors, etc., and applying the inverse engineering gene extraction method, the O.V.S architecture, and the Adobe Photoshop software. Then, a multi-level cultural gene evaluation model was constructed based on the hierarchical analysis method to evaluate the importance of the cultural factors of the walking horse lantern. Finally, the judgment matrix is used to compare the degree of influence among the cultural factors of the lantern, and the core cultural factors that can represent the cultural characteristics of the lantern are screened according to the quantitative results. With the help of digital media, we reconstructed the cultural genes of the dominant genes and the recessive genes of people’s participation, historical allusions and festivals, and evaluated the genetically reconstructed lantern products, which were loved and purchased by the majority of consumers. The research in this paper realizes the cultural inheritance and value dissemination of the lanterns, and also provides a closed-loop research paradigm of “extraction-assessment-reconstruction” for similar non-heritage craft materials.
