Editorial: Computers & Graphics journal special section on cultural heritage

Editorial special sectionAn increasing number of Cultural Heritage professionals are using Computer Graphics technology to unlock and document the secrets of humanity's legacy. Earlier this year, a recent special issue of this journal published some of the important results from the intersection of these two fields [1]. The level of interest and the quality of submissions was such that an additional special section is necessary to showcase three further exciting results. Andujar et al. [2] discuss the design of the user interface for the virtual inspection of the entrance of the Ripoll Monastery in Spain. The authors analyze the requirements from museum curators and discuss the main interface design decisions. Results of a user study comparing the proposed user interface with alternative approaches are provided together with a discussion of its benefits to the Cultural Heritage Community. Adán et al. [3] propose a semi-automatic approach for the reconstruction of archeological pieces through the integration of a set of only a few segments of the original piece. This highly complex problem is tackled by considering hybrid human/computer strategies. Hypotheses, models and integration solutions originating from both humans and computers are continuously updated until an agreement is reached. This restoration approach has been tested on a set of ancient fractured pieces belonging to the remains of Roman sculptures at the well known Mérida site. Finally, Ritz et al. [4] present a novel 3D geometry acquisition technique at high resolution based on structured light reconstruction with a low-cost projector-camera system. The proposed setup allows reconstruction of the finest details of small cultural heritage objects and enables accurate height field measurements which can be used as input to physically based renderers. The cooperation between the diverse fields of cultural heritage and computer graphics is maturing. Researchers and practitioners in both fields now regularly work closely together. Many more high quality publications are expected as the synergies between the two disciplines are realized in future collaborations

Uses of uncalibrated images to enrich 3D models information

The decrease in costs of semi-professional digital cameras has led to the possibility for everyone to acquire a very detailed description of a scene in a very short time. Unfortunately, the interpretation of the images is usually quite hard, due to the amount of data and the lack of robust and generic image analysis methods. Nevertheless, if a geometric description of the depicted scene is available, it gets much easier to extract information from 2D data. This information can be used to enrich the quality of the 3D data in several ways. In this thesis, several uses of sets of unregistered images for the enrichment of 3D models are shown. In particular, two possible fields of application are presented: the color acquisition, projection and visualization and the geometry modification. Regarding color management, several practical and cheap solutions to overcome the main issues in this field are presented. Moreover, some real applications, mainly related to Cultural Heritage, show that provided methods are robust and effective. In the context of geometry modification, two approaches are presented to modify already existing 3D models. In the first one, information extracted from images is used to deform a dummy model to obtain accurate 3D head models, used for simulation in the context of three-dimensional audio rendering. The second approach presents a method to fill holes in 3D models, with the use of registered images depicting a pattern projected on the real object. Finally, some useful indications about the possible future work in all the presented fields are given, in order to delineate the developments of this promising direction of research

Scalable exploration of highly detailed and annotated 3D models

With the widespread availability of mobile graphics terminals andWebGL-enabled browsers, 3D graphics over the Internet is thriving. Thanks to recent advances in 3D acquisition and modeling systems, high-quality 3D models are becoming increasingly common, and are now potentially available for ubiquitous exploration. In current 3D repositories, such as Blend Swap, 3D Café or Archive3D, 3D models available for download are mostly presented through a few user-selected static images. Online exploration is limited to simple orbiting and/or low-fidelity explorations of simplified models, since photorealistic rendering quality of complex synthetic environments is still hardly achievable within the real-time constraints of interactive applications, especially on on low-powered mobile devices or script-based Internet browsers. Moreover, navigating inside 3D environments, especially on the now pervasive touch devices, is a non-trivial task, and usability is consistently improved by employing assisted navigation controls. In addition, 3D annotations are often used in order to integrate and enhance the visual information by providing spatially coherent contextual information, typically at the expense of introducing visual cluttering. In this thesis, we focus on efficient representations for interactive exploration and understanding of highly detailed 3D meshes on common 3D platforms. For this purpose, we present several approaches exploiting constraints on the data representation for improving the streaming and rendering performance, and camera movement constraints in order to provide scalable navigation methods for interactive exploration of complex 3D environments. Furthermore, we study visualization and interaction techniques to improve the exploration and understanding of complex 3D models by exploiting guided motion control techniques to aid the user in discovering contextual information while avoiding cluttering the visualization. We demonstrate the effectiveness and scalability of our approaches both in large screen museum installations and in mobile devices, by performing interactive exploration of models ranging from 9Mtriangles to 940Mtriangles

Archaeology

The contents of this book show the implementation of new methodologies applied to archaeological sites. Chapters have been grouped in four sections: New Approaches About Archaeological Theory and Methodology; The Use of Geophysics on Archaeological Fieldwork; New Applied Techniques - Improving Material Culture and Experimentation; and Sharing Knowledge - Some Proposals Concerning Heritage and Education. Many different research projects, many different scientists and authors from different countries, many different historical times and periods, but only one objective: working together to increase our knowledge of ancient populations through archaeological work. The proposal of this book is to diffuse new methods and techniques developed by scientists to be used in archaeological works. That is the reason why we have thought that a publication on line is the best way of using new technology for sharing knowledge everywhere. Discovering, sharing knowledge, asking questions about our remote past and origins, are in the basis of humanity, and also are in the basis of archaeology as a science

Architecture, Technocracy, and Silence: Building Discourse in Franquista Spain

This dissertation explores the modernization of architecture in Spain in relation to the ideological, cultural, and institutional evolutions of Francisco Franco’s regime (1939-1975). It traces the ways in which buildings, images, and ideas about the built environment participated in the distinct form of technocracy—a Catholic technocracy—that conformed the Franquista State at mid-passage. In so doing, it provides an interpretation of the historical development of Franquismo as seen through the lens of architecture as much as of the politics of the architecture of the period. Throughout its thirty-six year span, the authoritarian state led by General Franco transitioned from the fascist military autarky that came out of the Civil War (1936-1939) to a technocracy that retained the ultra-conservative values that were essential to its inception. Members of the organization Opus Dei, the lay Catholic movement founded in Spain in the late 1920s, came in the 1950s to control the cultural and governing apparatus of the regime. As non-party technocrats, they were called upon to rationalize the government, advance sciences and technology, liberalize the economy, and bring forth the country’s geopolitical realignment with the democratic West. The ambiguous combination of conservative Catholicism and modernization they promoted best suited the regime, as it sustained the reactionary apparatuses of the dictatorship while allowing for partial reforms. Through a series of close analyses of four buildings now canonical of the period—the Camino Chapel designed in 1954, the Tarragona Government Building of 1956, the national pavilion of Expo 58, and the Pallars housing block for workers built in 1959—this dissertation makes buildings speak of the shifting politics of Franquismo and its governing techniques, of the dislocations of Catholicism that were essential to these changes, and of the distinct architectural culture that emerged within these processes. This history thus reveals the structural role certain buildings played in the advent of Spain’s Catholic technocracy, arguing that the intersection of aesthetics and politics assumed the paradoxical discursive form of silence

The Liturgy in the Middle Ages

This collective volume examines the concept, theory, practice, and representations of the liturgy in the Middle Ages, including its sacramental developments, its religious and political implications, its forms of ritualization, and its doctrinal presumptions. It aims to create a space for interdisciplinary dialogue between history, theology, canon law, art history, political philosophy, and symbolic anthropology. It privileges the examination of the transferences between the spiritual and the temporal, the sacred and the profane, the political and the religious

Enhancing our lives with immersive virtual reality

Virtual reality (VR) started about 50 years ago in a form we would recognize today [stereo head-mounted display (HMD), head tracking, computer graphics generated images] – although the hardware was completely different. In the 1980s and 1990s, VR emerged again based on a different generation of hardware (e.g., CRT displays rather than vector refresh, electromagnetic tracking instead of mechanical). This reached the attention of the public, and VR was hailed by many engineers, scientists, celebrities, and business people as the beginning of a new era, when VR would soon change the world for the better. Then, VR disappeared from public view and was rumored to be “dead.” In the intervening 25 years a huge amount of research has nevertheless been carried out across a vast range of applications – from medicine to business, from psychotherapy to industry, from sports to travel. Scientists, engineers, and people working in industry carried on with their research and applications using and exploring different forms of VR, not knowing that actually the topic had already passed away. The purpose of this article is to survey a range of VR applications where there is some evidence for, or at least debate about, its utility, mainly based on publications in peer-reviewed journals. Of course not every type of application has been covered, nor every scientific paper (about 186,000 papers in Google Scholar): in particular, in this review we have not covered applications in psychological or medical rehabilitation. The objective is that the reader becomes aware of what has been accomplished in VR, where the evidence is weaker or stronger, and what can be done. We start in Section 1 with an outline of what VR is and the major conceptual framework used to understand what happens when people experience it – the concept of “presence.” In Section 2, we review some areas where VR has been used in science – mostly psychology and neuroscience, the area of scientific visualization, and some remarks about its use in education and surgical training. In Section 3, we discuss how VR has been used in sports and exercise. In Section 4, we survey applications in social psychology and related areas – how VR has been used to throw light on some social phenomena, and how it can be used to tackle experimentally areas that cannot be studied experimentally in real life. We conclude with how it has been used in the preservation of and access to cultural heritage. In Section 5, we present the domain of moral behavior, including an example of how it might be used to train professionals such as medical doctors when confronting serious dilemmas with patients. In Section 6, we consider how VR has been and might be used in various aspects of travel, collaboration, and industry. In Section 7, we consider mainly the use of VR in news presentation and also discuss different types of VR. In the concluding Section 8, we briefly consider new ideas that have recently emerged – an impossible task since during the short time we have written this page even newer ideas have emerged! And, we conclude with some general considerations and speculations. Throughout and wherever possible we have stressed novel applications and approaches and how the real power of VR is not necessarily to produce a faithful reproduction of “reality” but rather that it offers the possibility to step outside of the normal bounds of reality and realize goals in a totally new and unexpected way. We hope that our article will provoke readers to think as paradigm changers, and advance VR to realize different worlds that might have a positive impact on the lives of millions of people worldwide, and maybe even help a little in saving the planet

8th. International congress on archaeology computer graphica. Cultural heritage and innovation

El lema del Congreso es: 'Documentación 3D avanzada, modelado y reconstrucción de objetos patrimoniales, monumentos y sitios.Invitamos a investigadores, profesores, arqueólogos, arquitectos, ingenieros, historiadores de arte... que se ocupan del patrimonio cultural desde la arqueología, la informática gráfica y la geomática, a compartir conocimientos y experiencias en el campo de la Arqueología Virtual. La participación de investigadores y empresas de prestigio será muy apreciada. Se ha preparado un atractivo e interesante programa para participantes y visitantes.Lerma García, JL. (2016). 8th. International congress on archaeology computer graphica. Cultural heritage and innovation. Editorial Universitat Politècnica de València. http://hdl.handle.net/10251/73708EDITORIA