SPOKE 4

Virtual technologies for museums and art Collections

The spoke will focus on the impact that digital cultural heritage (DCH) has, comparing it with the current view on (in)tangible heritage. DCH objects are defined through the network of interlinked relations they have with the cultural heritage environment and their provenance context, while (in)tangible objects are the result of selective processes defined and used by cultural heritage institutions during time. The spoke will experiment with different templates of museums and art collections, identified analyzing ISTAT data, for designing pilot studies and best practices that can be further adapted and reused in institutions and contexts sharing similar characteristics. The Spoke will consider a plethora of virtual technologies: decentralized and interlinked knowledge graphs of DCH and (in)tangible objects (including provenance information and citizens’ interpretations and reflections), Web-based environments for sharing cultural heritage and involving users in museums and art collections in situ or remotely, new design approaches to virtual technologies for cultural heritage including eXtended Reality, gamification, serious games, edutainment, 2D/3D models and multimedia, tools for digitization and simulation for enabling digital approaches to cultural heritage, Internet of Things and sensors networks, AI-based methods and tools for cultural heritage, location-based technologies connected to GIS for cultural heritage (e.g. sites), lighting technology for exhibitions. 

Planned activities are:

• Creation of a data model defining basic metadata describing DCH and (in)tangible objects handled in the pilot studies 

• Identification of the relationship between the DCH and the (in)tangible cultural heritage 

• Definition of technology-aided approaches to foster citizen participation, reflection, accessibility, and social cohesion 

• Definition of guidelines for implementing new narratives in museums and arts collections supported and enabled by virtual technologies 

• Development of prototypes to address specific challenges for enabling users’ interaction (either in situ or remotely) with digital and (in)tangible objects in museums and art collections 

• Definition of a workflow to produce FAIR-compliant data of DCH and (in)tangible objects 

• Creation of a database compliant with the data model in Ry.1 to store information about cultural heritage objects handled in the pilot studies and their users, to enable further analysis on them 

• Definition of guidelines for adopting energy efficient solutions and cost-benefit analysis to help extending current narratives in museums and art collections supported by evidence gathered from the pilot studies

• Development of exploitation strategies for maximizing reusability and enabling to scale up narratives and prototypes at the national level 

• Creation of a workflow to improve the cultural value of cultural heritage objects through approaches for digital dissemination (e.g. focused on the society, high school programs and museum networks) and how they affect the potential audiences.