Search

The metaverse, powered by XR technologies, enables human augmentation by enhancing physical, cognitive, and sensory capabilities. Cultural heritage sees the metaverse as a vehicle for expression and exploration, providing new methods for heritage fruition and preservation. This article proposes a metaverse application, inspired by the events of the Italian Resistance, promoting interactions between multiple users in an immersive VR experience while safeguarding intangible cultural assets according to an edutainment approach. The virtual environment, based on Ivrea’s town hall square, provides in-depth information about the partisan’s life and the historical value of its actions for the city. Furthermore, the application allows users to meet in the same virtual place and engage with one another in real time through the Spatial SDK. Before the public presentation, a heterogeneous group of thirty users underwent usability and engagement tests to assess the experience on both VR headsets and smartphones. Tests revealed statistically significant evidence that there is a genuine difference in users’ perceptions of usability and engagement with different devices and types of interaction. This study highlights the effectiveness of adopting XR as a supporting technology to complement the real experience of cultural heritage valorization.

Numerous digital media repositories have been set up during recent decades, each containing plenty of data about historic cityscapes. In contrast, digital 3D reconstructions of no longer extant cityscapes have so far almost solely been performed for specific cases and via manual modelling techniques. Within the Jena4D research group, we are investigating and developing methods and technologies for transferring historical media and their contextual information into 4D models. The next step will be to automate this process and extend it to the world scale. Our team are working on different facets of that endeavor: retrieving images, text, and object data from public sources; crowdsourcing and collecting qualitative data from contests and pupil labs; processing historical plans and photographs to extract spatial data; location-based mobile visualization; and collection-browsing interfaces. This article is intended to highlight (1) current challenges, (2) the state of the art, (3) our approach to 4D modelling and visualization on the world scale, and (4) results from testing demo cases in Dresden, Jena, and Amsterdam.

Since the 2010s, various national and pan-European public infrastructures have been emerging around aggregation, viewing, and 3D heritage model collection. The purpose of this article is to focus on the current state and ecosystem for 3D models in Europe through (a) a review of published studies on users, objects, and demands (b) and an overview of the ecosystem for 3D heritage data. As part of the German distributed infrastructure, the DFG 3D Viewer Jena experimental repository serves as a testbed for technology prototyping and testing. Based on the findings of the European ecosystem, we used this repository to test a prototypic approach to (c) acquiring 3D data from multiple sources, (d) enriching data quality, and (e) enabling indexing, searching, and viewing functionalities.

The objective of this article is to generate and validate a workflow that allows us to print physical twins (models) from digital twins obtained from unique buildings of our architectural heritage. These physical twins will guarantee the preservation and diffusion of the cultural asset, and will promote new pedagogical ways to spread the heritage. In addition, these physical cufflinks are an interesting tool to guarantee universal accessibility through low-cost and rapid distribution typological models. We can overcome physical barriers and reach many more users, regardless of their economic, physical, or location conditions. To obtain this workflow, digital twins of architectural elements of high cultural value obtained by photogrammetry or terrestrial laser scanner will be used. The digital twin will be optimized through different platforms, and an optimized exchange file will be generated for its dissemination and printing. A digital platform will be proposed that guarantees the free distribution of these digital twins to any user. Finally, the physical twins will be obtained. For the development of this work, we have chosen to use 3D resin printers with SLA technology (selective laser exposure to light by laser) due to their performance and high quality in the models obtained.

Augmented reality is a mature technology that uses the real world as a substrate and extends it by overlaying computer-generated information. It has been applied to several domains. In particular, the technology was proven to be useful for the management and preservation of Cultural Heritage. This study provides an overview of the last decade of the use of augmented reality in cultural heritage through a detailed review of the scientific papers in the field. We analyzed the applications published on Scopus and Clarivate Web of Science databases over a period of 9 years (2012–2021). Bibliometric data consisted of 1201 documents, and their analysis was performed using various tools, including ScientoPy, VOS Viewer, and Microsoft Excel. The results revealed eight trending topics of applying augmented reality technology to cultural heritage: 3D reconstruction of cultural artifacts, digital heritage, virtual museums, user experience, education, tourism, intangible cultural heritage, and gamification. Each topic is discussed in detail in the article sections, providing insight into existing applications and research trends for each application field.

The objective of this article is to generate and validate a workflow that allows us to use virtual twins obtained from unique buildings of our architectural heritage. These twins will guarantee the preservation and dissemination of cultural assets and will promote universal accessibility through new technologies, such as databases, metaverses, virtual reality, augmented reality or gamification. This universal accessibility is based on new metaverses to offer experiences that allow us to overcome physical barriers and reach any user regardless of their economic or physical condition or their location. To obtain this workflow, we worked with digital twins obtained by photogrammetry. Different databases and metaverses were studied, understanding them as new systems for the representation and dissemination of architecture. These metaverses were critically assessed and screened, looking for the most suitable one to be integrated into an effective workflow that satisfies a series of imposed premises, such as being suitable for use in virtual reality and augmented reality environments. The ultimate goal is the aforementioned universal accessibility.

The article considers the social perception of artificial intelligence (AI) as an essential factor having an impact on the digitization, transfer, and popularization of cultural heritage. The article aims at the theoretical comprehension of the digital ontology and implementation of AI in the context of Russian realia. The research relies on comprehensive analysis based on statistical data, using descriptive and comparative methods. The interdisciplinary approach adopted includes reflexive analysis of both positive and negative consequences of the digitalization process. The article examines the peculiarities of the “digital ontology”, deterritorization effect, new actors in the digital process, the effect of digital trust, and opposite views of AI-enthusiasts and AI-alarmists. The article describes objective and subjective reasons for the negative perception of digital artifacts, and states the need to consider the influence of key figures in digital ontology: influencers, stakeholders, and data scientists. The ambivalence of public perception of both artificial intelligence and digital cultural heritage is stated. The research reveals digitization frontiers, which involve three factors: the axiological factor, indicating the need for consistency between a human values system and AI development programs; the subject vector, emphasizing the role of a new type of digital heritage bearers and digital influence actors; ethical factor associated with the need to transform relations with information technologies in order to subordinate them to human reflection and comprehension. The authors conclude that cultural heritage digitization should be aimed at generating a human-centered future.

Digital 3D modelling and visualization technologies have been widely applied to support research in the humanities since the 1980s. Since technological backgrounds, project opportunities, and methodological considerations for application are widely discussed in the literature, one of the next tasks is to validate these techniques within a wider scientific community and establish them in the culture of academic disciplines. This article resulted from a postdoctoral thesis and is intended to provide a comprehensive overview on the use of digital 3D technologies in the humanities with regards to (1) scenarios, user communities, and epistemic challenges; (2) technologies, UX design, and workflows; and (3) framework conditions as legislation, infrastructures, and teaching programs. Although the results are of relevance for 3D modelling in all humanities disciplines, the focus of our studies is on modelling of past architectural and cultural landscape objects via interpretative 3D reconstruction methods.

Bosnia and Herzegovina (BH) has a very picturesque past. Founded in 11th century, it has always been a crossroads of faiths and civilizations. Extended Reality (XR) technologies can finally take us to time travel into this history, enable us to experience past events and meet historical characters. In this paper, we overview the latest applications we developed that use Virtual Reality (VR) video, Virtual and Augmented Reality (AR) for interactive digital storytelling about BH history. “Nine dissidents” is the first BH VR documentary, tackling a still tricky subject of dissidents in the Socialist Yugoslavia, artists and writers falsely accused, persecuted and still forbidden. “Virtual Museum of Old Crafts” aims to present and preserve crafts intangible heritage through Virtual Reality. “Battle on Neretva VR” is recreating a famous WWII battle offering the users to experience it and meet comrade Tito, the commander of the Yugoslav Liberation Army. “Sarajevo 5D” shows the cultural monuments from Sarajevo that do not exist anymore in physical form using Augmented Reality. Through user experience studies, we measure the user immersion and edutainment of these applications and show the potential of XR for the presentation and preservation of cultural heritage.

PlugSonic is a suite of web- and mobile-based applications for the curation and experience of 3D interactive soundscapes and sonic narratives in the cultural heritage context. It was developed as part of the PLUGGY EU project (Pluggable Social Platform for Heritage Awareness and Participation) and consists of two main applications: PlugSonic Sample, to edit and apply audio effects, and PlugSonic Soundscape, to create and experience 3D soundscapes for headphones playback. The audio processing within PlugSonic is based on the Web Audio API and the 3D Tune-In Toolkit, while the mobile exploration of soundscapes in a physical space is obtained using Apple’s ARKit. The main goal of PlugSonic is technology democratisation; PlugSonic users—whether cultural institutions or citizens—are all given the instruments needed to create, process and experience 3D soundscapes and sonic narratives; without the need for specific devices, external tools (software and/or hardware), specialised knowledge or custom development. The aims of this paper are to present the design and development choices, the user involvement processes as well as a final evaluation conducted with inexperienced users on three tasks (creation, curation and experience), demonstrating how PlugSonic is indeed a simple, effective, yet powerful tool.

Although Augmented Reality (AR) technology has entered many market and knowledge domains such as games and leisure activities, it remains rather limited in digital heritage. After studying the potentiality of using modern AR elements in a museum context, this paper proposes the use of additional game and educational elements in the core AR application in order to enhance the overall on-the-spot museum visitor’s experience. An agile AR application design methodology was followed by taking into account the needs of small-to-medium sized real-world museums. Moreover, a heuristic evaluation protocol was applied by a group of experts in order to test the proof-of-concept AR application, in which some novel elements were proposed such as the AR quiz game. The main findings indicate that enhanced AR experiences in museum settings can make a nice fit with the user environment, physical and perceptual abilities, known metaphors, and user position and motion in 3D space. Moreover, AR services can be provided under a minimum distraction and physical effort. As a conclusion, AR technologies are mature enough to be standardized for museum usage, while the audience seems to be ready to take advantage of the related enhanced museum experiences to maximize both user satisfaction and learning outcomes.

Cultural heritage represents a reliable medium for history and knowledge transfer. Cultural heritage assets are often exhibited in museums and heritage sites all over the world. However, many assets are poorly labeled, which decreases their historical value. If an asset’s history is lost, its historical value is also lost. The classification and annotation of overlooked or incomplete cultural assets increase their historical value and allows the discovery of various types of historical links. In this paper, we tackle the challenge of automatically classifying and annotating cultural heritage assets using their visual features as well as the metadata available at hand. Traditional approaches mainly rely only on image data and machine-learning-based techniques to predict missing labels. Often, visual data are not the only information available at hand. In this paper, we present a novel multimodal classification approach for cultural heritage assets that relies on a multitask neural network where a convolutional neural network (CNN) is designed for visual feature learning and a regular neural network is used for textual feature learning. These networks are merged and trained using a shared loss. The combined networks rely on both image and textual features to achieve better asset classification. Initial tests related to painting assets showed that our approach performs better than traditional CNNs that only rely on images as input.