MOSAIC introduces a new approach to organisation, maintenance and promotion of arts and museums. This approach is based on a couple of cool interactive technologies: Hypermedia and Telecommunications ; MOSAIC applies them to museums, art galleries, architecture and other kinds of arts.
The project evolves on three phases : Feasibility Study, Implementation and Application Deployment. Each one has a duration of one year.
The project is financed by the European Community (EC) represented by the Commission of the European Communities. Six companies constitute the Industrial Consortium involved in MOSAIC development:
- Banca di Roma s.p.a ("The Coordinator")("BDR") established in Italy
- Joanneum Research - Forshungsgesellschaft mbH ("The Contractor")("JRC") established in Austria
- Zentrum fur Graphische DatenVerarbeitung e.V ("The Contractor")("ZGDV") establisched in Germany
- Cineca - Consorzio Interuniversitario per la Gestione Del Centro di Calcolo Elettronico dell’Italia Nord Occidentale ("the Contractor") ("CINECA") established in Italy
- Politecnico di Milano, DIP.ISET ("The Contractor") ("DISET") established in Italy
- Infobyte s.p.a ("The contractor") "INFOBYTE" established in Italy
- Arenotech established in France
Overview
The MOSAIC main goal is to improve the visibility of the European Cultural Heritage to disseminate knowledge and to promote interchanges between cultural operators.
European museums and galleries are rich of cultural treasures but more of them are not accessible to scholars or public because lack of space and travel costs. This is the reason why ‘Virtual Reality' technology could aims to develop a trans-European framework to access to museums and galleries. This technology could help to see not only what is already shown to the public but also what is not visible because of exhibition sites lack or what is not accessible to the public (like frescos in restricted access buildings or in private offices).
During the project an inter-operable system shall be designed and integrated. The system shall be able to have interaction with museums, libraries, photo-archives and its users could be specialists, researchers, students, tourists, tourists operator, employees, etc.
One of the fall-out of MOSAIC may be the availability of some fees for museums and art galleries coming from network usage and information downloading.
The open issue that MOSAIC will face is : how to diffuse and increase the cultural heritage dissemination and its network framework through a structure process capable of growing and financing itself ?