The scope of this document is to define existing applications useful for MOSAIC. In particular the objective is to align the knowledge of all consortium partners by the interchange of information and technologies.
The objectives of the document are the following:
The result is a complex document containing this executive summary, the description of applied methodology, a list of main results, and the guidelines for MOSAIC.
All operative results, which are implicitly guidelines, are stored in five WPK 1100 annexes:
Introduction the state of Italian art
The state of art of cultural deposit in Europe is very well known and evident, the wealth of artworks and goods expression of every kind of art from graffiti to frescos and architecture, issued along the centuries care of different people that inhabited the various states, characterises uniquely the European cultural heritage.It sounds strange but it is this cultural wealth that causes problems which trouble the Art, in particular in Italy.
Lack of adequate exhibition space, the reduced ratio cost/benefit in managing public access to some museums, problems related to restoration, rehabilitation and even preservation of artworks themselves, difficulties in accessing information and data related to works of art, untimeliness in promoting and disseminating information and news, relevant costs of travel and accommodation, dissemination across the country of works of art due to both accidental and de facto situations, some place holding collection of objects, art and cultural wealth are inaccessible to the public because they are private, seat of government offices and more. These are some of the most common problems which trouble cultural wealth.
In addition is often needed to conjugate different types of works of art like relevant historic and artistic Architectural containers (non movable heritage) with collections of objects, paintings and more (movable heritage) to create art exhibitions and art galleries.
Network access to museums and galleries offers both easier access to Europe's heritage and new revenue for its preservation and display from access and re-use fees.
European museums and galleries hold the richest collection of objects, art and cultural wealth than anywhere in the world, but much is not accessible to scholars and public because of lack of space and cost of travel. This is the reason why several projects are aimed to develop a trans-European framework for electronic network access to museums and galleries, classifying and showing not only what is shown to the public but in addition what is not visible because of lack of exhibition space or, what is not accessible to the public like frescos in access restricted buildings and private offices.
The main goal of this project is to improve the visibility of cultural heritage, to disseminate knowledge and cultural interchanges amongst nations. One of the fall-out of this project may be the availability of some fees for museums coming from network usage and information downloading.
Virtual Museum project developed by the team Direzione della Comunicazione ENEL and Istituto di Psicologia CNR Roma is a first attempt to solve some of these problems applying new interactive technologies to communication and knowledge transfer, other interesting methods are available trough the use of network communication , hypermedia and scientific visualisation.. Recently, following a pilot project, the Italian Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche (CNR) launched a call for proposal to collect ideas and fund some projects in the field of cultural wealth.
Looking at European Museums and Art Galleries, they hold the richest collections of objects, art and cultural wealth that anywhere in the World. Unfortunately much of this is not accessible to the public or it is unknown. G7 has recently pointed out the problem related to cultural heritage information services assigning to Italy the task to co-ordinate and promote cultural wealth all over Europe.
European Communities has promoted several actions in the field of cultural wealth like Trans European Network Telecom (sect. Cultural Heritage) and Raphael programmes. In addition there are several initiatives carried out by national institutions and private enterprises. Some European Regions are developing common projects and initiatives to co-ordinate their action all over Europe trying to offer to European an open, inter-operable management of cultural wealth. This seems to be the right moment to collect the efforts and co-ordinate the promotion of arts using as a leverage information technology and inter-activity.
A New Approach to the Cultural Heritage
Detecting 3D rests on archaeological sites and storing them in a new realistic way is changing the archaeological thought. At the same time, new tools are preparing the Public Administration to control and to manage information. Supporting decision in restoring and rebuild ancient monuments and artworks, the Virtual Reality can give new life to the scientific hypothesis without expose the real ruins to the impact of erroneous actions. So monuments could be rebuild 3-dimensionally following several hypothesis, virtually restored and brought all around the world without damaging the real one. Furthermore, virtual tools can help Museums, Cultural Associations and Foundation to better explain the meanings involved in the monuments, and could convert these information in electronic publishing, either on CD-ROM than on the Net.
Some Remarks on the Use of the Virtual Reality in the Archaeology and Art History
Adding the "Infinite Resolution" technology to their well known applications Infobyte, one of the world leader companies in VR and Multimedia explains the use of the textures, images and high definition capability to build more immersive 3D-environments and more exciting multimedia titles.
Using 3D tools on the Web to visit Monuments
VRML, Java, Cosmo, QTVR, AlphaWorld and other environments can allow the production or re-production of artworks and archaeological sites on the Web. Museums can benefits from the Net in order to allow the potential visitors to preview their contents, to prepare cultural rides and to reserve tickets, time visiting and accommodations.
Urban Space and 3D Managing
The experience of the Graz University in Austria and of the Fraunhofer Institute in Germany. Virtual reconstruction of Quarters and Blocks help the Public Administration to control and to projects interventions in the cities of the Old Continent.
(Prof. Franz Leberl from the Graz Univ. And some other from the FhI, Germany)
Digital Analysis of Paintings and Frescos
A program for the analysis of the perspective of colour raster images and the rebuilding of the corresponding tridimensional models without loss of chromatic information is presented using, as an example, the famous painting "La flagellazione" ("The flagellation") by Piero della Francesca. The seminar will show the different phases necessary to determine the elements needed for the rebuilding (the distance of the observation point from the painting and from the ground) starting with the extraction of the basic perspective structures of the painting (ground plane, lines) up to the calculation of the main accidental point, of the horizon line and the distance point.
It is then shown how it is possible on the basis of these elements to rebuild most of the 3D model that originated the image. Some representations of the model will then be shown using different view points and different directions of observation.
About Virtual Archaeology
"Towards a virtual archaeology" is the evocative title of an article published by Paul Reilly in 1991. In it he describes some of the possible courses that might be taken by the archaeology of the future - an archaeology we can imagine as being essentially technological, multidisciplinary and virtual (in the scientific sense of the word), because it will be linked into the fields of computer processing, simulation, experimentation and computer reconstruction. But will the archaeology of the future be like that ? What language will it be using in the third millennium ? What will its fields of investigation be ?
Above all, how much of the ancient world will be able to reconstruct from the remnants of its material culture, sites and buildings ?
The possibilities that are increasingly being created by scientific and technological research have opened new horizons for archaeology and redrawn its boundaries. As progress marches on , we will be able to reconstruct ever larger segments of our most distant past, leading to a more accurate understanding of the macrocosm of the ancient world. The problem for archaeology is to retrieve the maximum possible amount of information from the material culture, so as to recapture its non-material aspects as well.
However, this process of amassing and interpreting information is a continuous one; what we cannot find out or understand now, we will be able to comprehend in the future - provided we do not destroy or lose the underlying data. It is important, therefore, not to waste information or lose access to it. In this process of acquisition , restoration and re-presentation the assistance of computers and other technology has become vital, and it is here that the term virtual archaeology becomes valid. The archaeology of the third millennium will very likely be a science with a strong technological element that will enhance out of all proportion our ability to explore, to interpret and to classify, bringing with it a greater and more penetrating ability to reconstruct the past. Loosely speaking, it will be a computerized archaeology, because it will involve the large-scale use of computer and archaeometric science in a major scientific endeavour to develop a truly virtual research laboratory. The "quality" of archaeological information and classification will in future create the bases of a new cognitive science.
Excavation and fieldwork are sometimes rather embarrassing for the archaeologist, because (paradoxically) they involve partially destroying the site that is the object of research without ever being able to recapture the whole of the information it contains. In the course of exploration the archaeologist destroys stratigraphy and structures and removes large quantities of soil in order to be able to interpret the excavated remains; "seeing what's underneath is essential for interpretation, but it never provides a whole answer. In many cases - including the cities richest in history - ancient structures hide yet earlier structures. Troy, for instance, had at least nine main phases dating between 3000 bc and the Roman period (Troy IX), and other phases again dating to the Late Antique and subsequent periods. Each one of these phases describes and represents a different city, and each would become intelligible to archaeologists only after thorough investigation - and yet this would have to involve the removal of overlying structures from later phases. Stratigraphy represents an extremely varied and complex sequence of innumerable pieces of information that are often difficult to identify - but not one of them is insignificant, and (ideally) not one should be destroyed.
Archaeological excavation is therefore a complex process that, if carried out correctly, allows a reconstruction of past events - or of a small part of them. That is the constant problem of archaeological research. Only a small amount of intelligible information can be recovered from the ground - a minute percentage of classifiable "events" at a site - and the very activity of excavation inevitably involves some degree of destruction of the information that is buried.
A banal example: how much information do changes in the architecture or furnishings of one's own house (or even the living-room or bedroom) contain about what has taken place in it ? Only one's own memory can reliably record all that has happened there, for few of the actions and events will have left visible traces: the changed position of a piece of furniture, a mark on the wall or a chipped tile. If our house is destroyed, an archaeologist investigating its remains in the distant future will be able to reconstruct very little of what took place in it. If no related documents have been found, he or she will find it very hard even to work out which rooms was which (without the furnishings, how do you distinguish a living- room from a bedroom ?).
Therefore, the ability to reproduce virtually the whole exploratory phase of archaeological research is the decision-maker's tool that enables us to answer the question "How much do we reconstruct ?" It is perhaps our only means of refining ever more accurate classifications and interpretations. It therefore also represents the last stage of research: the recreation of an ancient space, including even its most esoteric aspects - not arbitrarily and unchangeably, but virtually.
The methods at the disposal of archaeology - first put on a scientific basis when it enlisted the aid of information science and computers in the 1960s - can now justifiably be called multidisciplinary, because they span so many areas of the applied sciences. The interaction between research in archaeology, geology and the physical, natural and information sciences is now providing an ever firmer methodological foundation. However, one of the great goals of archaeology is to be presenter (or re-presenter) of information - of what we can be deduced and extrapolated from its data and finds.
Alongside research, therefore, it has an equally important role of communication and dissemination to develop. Amongst the many fields of research, archaeology -synthesizing the most disparate hypotheses in an all-embracing scientific attempt to reconstruct the past - is one of those best able to capture the imagination of the public.
Why is the virtual reconstruction of an archaeological site so important ? Because, over and above its strong popular impact, computer reconstruction allows the presentation of complex information in a visual way that enables it to be used to test and refine the image or model that has been created. It is very much more than a graphic reconstruction: it is a simulation. And, because it is a simulation, it provides a non-intrusive and non-destructive means of exploring a model in three dimensions and from an infinite number of viewpoints. Furthermore, it allows objective verification to be made of possible interpretations of architecture, material culture, topography, palaeo-environmental data, restoration, museum display, and any number of other factors.
The ancient world that could be explored by virtual archaeology is a world in color - very different from the monochrome world to which earlier reconstructions have accustomed us. The polychrome renderings of building materials - from Parian marble to wood, from stone to travertine, from limestone to terracotta, and so on - convey the colour and texture and vitality of the architectural finishes and the ancient buildings they adorn.
All these factors make virtual archaeology a highly useful tool for enlarging our knowledge of a field that has hitherto been under-explored, perhaps because it is concerned with the past.
In April 1995, at "Technology, Instruments and Applications", the third International Conference on the World Wide Web (now the major element of the Internet, the world's largest digital network), a new graphics language was presented: VRML, Virtual Reality Modelling Language. VRML is a language that describes three-dimensional objects and allows the user to move from texts into three-dimensional spaces and vice-versa. It is a completely new way of visualizing information in three-dimensional space via hypermedia links, allowing the information/objects to be rotated, moved and observed from any angle. This powerful graphic language opens up new and extraordinary possibilities for handling multimedia data in three-dimensional form.
We think that in the near future archaeological information will be available in VRML format, offering the opportunity of exploring for instance virtual archaeological parks furnished with physical and conceptual models, with finite territories and multidimensional ideas.
Some reference application in the Archaeological field are: Pompei, The "Rocca di Entella", The "Bucchero of Marzabotto", Stonehenge reconstruction, Ur digital 3D model, The Monumental Architectures of Ebla ,The Tumbs of Horemheb and Bakenrenef, Prince Uage room at Khelua, Lascaux Cave, Chhokia digital reconstruction ,Pueblo Bonito, Tenochtitlàn.
Education Entertainment Applications
Edutainment is potentially a new field of development for software applications. Such kind of "value added" games will substitute common "shot & kill" games adding some useful content like historical background to the entertainment. This approach will be also useful in the field of cultural heritage promoting edutainment applications linked with artworks or archaeological sites. One of the first example in this direction has been showed on the occasion of Imagina INA 97 in Monaco. The application is called "Versailles 1685: A game of Intrigue at the Court of Louis XIV". The application is mainly based on a digital 3D reconstruction of the palace of Versailles as was in the XVII century fitted with original paintings and furniture. This game presented one major challenge: how to reconcile imperative game requirements and the constraints of historical fact, or, how to keep an attractive game form while still communicating historical data which is, by nature, rigid and unwieldy. These two imperatives had to be combined without allowing either one to cancel out the other. In this game is an incredibly effective means of reconstructing a Versailles that no longer exists. It enables us to explore the chateau exactly as it was in 1685, to infuse our often ponderous documentation with new life and to put the hum and throb of life back in the chateau. New technology enables us to makeVersailles better known to the public by leading them away from the beaten track. For the chateauis not very well known, apart from the State Apartments and the Hall of Mirrors. Given that the game takes place in 1685, locations had to be reconstituted exactly as they were at that time, whereas the chateau and the gardens were permanently being modified. In such historical reconstruction the documentation, in the form of engravings, paintings, architectural elevations, memoirs atc., is sometimes contradictory or incomplete and require rigorous collation.
The player has to solve a plot to kill the king taking part to the main ceremonies and events linked to the king's everyday life. QuickTime VRTM – like environment let the user walk through the palace looking at frescos and asking for further information about artworks and architecture. The king's day regulated life at the Court so it naturally came to underlie the way the game unfolds. As a result, the historical reality of life in the chateau at the time is intimately interwoven into the game. Similarly, anecdotes recounted by chroniclers of the time have also been integrated into the story.
This application enables us to rediscover Versailles and provides an astounding confrontation between the reality of still existing places and the reconstitution of those that have disappeared. The reconstitution provides detail, allowing us to contemplate the variety of the décor, its beauty and its quality. The user can also discover astonishing things which we would otherwise not imagine at Versailles, such as the spiral staircase.
Such experiments will bring the monument back to life meant redecorating rooms and re-installing paintings at present scattered around different museums. Paintings are placed in their original locations and textiles are fully restored in order to reconstitute the monument as it was at the time.
Another interesting example of SOHO market application devoted to cultural heritage is, no doubt, "Roma" , a full tridimensional interactive application rebuilding the ancient Imperial Rome with palaces, houses, monuments in the original "coloured" aspect.
Technologies and applications useful for MOSAIC
Telecommunications
We introduce satellite communication, mobile communication, and others telecommunication technologies, such as ATM, ADSL Access Network, NORTEL Broadband communications over power supply and Internet & Basic Services Evolution, EURO ISDN and Cross media technology.
Data Storage
The easier CD-ROMs are extremely cheap, especially when produced in great numbers. The CD-ROM readers are continuously dropping in price as well. CD-ROMs can easily be distributed and handled, and one of them can take a substantial amount of data (650 Mbytes). Another interesting technology is DVD. The DVD looks a lot like its predecessor, the Compact Disk. But the similarity is deceptive. In terms of the possibilities it opens up, the DVD is out on its own. A basic Single Sided Single Layer DVD holds 4.7 GB of data, or as much as 7 CDs.
A new interesting operative product are Imation SuperDisk Diskettes and Drives.
We individuated many useful products for Data Navigation and Data Visualisation (Fakespace BOOM, Custom devices, Stereo Video Beams, CAVE, IMAX Theater, Easy Guide...)
Software
Databases
A foundamental step of MOSAIC project is the implementation of museums and collections database. This very complex application will be developed with MS ACCESS for prototype and distributed data entry and with SQL SERVER or ORACLE for pilot implementation. Other interesting applications are object database software, such as X-WORLD, Jasmine, ObjectStore, O2.
Data Presentation & Encoding Standards
Client-server and modular database architectures have provided diverse opportunities for the development of interfaces and data presentation software., especially the exploitation of open solutions for terminal-side processing, notably Java applets. Recent improvement on dynamic presentations offered by the new specifications of HTML 4.0, CSS2 (style sheets) and VRML 2.0, have assisted in the evolution of an open multimedia presentation platform which is fully competitive with respect to proprietary solutions in terms of functionality and content quality. The delivery of real-time (streamed) audio-visual content, of great relevance and potential for museums applications, is also being experimented with on the Web, thanks to new specifications such as SMIL (Synchronised Multimedia Integration Language).
Concerning user interface front-ends for database access, the following two formal standardisation efforts have to be considered:
HTML, which is an application of SGML. This is the data format that has made the World Wide Web possible. All documents transmitted over the Internet are coded using this language. The draft of the extended version HTML 4.0, includes facilities for multilingual data presentation, interactive elements, objects and control of presentation using cascading style sheets.
VRML.This is widely acknowledged as the best available means of encoding movable objects that need to be displayed over the Internet.
Image Format StandardsLevels of resolution and compression used in specific applications tends to be application-specific; also hard- and software developments are enabling the creation, use and storage of ever higher quality images. One of the possible solutions is Flash pix. FlashPix is a hierarchical digital image file format that provides an ideal way to view and print high-quality, high-resolution images from the WWW. A FlashPix file consists of multiple versions of an image at various resolution levels.
Other interesting solutions are :Lightscape, form·Z : The 3D form synthesizer, MultiGen...
Searching distributed databases
Other interesting features are DAVIC and DICOM.
Interoperability of Payment and Access Systems
Content & Structure Description (Metadata) Standards
There are a number of content-providing communities, which have already, or are developing, national and/or domain-specific standards to support the description of different types of content in prescribed formats. Two exemples are:
Research and Projects useful for MOSAIC
EU Research, Technology Development and Demonstration Projects related to Multi-Media Access to Cultural Heritage useful for MOSAIC :
We individuated a number of projects and applications that can be reused partially or totally in developing MOSAIC networks or CSC
Interoperability
ACTS AC087 - DAM, DAVIC Accompanying Measures
ACTS AC220 GINA , Guidelines for Interoperability in Networks and ATM deployment
Teledidactic
AC042 AVANTI, Adaptive and Adaptable Interactions for Multimedia Telecommunications Applications
AC109 LEVERAGE, Learn from Video Extensive Real ATM Gigabit Experiment
Teleworking
AC222 - DIPLOMAT, European Charter for Telework
AC223 - ETD, European Telework Development
ACS064 Tecodis, Teleworking in Co-operative Development of Industrial Software
Other useful applications
AC099 TELE-SHOPPE, Tele-shopping Services Using Virtual Reality and Interactive Multimedia
Other Projects related to Multi-Media Access to Cultural Heritage
The ARCTOS project: Archaeology, GIS and Desktop Virtual Reality
T_Vision 1 - An earth visualization project
Similar Applications and Projects:
We also analysed similar projects that should be known in order create links and information interchange with them.
In the last annex we evaluate cultural heritage web sites in European states (Belgium, France, Italy, Netherland United Kingdom) and in non EU Countries, such as Canada, Japan, Egypt, Russia, Usa.
The objective is to investigate the level of complexity and of interest of world sites, in order to know which is the real state of art.
We individuated interactive webs, which give the user a realistic perception of the work of art allowing him to walk around it and zoom on a detail. There are always games or questions that capture users' attention and make him participating. Other Web sites have excellent graphical effects and complex structure, which shows cultural heritage in exhaustive way, but the user can get the same information on a book or a museum catalogue.
There are other web sites not so complex and not very careful which only inform the user that the museum exists and where is and show some images of cultural heritage. In this class there are sites dedicated to small and local galleries without great works of art.
The main result of the WPK 1100 research is that MOSAIC doesn't have to produce new technological solutions or systems, but it should reuse existing applications and existing standards creating interfaces between them.
Recommendations are as follows: