Cultural Heritage Content Research Articles

Becoming Social Museums by Being Virtual-Oriented and Technology-Driven Organisations

Abstract As audience-oriented and information-driven organisations, museums are embracing the Internet and interactive technology for developing virtual museums by encouraging the participation of the users in cultural activities. Technology does not exist per se being socially shaped. Museums have the opportunity to promote social innovation by developing technology and opening up to the audience as an active participant in the definition of cultural contents emphasising the interaction and communication between museums and their users. The Internet and interactive technology help museums to drive service innovation by opening up to the participation of the audience in defining cultural heritage contents. As virtual-oriented and technology-driven organisations, museums are becoming social, developing social spaces for innovation, selecting different pathways by managing information and knowledge sharing, developing interactive and virtual technology, building a shared authority on cultural heritage, involving the user as an active participant in co-production of cultural heritage knowledge.

제 4차 산업혁명 시대의 가상현실기반 문화유산콘텐츠 사용경험에 대한 연구: 어포던스 이론과 디지털 미디어 리터러시의 적용

제 4차 산업혁명 시대의 가상현실기반 문화유산콘텐츠 사용경험에 대한 연구: 어포던스 이론과 디지털 미디어 리터러시의 적용

Developing Museum Education Content: AR Blended Learning

AbstractTraditional museums of culture and history are failing to develop or make effective use of augmented reality (AR) technology. To address this deficit, the present study sought to develop online and offline experiential AR learning tools that would enable children to more fully explore museum artefacts. The study approach was based on the Blended Learning Model, which utilises symbiotic online and offline conversions and arrangements to enhance learning effectiveness. First, the study investigated the characteristics and limitations of existing AR technology from the perspective of children’s education by focusing on cultural assets. Second, an educational app with cultural heritage content was designed on the basis of a survey of stakeholders’ perceptions and needs. A blended learning experiment was then conducted, involving five steps (1) making a 3D assembly model (offline); (2) viewing the 3D model through the AR app; (3) learning about the cultural relic from a textbook (offline); (4) exploring the 3D model through the AR Quiz Game (online); and ( 5) visiting the museum (offline). This programme was found to be appropriate for elementary school third and fourth graders, who responded with high levels of flow and interest. The findings suggest that this experiential AR blended learning tool provides a more meaningful experience that motivates children to appreciate the value of cultural/historical assets.

Testing of Priorities in the Research of Cultural Heritage in Slovakia’s Depopulated Regions

Abstract Along with the dynamics of findings of several scientific disciplines of the recent decades, the mechanisms and processes of culture transmission seem to be much more apparent. The knowledge about cultural heritage and the inheritance of culture produced in this way have led to the creation of several platforms of critical cultural heritage. Anthropological and ethnological findings significantly enrich these multi-disciplinary environments where the criterion of a living cultural heritage is becoming generally accepted. In this light, the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) created a working group in 2019 with the aim to prepare an innovated Strategic Research Agenda (SRIA) for the submission of European projects in the field of cultural heritage (JPI CH). The working group invited Slovak and Czech researchers to reflect on the knowledge from the Central European research area in order to define the research topics for the priority Cultural Heritage and People. The research on the testing of the priority and clarification of the impacts of the depopulation of cultural regions on cultural heritage was conducted at selected locations of the Hont, Novohrad and Malohont regions. The key indicators for justifying the inclusion of the research topic The impact of the depopulation of EU regions with cultural heritage in SRIA include ethnographic information, historical demographic data and the modelling of the transmission of cultural heritage content to the next generations.

A Study on the Present Condition and Prospect of Architectural Cultural Heritage Content Applied to 3D Digital Technology

A Study on the Present Condition and Prospect of Architectural Cultural Heritage Content Applied to 3D Digital Technology

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.

Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence for Designing Accessible Cultural Heritage

This paper reviews the literature concerning technology used for creating and delivering accessible museum and cultural heritage sites experiences. It highlights the importance of the delivery suited for everyone from different areas of expertise, namely interaction design, pedagogical and participatory design, and it presents how recent and future artificial intelligence (AI) developments can be used for this aim, i.e.,improving and widening online and in situ accessibility. From the literature review analysis, we articulate a conceptual framework that incorporates key elements that constitute museum and cultural heritage online experiences and how these elements are related to each other. Concrete opportunities for future directions empirical research for accessibility of cultural heritage contents are suggested and further discussed.

The value of mass-digitised cultural heritage content in creative contexts

How can digitised assets of Galleries, Libraries, Archives and Museums be reused to unlock new value? What are the implications of viewing large-scale cultural heritage data as an economic resource, to build new products and services upon? Drawing upon valuation studies, we reflect on both the theory and practicalities of using mass-digitised heritage content as an economic driver, stressing the need to consider the complexity of commercial-based outcomes within the context of cultural and creative industries. However, we also problematise the act of considering such heritage content as a resource to be exploited for economic growth, in order to inform how we consider, develop, deliver and value mass-digitisation. Our research will be of interest to those wishing to understand a rapidly changing research and innovation landscape, those considering how to engage memory institutions in data-driven activities and those critically evaluating years of mass-digitisation across the heritage sector.

X-Reality Museums: Unifying the Virtual and Real World Towards Realistic Virtual Museums

Culture is a field that is currently entering a revolutionary phase, no longer being a privilege for the few, but expanding to new audiences who are urged to not only passively consume cultural heritage content, but actually participate and assimilate it on their own. In this context, museums have already embraced new technologies as part of their exhibitions, many of them featuring augmented or virtual reality artifacts. The presented work proposes the synthesis of augmented, virtual and mixed reality technologies to provide unified X-Reality experiences in realistic virtual museums, engaging visitors in an interactive and seamless fusion of physical and virtual worlds that will feature virtual agents exhibiting naturalistic behavior. Visitors will be able to interact with the virtual agents, as they would with real world counterparts. The envisioned approach is expected to not only provide refined experiences for museum visitors, but also achieve high quality entertainment combined with more effective knowledge acquisition.

Culturally Significant Presence in Single-player Computer Games

Cultural presence is a term used to explain and evaluate cultural learning in virtual heritage projects but is less frequently used for video games. Given the increasing importance of video games to cultural heritage, this article investigates explanations of cultural presence that could be communicated by games, especially concerning UNESCO and ICOMOS definitions of cultural significance. The aim is to determine if cultural presence can be communicated via video games and across a range of game genres. Observations derived from game prototyping workshops for history and heritage aided the development of a teachable list of desirable game elements. To distinguish itself from the vagueness surrounding theories of cultural presence, a theory of culturally significant presence is proposed. Culturally significant presence requires three components: culturally significant artifacts and practices; an overarching framework of a singular, identifiable cultural viewpoint; and awareness by the participant of both the culturally significant and the overarching cultural framework and perspective (which gives sites, artifacts, and practices their cultural significance and relational value). As awareness of cultural presence requires time for reflection, single-player games were chosen that were not completely dependent on time-based challenges. Another criterion was cultural heritage content: They must simulate aspects of heritage and history, communicate a specific cultural framework, or explore and reconstruct a past culture. Four games were chosen that simulate a culture, explain archaeological methods, portray indigenous intangible heritage, or explain historical-based ecosystems of the past based on educational guidelines. The games are Assassin's Creed: Origins ; Heaven's Vault ; Never Alone ; and a Ph.D. project: Saxon . Their genres could be described as first-person shooter/open world/virtual tour; dialogue-based puzzle game; 2D platform game; and turn-based strategy game. The aim is not to evaluate the entire range of interactive virtual environments and games, but to examine the applicability and relevance of this new theory and to ascertain whether the four games provided useful feedback on the concept and usefulness of culturally significant presence. A more clearly demarcated theory may not only help focus evaluation studies but also encourage game developers to modify or allow modification of commercial games for classroom teaching of digital heritage.

Improving the User Experience with Audiovisual Content: The Project “Europeana Media”

Abstract Europeana is the EU flagship initiative for digital cultural heritage that gives free access to more than 50 million digital objects coming from more than 3,500 libraries, archives and museums across Europe. Of this huge amount of digital cultural heritage content, over a million are videos and more than seven hundred thousand are audio documents. Audio and video materials keep users engaged on a website longer than any other content type and this is the kind of content most web users look for, and user statistics confirm this also on Europeana.eu. Hence the aim of the project Europeana Media was to improve the user experience with audiovisual material on the Europeana portal and deliver functionalities to better access and incorporate AV content from Europeana.eu into the working environments of researchers, educators and citizens by developing an Enhanced Unified Playout Service. This unified player is based on theInternational Image Interoperability Framework (IIIF), which provides a standardised method of describing and delivering images, video and audio over the web.

Towards a phygital heritage approach for museum collection

The paper presents different experiences developed at the Department of Architecture and Design of Politecnico di Torino in collaboration with Fondazione Museo delle Antichità Egizie in Turin, Italy. These research offered interesting suggestions for working on the crucial relationship between content (collection) and container (museum) through shared and interoperable digital workflows. In the B.A.C.K. TO T.H.E. F.U.T.U.RE. project the research emphatise the role of artworks, that are characterized by intangible and historical values. Artworks are also connected with eterogeneous documentary heritage that enlighted the need of creating new narratives avoiding the descriptive and analytical ones. The project offers a workflow that using different vocabularies (database and open data) is able to structure data and use visual media (3d web publishing) to create different degree of accessibility to cultural heritage content. The recently launched SMART MUSEUM research, works on automated procedures to show, through graphics, the complex phenomena triggered by the attractive weight of the collections. In this case, the artwork assumes artistic, social and media values that contribute to create novel attributes able to identify an attractive weight of the artwork. These value affects the attractiveness of an artwork within the exhibition project and can be an interesting subject for a correct foreshadowing of visitor flows. The involved elements are the exhibition area (the graphic field), the collection (the attractive elements) and the users. The conceived procedure, once automated, becomes a prototype to support the curators to control and improve the efficiency of the exhibition layout.

Restoration and Development of Urban Heritage Sites (Rehabilitation of Middle cities and Heritage towns)

There are various restoration methods and techniques that would help specialists whether planners, designers and archeologists to study historical sites and their valued heritage buildings in various cities at Egypt as Alexandria governorate which is considered as one of heritage towns. One of these techniques is Virtual Reality (VR) that could be used to improve the field of Virtual Heritage (VH) which is directed towards accurate representation of historic structures in urban heritage sites, objects or artefacts. Beside, using Geographical Information System (GIS) and Google earth model to define these urban heritage sites accurately with all database related to the specific area under study. Digital models of historical buildings and its urban spaces only give a sense of precision for their historical values. Yet, human attitude and cultural traditions remain a gap in current research and advanced technology in heritage visualization. So, Virtual Heritage Environments (VHE) suffers from the lack of ‘thematic interactivity’ due to the limited cultural heritage content and engaging modules largely used in photorealistic systems. So, this paper focuses in using various digital restoration techniques and methods to investigate and incorporate a cultural-feed into digital platforms of VH especially at Alexandria in Egypt as Qaitbay castle plaza. This site discusses a conceptual and practical workflow for the development of virtual heritage platforms as a research area, educational purpose. The study includes engagement tool of historic conservation in Alexandria, brings historic spaces and buildings to users in detailed studies whether researchers or students. The results of the research would be used for the renewal of the current plaza of Qaitbay castle by making it more attractive. Also, this plaza is considered as a tourist and historical area as well as the organization for paths of movement and transforming the work places for sale from street vendors to organized markets. The scenario was realized by integrating low-cost Virtual Reality (VR) techniques, as the Kolor Panotour Pro software, some tools as Oculus Rift DK2 and the Leap Motion controller. Further, the 3D virtual model was implemented by integrated steps through Virtual Tours and Informational Modeling (VT/IM) to improve real urban data of heritage sites. The paper describes the process for optimizing the 3D virtual model, the implementation of the interactive scenario and the results of a proposed 3D VT/IM of redesigning model for the Qaitbay Castle Plaza. Finally, the paper predicts future research directions for virtual reality, with a particular focus on interaction interfaces and explores the implications for the cultural heritage domain.

EXPLORATION AND PRACTICE OF BEIJING BELL AND DRUM TOWERS SAFETY DETECTION PROJECT

Abstract. Ancient architecture is one of the important historical and cultural heritage content, after many years trials and hardships, there will be a variety of diseases. To better protect the ancient architecture, we need to carry out a detailed investigation to detect and assess its structural safety and stability. Exploration of ancient architecture safety detection, need for an integrated comprehensive and detailed surveying and mapping means drawing detection map, using non-destructive detection techniques to check. We based on three-dimensional laser scanning, integrated utilization technology mapping, ground penetrating radar detection technology, stress wave scanning technology, visual quality and damage prospecting techniques to detect the safety situation in Beijing Bell and Drum Towers. We put forward reasonable suggestions for appropriate repair, on the basis of a variety modal analysis detected the structures, the status of Beijing Bell and Drum Towers safety were assessed. The detection process in this paper has better prospects for the future work that explores cultural heritage of ancient architecture repair detection and appropriate assessment.

“Sampo” Model and Semantic Portals for Digital Humanities on the Semantic Web

This paper presents the vision and longstanding work in Finland on creating a national Cultural Heritage ontology infrastructure and semantic portals based on Linked Data on the Semantic Web. In particular, the “Sampo” series of semantic portals is considered, including CultureSampo (2009), TravelSampo (2011), BookSampo (2011), WarSampo (2015), BiographySampo (2018), NameSampo (2019), WarWictimSampo (2019), FindSampo (2019), MMM (2020), LawSampo (2020), AcademySampo (2020), and ParliamentSampo (2022). They all share the “Sampo model” for publishing Cultural Heritage content the Semantic Web that typically involves three components: 1) A “business model” for harmonizing, aggregating, and publishing heterogeneous, distributed contents based on a shared ontology infrastructure. 2) An approach to interface design, where the data can be re-used and accessed independently from multiple application perspectives, while the data resides in a single SPARQL endpoint. 3) A two-step model for accessing and analyzing the data where the focus of interest is first filtered out using faceted semantic search, and then visualized or analyzed by ready-to-use Digital Humanities tools of the portal. This model has been proven useful in practise: Sampo portals have attracted lots users from tens of thousands to millions depending on the Sampo. It is argued that the next step ahead could be portals for serendipitous knowledge discovery where the tools, based on AI techniques, are able to find automatically serendipitous, “interesting” phenomena and research questions in the data, and even solve problems with explanations.

Mergin’ Mode: Mixed Reality and Geoinformatics for Monument Demonstration

Since smart devices are becoming the primary technological means for daily human activities related to user-location, location-based services constitute a crucial component of the related smart applications. Meanwhile, traditional geospatial tools such as geographic information systems (GIS) in conjunction with photogrammetric techniques and 3D visualization frameworks can achieve immersive virtual reality over custom virtual geospatial worlds. In such environments, 3D scenes with virtual beings and monuments with the assistance of storytelling techniques may reconstruct historical sites and “revive” historical events. Boosting of Internet and wireless network speeds and mixed reality (MR) capabilities generate great opportunities for the development of location-based smart applications with cultural heritage content. This paper presents the MR authoring tool of “Mergin’ Mode” project, aimed at monument demonstration through the merging of the real with the virtual, assisted by geoinformatics technologies. The project does not aim at simply producing an MR solution, but more importantly, an open source platform that relies on location-based data and services, exploiting geospatial functionalities. In the long term, it aspires to contribute to the development of open cultural data repositories and the incorporation of cultural data in location-based services and smart guides, to enable the web of open cultural data, thereby adding extra value to the existing cultural-tourism ecosystem.

Towards Hybridity

This article considers the many layered and multi-faceted questions of hybridity as interdisciplinary encounter through the lens of a central case study – the EU-funded project, CultureMoves (2018-2020), on which the Centre for Dance Research (C-DaRE) was a collaborating partner. With Europeana principles as a backdrop for the re-use of cultural heritage content, CultureMoves was an 18-month long project that aimed to develop a series of digital tools enabling new forms of touristic engagement and dance educational resources. The CultureMoves project is marked by hybridity in terms of its very interdisciplinarity, in its rooting in an interpretation of ‘creative tourism’ (Richards and Raymond 2000; Richards and Marques 2012) as a means of enhancing encounters between artists, tourists and communities and in its focus on the expanded sense of the coming together of dance artist and cultural heritage site. With particular reference to the broader field of creative tourism, this article reflects on the key questions and assumptions that underlie existing and potential collaborations between the dance research/ education, digital technology and tourism sectors, and which prepared the terrain for the toolkit development. The article will also provide a close examination of experiments in the project that intend to awaken new experiences of space and place, and dormant histories, through bringing dancing bodies into relation with the built environment and digital technologies, as an intervention into creative (and cultural) tourism. Marked by the intersection of the human and non-human, and the differing expectations of stakeholders and audiences, the discussion also considers where experiments fail, to offer a view of what that tells us about the limits of hybridity in performance.

Indoor levels of volatile organic compounds at Florentine museum environments in Italy.

Indoor Air Quality monitoring in cultural institutions is of particular concern to protect these places and the cultural heritage content. An indoor monitoring campaign was performed in three museums in Florence (Italy) to determine the occurrence and levels of volatile organic compounds (VOCs). VOCs of interest included BTEX (benzene, toluene, ethylbenzene, xylenes), terpenes, aldehydes, organic acids, and cyclic volatile methyl siloxanes (cVMS). The most abundant VOCs in all samples analyzed were BTEX, which were strictly related to the traffic source, followed by siloxanes and terpenes. Among BTEX, toluene was always the most abundant followed by xylenes, ethylbenzene, and benzene. cVMS in exhibition rooms with the presence of visitors showed higher values compared to samples collected when the museums were closed. Terpenes showed not only the influence of vegetation-biogenic sources surrounding a museum but could also be related to the wood used for the construction of showcases and furniture and the use of cleaning products. Data obtained also showed the presence of organic acids and aldehydes whose source can be traced back to exhibits themselves and wood-based furniture. Assessing the levels of organic acids in museums is important because, over time, it can cause deterioration of the artifacts.

Supporting the Cross-cultural Appreciation of Traditional Chinese Puppetry Through a Digital Gesture Library

In recent years, digital cultural heritage has attracted much attention in the HCI domain, but there are currently few studies that focus on enhancing the appreciation of intangible cultural heritage content amongst cross-cultural audiences. This article reports on the development of a Digital Gesture Library to support cross-cultural appreciation of traditional Chinese puppetry. We describe fieldwork with professional puppeteers to understand their practices and art form, which informed the development of the Digital Gesture Library, which uses a three-perspective archive of puppetry gestures and a tangible interface to support cross-cultural audiences’ appreciation of puppetry and encourages further exploration of Chinese culture. We present findings on the efficacy of the Digital Gesture Library from qualitative and quantitative user studies and, from this, discuss the opportunities and challenges for developing digital technology for cross-cultural appreciation of intangible heritage.

DeCACHe: Supporting Designers in Creating Cognition-Centered Adaptive Cultural Heritage Activities

Cultural heritage (CH) institutions attract wide and heterogeneous audiences, which should be efficiently supported and have access to meaningful CH content. This introduces numerous challenges when delivering such experiences, given that people have different cognitive characteristics which influence the way we process information, experience, behave, and acquire knowledge. Our recent studies provide evidence that human cognition should be considered as a personalization factor within CH contexts, and thus we developed a framework that delivers cognition-centered personalized CH activities. The efficiency and the efficacy of the framework have been successfully assessed through two user studies, but non-technical professionals (e.g., CH designers) may face difficulties when attempting to use it and create personalized CH activities. In this paper, we present DeCACHe, which supports CH designers in creating cognition-centered personalized CH activities throughout different phases of the design lifecycle. We also report a user study with seventeen professional CH designers, who used our tool to design CH activities for people with different cognitive characteristics.