Cultural Heritage Community Research Articles

APPLICATION LIDAR AND POINT CLOUDS FOR 3D MODELING OF MUSEUM OBJECT

A museum is an institution intended for the general public that collects, cares for, presents, and preserves the community's cultural heritage for study, research, and pleasure or entertainment. The museum is undoubtedly one of the educational places for the community because it has many historical objects. It provides an opportunity to make the museum a vital place to be developed in a virtual form, such as Augmented Reality or Virtual Reality. However, one problem in developing virtual media is the 3D modeling of objects for interior design in museums. LiDAR (Light Detection And Ranging) is a near real-time 3D positioning technology. A point cloud collects data points in a 3D coordinate system, generally defined by x, y, and z coordinates. Both of these technologies can be used to create 3D object models quickly. The final result of this research is applying LiDAR & point cloud as a 3D modeling technique and assessing the accuracy of using these techniques for 3D modeling of the museum object

Populating the Data Space for Cultural Heritage with Heritage Digital Twins

The present paper concerns the design of the semantic infrastructure of the data space for cultural heritage as envisaged by the European Commission in its recent documents. Due to the complexity of the cultural heritage data and of their intrinsic inter-relationships, it is necessary to introduce a novel ontology, yet compliant with existing standards and interoperable with previous platforms used in this context as Europeana. The data space organization must be tailored to the methods and the theory of cultural heritage, briefly summarized in the introduction. The new ontology is based on the Digital Twin concept, i.e., the digital counterpart of cultural heritage assets incorporating all the digital information pertaining to them. This creates a Knowledge Base on the cultural heritage data space. The paper outlines the main features of the proposed Heritage Digital Twin ontology and provides some examples of its application. Future work will include completing the ontology in all its details and testing it in other real cases and with the various sectors of the cultural heritage community.

Locating a cultural identity in the use of metaphorical proverbs among the Tai Ahoms of Assam: a study through oral literature

AbstractThis article is an attempt to explore the role of Tai Ahom proverbs as a marker of cultural identity in the realm of postmodern society. Using or choosing culturally driven speech in communication is a linguistic behaviour which reflects the character of the people, their worldview, and thus their uniqueness or difference from the ‘other’. In another way, this might be a conscious way of projecting self. This qualitative study on proverbs of Tai Ahom language and culture adopts the methods of ethnography and textual analysis. A cultural hermeneutic model, along with the participant observation method, was used to collect the data. Finally, the Tai Ahom community of Sivasagar district of Assam, India was chosen as the locus for the research. The findings show that the proverbs are deeply woven by the Ahom community's cultural heritage, history, pride, advice, and satire. Hence, this article provides an insight into Tai Ahoms’ way of living and their worldview. In locating the Tai Ahom's cultural identity within the homogenised bigger community of ‘Assamese’ or akhomiya, this study could help in understanding the differences or uniqueness of the Tai Ahom and thereby the Assamese identity in the present context.

Major to trace element imaging and analysis of iron age glasses using stage scanning in the analytical dual beam microscope (tandem)

Dark and clear silicate glasses formed during an iron age vitrification event ≈ 1500 years ago at the Broborg hillfort near Uppsala, Sweden have been analyzed using a scanning electron microscope equipped with a micro-X-ray fluorescence (μXRF) spectrometer. Correlated µXRF and electron beam-induced energy dispersive spectrometry (EDS) X-ray maps were collected via stage-scanning at constant velocity. This coupled procedure represents a new approach for the cultural heritage community to conduct analytical studies of archaeometric specimens composed of metal, ceramic, or mixed inorganic/organic materials, where major and trace element compositions are registered in space for areas up to the centimeter-length scale at micrometer-scale resolution. Overview images were used to select areas for EDS beam scan maps correlated with multispectral cathodoluminescence (CL) imaging and co-located quantitative EDS and μXRF point analysis. Fe, Ca, Mg, Ti, P, Mn, Zr, Zn, and Y are enriched in the dark glass, while Si, Al, K, Na, Ba, Sr, Rb, and Ga are enriched in the clear glass. Unmelted material is comprised predominately of quartz (SiO2) along with trace apatite (Ca5(PO4)3[Cl,OH]) and zircon (ZrSiO4). Multivariate statistical analysis was used to measure the area fractions of high variance components while lower variance components represented phase mixtures. Differences between calculated melt viscosities for the glass compositions are consistent with field and laboratory observations. Coupled large area EDS and μXRF imaging shows significant promise for informed selection of higher spatial resolution and higher sensitivity follow-up studies, e.g., those performed using synchrotron analysis.Graphical

The Dark Side of Cultural Heritage Protection

ABSTRACTThis article introduces the concept of the dark side of cultural heritage protection. The existence of strict legal protection with burdensome sanctions is expected to provide a sense of security for a country to protect its cultural heritage from threats from other countries or communities. However, it is an unavoidable fact that the efforts of a country that wants to protect its culture lead to conflict and the threat of war between countries. This article shows how many and most of the excessive efforts of an organization to protect cultural heritage from the dangers of war and conflict contribute and have the potential to make cultural heritage vulnerable or even lead to its destruction. The more we talk about cultural heritage and the values it contains and the importance of protecting it, the more attractive it becomes for some groups, organizations, and even countries to target it because it has extraordinary cultural values. For some, efforts to protect and save cultural heritage have been considered as part of the war against terrorism. They destroy a cultural heritage on purpose to kill profitable tourism. This causes the owner community to lose their rights and even leads to revenge until a war occurs between communities, organizations, or countries. Art and culture have moved to the forefront of war, both as additional damage and direct targets for belligerents who use cultural destruction as a means to encourage more violence, hatred, and revenge. This article argues that states, international organizations, and cultural heritage communities need to recognize these negative side effects and make sure to consider them in future action. Keywords: Conflict; Cultural Heritage; The Dark Side; Legal Protection

Too Low Motivation, Too High Authority? Digital Media Support for Co-Curation in Local Cultural Heritage Communities

Over the last decades, a shift towards participatory approaches could be observed in cultural heritage institutions. In co-curation processes, museums collaborate with public audiences to identify, select, prepare, and interpret cultural materials. This article focuses on the question how to engage and motivate local communities or individuals in rethinking dominant discourses or expert narratives regarding cultural heritage and bringing in their own experiences and knowledge. Based on four case studies of cultural co-curation, we delineate two basic challenges for this process: (1) Authority—even though museums strive to involve the public, there is still an imbalance in participation due to the museums’ authoritative status. (2) Motivation—participation in co-curation processes requires high levels of motivation, which are difficult to achieve. Based on the media synchronicity theory, we discuss which characteristics of new media technologies can be helpful to overcome these challenges. Media can increase awareness on counternarratives and blind spots in cultural collections. They can provide a setting where the participants can easily contribute, feel competent to do so, are empowered to rethink dominant discourses, develop a sense of relatedness with other contributors, and maintain autonomy in how and to which degree they engage in the discourse.

Research on the External Communication of Liaoning Intangible Cultural Heritage Guided by Cultural Confidence

Liaoning is rich in intangible cultural heritage. Cultural confidence leads the external communication of Liaoning's intangible cultural heritage, points to the aesthetic pursuit and cultural communication in a deeper cross-cultural context, and is conducive to the common development and prosperity of different civilizations. Aiming at the problems existing in the external communication of Liaoning intangible cultural heritage, this paper puts forward the strategy of cultural confidence leading the external communication of Liaoning intangible cultural heritage. Understand the significance of cultural self-confidence leading the external communication of intangible cultural heritage, give play to the leading role of the government in the communication of intangible cultural heritage, realize the effective connection between intangible cultural heritage and local tourism, further enhance the era appeal of intangible cultural heritage, meet the audience needs of intangible cultural heritage in the new media era, improve the translation level, and break the language barriers of intangible cultural heritage communication.

Digital Archaeology: From Interdisciplinarity to the ‘Fusion’ of Core Competences Towards the Consolidation of New Research Areas

The aim of this article is to explore the interdisciplinary turn observed in the development of humanities computing, in terms of integration and fusion of expertise. The debate started with the Seminar on Discipline umanistiche e informatica. Il problema dell’integrazione, held in 1991 at the Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei. Moving backwards in time, already from the 1960s the role of ‘integration’ was at the heart of many interdisciplinary initiatives supported by the National Research Council of Italy and the Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei as part of their coordinated efforts to promote scientific progress. Through a number of archaeological case studies pivoting around the Etruscan civilisation, it will be shown how over time archaeological computing, and its evolution towards digital archaeology, has found in GIS and multimedia systems a unitary platform on which methods and practice of data acquisition, analysis, interpretation, and communication can converge. The concept of ‘fusion’, however, is much more recent and responds to a global resource management model, which combines the methods of archaeology with the objectives of Heritage Science, along the research path that goes from field and laboratory investigation to the protection, enhancement and communication of cultural heritage.

The Origins of the Postgraduate Programs on Cultural Heritage Knowledge, Management, Conservation, and Communication in Italy: A Vision of the Past as Engine for the Next Future

A discriminating, multi-disciplinary knowledge is a necessary expertise that all the actors who operate in the management, conservation, and communication of Cultural Heritage (CH) must have. They are, therefore, expected to be seriously prepared in many fields. However, a proper training program for them, which effectively combines humanistic studies with scientific ones, is difficult to be arranged when there is lack of comprehensive perspective in the education system. This paper introduces the experiences of the postgraduate programs that were established for many years at the Scuola Normale Superiore in Pisa, Italy. Through a calibrated mixture of theoretical background and practical applications taught by high-profile scholars, those programs proved to be effective in the preparation of figures later dealing with the CH at different levels. The clear organization of those specialized lectures, the innovation introduced with hands-on practical case studies and the adoption of state-of-the-art techniques, led to an educational paradigm that is still efficient, whose outcomes also demonstrated how it can be inspiring for future high-level learning programs, which must be oriented towards fostering an aware preparation for leading operators involved in the conservation and dissemination of CH.

Participatory Heritage On Social Networking Sites: The Discussion of Main Theoretical Concepts

The field researching cultural heritage communication on social networking sites, is still developing its theoretical foundations, while participatory heritage, as one of the newest concepts born in this field, is still lacking its grounded conceptualization, especially emerging from practice-based research studies. This theoretical study suggests to integrate different theoretical considerations that derives from cultural heritage studies, social networking sites research and theory of participation, and proposes to refine the concept of participatory heritage believing that the primary understanding of the context as “participatory” lies not in the environment itself, but in the activity that takes place in it. Therefore, I offer that participatory heritage could be understood as a new shift in cultural heritage practice that emerge through collaboration and communication of people on social networking sites.

CULTURAL HERITAGE MONUMENT DOCUMENTATION THROUGH ADAPTIVE PARAMETRIC DESIGN PROCESS

Abstract. The paper presents a novel adaptive parametric documentation, modelling and sharing methodology, which aims to achieve a continuous holistic documentation, data processing and sharing process for cultural heritage community, such as architects, engineers, archaeologists, conservators, programmers, fabricators, contest creators, game developers, scholars and common citizens. Thus, the use of advance parametric and building information modelling software allows the processing and specification of all data by creating the 3D models needed for the multidisciplinary experts. Two Cypriot case studies from the medieval time period have been chosen for the development, and evaluation of our proposed methodology in order to investigate the process of modelling and sharing all the given metadata and 3D data. The first one is the Asinou Church, a UNESCO Heritage stone monument in the Troodos Mountains with a unique interior and the Kolossi Castle, a former Crusader stronghold on the west of the city of Limassol on the island of Cyprus.

DIGITAL PRESENTATION AND COMMUNICATION OF CULTURAL HERITAGE IN THE POST-PANDEMIC ERA

Abstract. In the post-pandemic era, coronaviruses will forge a long-term coexistence with humanity, and the fight against the pandemic will become the normal. With international social isolation and limited physical space for communication during the COVID-19 pandemic, the digital communication of cultural heritage based on internet technology has not only proven the importance and necessity of cultural heritage digitalization, but will also greatly accelerate the digital transformation that has already begun. In the post-pandemic era, the accumulation of rich digital data on cultural heritage will form the basis for further cultural communication. However, the collection of digital data is not the final link in this digital chain. Effectively leveraging the advantages of the digital technology – which spreads rapidly and has a broad audience as well as vivid information presentation – to integrate and digitally process the existing and emerging cultural heritage data will continuously combine the cultural heritage with new communication technologies. We should use diversified media platforms to achieve further breakthroughs in the communication model, present the digital communication content of the cultural heritage showing the characteristics of the times, and form real and virtual interaction of cultural heritage in a converged media environment, in order to further ease interpersonal isolation and even space-time constraints brought about by the pandemic, reconstruct the communication ecology of cultural heritage, and inherit and utilize the precious wealth left to humanity by history.

From Bricks to Clicks: How Digital Heritage Initiatives Create a New Ecosystem for Cultural Heritage and Collective Remembering

Cultural heritage institutions, such as museums, libraries, archives, and historical societies, are increasingly using digital heritage initiatives and social media platforms to connect and interact with their heritage communities. This creates a new memory ecosystem whereby heritage communities are invited to contribute, participate with, and share more of what they are interested in collectively remembering, rather than simply accepting the authoritative narratives of heritage institutions, which raises questions about what this means for cultural heritage writ large and whose versions of the past these heritage communities will hold onto as their digital inheritance. The primary contributions of this article are to provide both an extended view of the issue by building on several qualitative studies involving in-depth interviews and digital observations with eight cultural heritage communities over a five-year period and to better understand how their digital heritage initiatives are creating a new ecosystem for cultural heritage and collective remembering.

The Study of Three-Dimensional Fingerprint Recognition in Cultural Heritage

Fingerprints play a central role in any field where person identification is required. In forensics and biometrics, three-dimensional fingerprint-based imaging technologies, and corresponding recognition methods, have been vastly investigated. In cultural heritage, preliminary studies provide evidence that the three-dimensional impressions left on objects from the past (ancient fingerprints) are of paramount relevance to understand the socio-cultural systems of former societies, to possibly identify a single producer of multiple potteries, and to authenticate the artist of a sculpture. These findings suggest that the study of ancient fingerprints can be further investigated and open new avenues of research. However, the potential for capturing and analyzing ancient fingerprints is still largely unexplored in the context of cultural heritage research. In fact, most of the existing studies have focused on plane fingerprint representations and commercial software for image processing. Our aim is to outline the opportunities and challenges of digital fingerprint recognition in answering a range of questions in cultural heritage research. Therefore, we summarize the fingerprint-based imaging technologies, reconstruction methods, and analyses used in biometrics that could be beneficial to the study of ancient fingerprints in cultural heritage. In addition, we analyze the works conducted on ancient fingerprints from potteries and ceramic/fired clay sculptures. We conclude with a discussion on the open challenges and future works that could initiate novel strategies for ancient fingerprint acquisition, digitization, and processing within the cultural heritage community.

Using ISO and Semantic Web standard for building a multilingual terminology e-Dictionary: A use case of Chinese ceramic vases

Cultural heritage is the legacy of physical artefacts and intangible attributes of a group or society that is inherited from past generations. Terminology is a tool for the dissemination and communication of cultural heritage. The lack of clearly identified terminologies is an obstacle to communication and knowledge sharing. Especially, for experts with different languages, it is difficult to understand what the term refers to only through terms. Our work aims to respond to this issue by implementing practices drawn from the Semantic Web and ISO Terminology standards (ISO 704 and ISO 1087-1) and more particularly, by building in a W3C format ontology as knowledge infrastructure to construct a multilingual terminology e-Dictionary. The Chinese ceramic vases of the Ming and Qing dynasties are the application cases of our work. The method of building ontology is the ‘term-and-characteristic guided method’, which follows the ISO principles of Terminology. The main result of this work is an online terminology e-Dictionary. The terminology e-Dictionary could help archaeologists communicate and understand the concepts denoted by terms in different languages and provide a new perspective based on ontology for the digital protection of cultural heritage. The e-Dictionary was published at http://www.dh.ketrc.com/e-dictionary.html .

MuMIA: Multimodal Interactions to Better Understand Art Contexts

Cultural heritage is a challenging domain of application for novel interactive technologies, where varying aspects in the way that cultural assets are delivered play a major role in enhancing the visitor experience, either onsite or online. Technology-supported natural human–computer interaction that is based on multimodalities is a key factor in enabling wider and enriched access to cultural heritage assets. In this paper, we present the design and evaluation of an interactive system that aims to support visitors towards a better understanding of art contexts through the use of a multimodal interface, based on visual and audio interactions. The results of the evaluation study shed light on the dimensions of evoking natural interactions within cultural heritage environments, using micro-narratives for self-exploration and understanding of cultural content, and the intersection between human–computer interaction and artificial intelligence within cultural heritage. We expect our findings to provide useful insights for practitioners and researchers of the broad human–computer interaction and cultural heritage communities on designing and evaluating multimodal interfaces to better support visitor experiences.

A Meaning-Aware Cultural Tourism Intelligent Navigation System Based on Anticipatory Calculation.

To improve the personalized service of cultural tourism, anticipatory calculation has become an essential technology in the content design of intelligence navigation system. Culture tourism, as a form of leisure activity, is being favored by an increasing number of people, which calls for further improvements in the cultural consumption experience. An important component of cultural tourism is for tourists to experience intangible cultural heritage projects with local characteristics. However, from the perspective of user needs and the content adaptive system, there are few suitable intelligent navigation and user demand anticipatory systems for intangible cultural heritage content. Purple clay culture is one of the first batches of national intangible cultural heritage protection projects in China. Therefore, taking purple clay culture exhibition as an example, this paper attempts to analyze the personalized information demand of tourism consumption experience in intangible cultural heritage communication activities with affective computing and meaning-driven innovative design method, by taking the content design in the navigation system as the research object. This paper uses the theory of planned behavior to calculate the relationship between tourists’ attitude, experience behavior, and display information demand. The findings indicate two issues. First, tourists’ demand for the entertainment and leisure attributes of intangible cultural heritage is greater than the demand for educational function attributes. Second, the meaning elements of information can change tourists’ beliefs in intangible cultural heritage and affect their attitude and behavior toward such heritage. According to the research results, strengthening the meaning elements of specific group information can improve people’s cultural identity and tourism satisfaction. The research results provide the basis for the content design direction of future museum intelligent navigation systems.

The Development of Tourism Entrepreneurship for Community Based Tourism in Thailand

The research aims to emphasize the entrepreneurship in community tourism development and to identify guideline of enhancing tourism entrepreneurship for community based tourism of Thailand. The research design was quantitative research. The samples consisted of 175 people living in the community, entrepreneurs in the community, government officials, folk philosopher, and community leaders who have tourism operations. Data were collected using a questionnaire. The major findings showed that an approach in the development of tourism entrepreneurship adhering to Community Based Tourism should focus on the development of 5 groups, namely 1) Community-based tourism management 2) Economic society and quality of life management 3) Conservation and promotion of community cultural heritage 4) A sustainable system management of natural resources and the environment and 5) Community based tourism services. This result shows the importance of entrepreneurial tourism for Community Based Tourism. It is essential reading for both tourism and entrepreneurship

Cultural Heritage communication and digital resources: three examples from Messapian archaeology

Digital resources play a key role in the use of our cultural heritage. Awareness of their importance has grown considerably over the last two decades, but it is above all in the current world health emergency that they have proven to be fundamental. A number of multimedia products created since 2000 to present the Cultural Heritage are accessible on the CEIT portal of the University of the Salento. This paper illustrates three of these products, created in the years 2008-2010, with the aim of communicating to the public the results of scientific research conducted in southern Puglia on the archaeology of the Messapians in an effective way. These, the fruit of pioneering projects, have given rise to new horizons and challenges in digital technologies, and to new models of scientific communication and universal use of the cultural heritage, which today are more important than ever.

The Sensorial Dimension of the Contemporary Museum between Design and Emerging Technologies

Nowadays, society passes through a moment of transition, in which technological progress has offered the possibility, as well as the challenge, of gathering and transmitting an infinity of information in such short time. In this context, the museum transforms, it becomes a sensitive organism that modifies the visitor-artwork relationship, introducing new models of interaction and fruition. Design in line with digital technologies play a determinative role in this transformation, generating new languages and experimentations that multiply the levels of artwork narration, introducing new temporal dimensions and exhibition paradigms. Despite the considerable progress accomplished in recent years both by research and industry in the fields of acquisition techniques, digitalization, computer graphics, visualization, most of the applications for the communication of cultural heritage on site and on line still have many limitations concerning their ability of engaging the users. They often lack narrative metaphors, sensorial and emotional involvement, while interaction interfaces may appear hostile for a considerable part of the visitors. Starting from the most appropriate learning style to the characteristics regarding the user’s identity, he has the necessity to enter a space, be it real or virtual, able to stimulate him towards future insights and knowledge acquisition. Storytelling and perception come into play in order to build experience, which needs to engage the visitor emotionally, but it must also be capable of not subtracting him to the real visit. It has to offer valid hints, but it must not become a substitute of reality, while technologies must not transform into barriers, but into an opening towards a future accessible to all. With the forthcoming objective of understanding how to overcome limitations and build enhanced fruition and adaptive, personalised interaction models where the visitor stays at the centre of the design scene, this paper analyses the current transformations, providing a general view of national and international experiences that use the technological potential in an innovative way, defining best practices in the field. The connections between user and technology related to space and time will be highlighted, as well as the storytelling methods and the interactive, engaging and sensorial visitor - museum experiences.