Between the Real and the Virtual: 3D visualization in the Cultural Heritage domain - expectations and prospects

[EN] The paper discusses two uses of 3D Visualization and Virtual Reality (hereafter VR) of Cultural Heritage (CH) assets: a less used one, in the archaeological / historical research and a more frequent one, as a communication medium in CH museums. While technological effort has been mainly invested in improving the “accuracy” of VR (determined as how truthfully it reproduces the “CH reality”), issues related to scientific requirements, (data transparency, separation between “real” and “virtual”, etc.), are largely neglected, or at least not directly related to the 3D outcome, which may explain why, after more than twenty years of producing VR models, they are still rarely used in the archaeological research. The paper will present a proposal for developing VR tools as such as to be meaningful CH research tools as well as a methodology for designing VR outcomes to be used as a communication medium in CH museums.The authors would like to express their gratitude to their collaborators over the years, in particular at the VAST-Lab, University of Florence and at Penn State University, during work meetings of various EU funded projects, such as EPOCH, No.E. and Chiron, as well as fruitful discussions at the Cyprus Institute.Hermon, S.; Kalisperis, L. (2011). Between the Real and the Virtual: 3D visualization in the Cultural Heritage domain - expectations and prospects. Virtual Archaeology Review. 2(4):59-63. https://doi.org/10.4995/var.2011.4556OJS596324AUKSTAKALNIS S., BLATNER D (1992): Silicon Mirage: The Art and Science of Virtual Reality, Peach Pit Press.BENJAMIN W (1969): The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, Illuminations, Schocken Books. New York.BARCELÓ, J.A., FORTE, M. 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An Approach to a Theory of Symbols, Hackett Publishing Company Inc., Indianapolis/Cambridge.HERMON, S (2008): Reasoning in 3D: a Critical Appraisal of the Role of 3D Modelling and Virtual Reconstructions in Archaeology, in B. Frischer and A. Dakouri-Hild (eds.), Beyond Illustration: 2D and 3D Technologies as Tools for Discovery in Archaeology, B.A.R. International Series 1805, Archaeopress. Oxford. pp. 36-45.HERMON, S., NIKODEM, J (2007) 3D Modelling as Scientific Research Tool in Archaeology, CAA Conference Proceedings, Berlin, 2007 (CD-Rom).HERMON, S., NICCOLUCCI, F., D'ANDREA, A (2005): Some evaluations on the potential impact of virtual reality on the archaeological scientific research, in Proc. VSMM 2005, Ghent, Belgium, pp. 105-14.LAUREL, B (1992): Computers as Theatre, Addison- Wesley. Reading, MA.LYOTARD J.F (1984): The Postmodern Condition (1979) publ. Manchester University Press.McLuhan, M (1964): Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man. Penguin. 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Populating the Digital Space for Cultural Heritage with Heritage Digital Twins

The present paper concerns the design of the semantic infrastructure of the digital space for cultural heritage as envisaged by the European Commission in its recent documents. Due to the complexity of the cultural heritage data and of their intrinsic interrelationships, it is necessary to introduce a novel ontology, yet compliant with existing standards and interoperable with previous platforms used in this context, such as Europeana. The digital space organization must be tailored to the methods and the theory of cultural heritage, briefly summarized in the introduction. The new ontology is based on the Digital Twin concept, i.e. the digital counterpart of cultural heritage assets incorporating all the digital information pertaining to them. This creates a Knowledge Base on the cultural heritage digital space. The paper outlines the main features of the proposed Heritage Digital Twin ontology and provides some examples of application. Future work will include completing the ontology in all its details and testing it in other real cases and with the various sectors of the cultural heritage community.Comment: Submitted to Data - An Open Access Journal from MDPI. 29 pages, 9 figure

The Heritage Digital Twin: a bicycle made for two. The integration of digital methodologies into cultural heritage research

The paper concerns the definition of a novel ontology for cultural heritage based on the concept of digital twin. The ontology, called Heritage Digital Twin ontology, is a compatible extension of the well-known CIDOC CRM ISO standard for cultural heritage documentation and incorporates all the different documentation systems presently in use for cultural heritage documentation. In the authors' view, it supports documentation interoperability at a higher level than the ones currently in use and enables effective cooperation among different users.Comment: Submitted to Open Research Europe. 30 pages, 9 figure

Digital Authenticity and the London Charter

This book was funded by the EU 7th Framework Programme (7FP), DIGIFACT 625637 Project (http://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/187953_ en.html) and ADS3DV 625636 Project (http://cordis.europa.eu/project/ rcn/187952_en.html). The book will be Open Access, thanks to FP7 post-grant Open Access (https://www.openaire.eu/postgrantoapilot)

Digging in excavation diaries: digital re-assessment of stratigraphy in 3D GIS. The sanctuary of Ayia Irini, Cyprus

During the last years, numerous research projects focussed on re-examination of past excavations, giving birth to re-evaluation of their documentation and material or to new discoveries. The aim of this paper is to present an ongoing research on the digital re-assessment of the Ayia Irini sanctuary’s stratigraphy using 3D GIS, by corroborating published material with data extracted from the original excavation diaries. The project wants to digitally reconstruct the site in order to question the positioning of finds and their setting within the sanctuary, the existence of natural versus human-made features and the possible impact of flooding episodes as proposed by the archaeologists who excavated the site

Digging in excavation diaries: digital re-assessment of stratigraphy in 3D GIS. The sanctuary of Ayia Irini, Cyprus

During the last years, numerous research projects focussed on re-examination of past excavations, giving birth to re-evaluation of their documentation and material or to new discoveries. The aim of this paper is to present an ongoing research on the digital re-assessment of the Ayia Irini sanctuary’s stratigraphy using 3D GIS, by corroborating published material with data extracted from the original excavation diaries. The project wants to digitally reconstruct the site in order to question the positioning of finds and their setting within the sanctuary, the existence of natural versus human-made features and the possible impact of flooding episodes as proposed by the archaeologists who excavated the site