Overview

EU Grant: ARCO—Augmented Representation of Cultural Heritage (Completed):
The Centre is a co-owner of the IP for the ARCO—Augmented Representation of Cultural Objects system which is used for building virtual museum exhibitions. This system was developed from the ARCO EU FP5 project, led by the Centre, and is now commercialised, but is still available as a system for research purposes. The system allows museum professionals (and others) to create, manage, and build virtual exhibitions of digital museum artefacts or objects and present them online in a virtual museum or exhibition, including the integration of augmented reality. The virtual museum can be composed of a set of simple web pages with embedded 3D content (3D museum artefacts) that can be dynamically updated from the ARCO database. The virtual museum could also be a virtual environment embedded on the web page allowing a user to navigate the environment while selecting and examining 3D objects. The system contains, amongst many other things, a content management system that includes: a cultural object manager (a cataloguing system), a presentation template manager (templates define the layout, on the web pages, of the virtual museum) and an exhibition manager that defines the organisation of the virtual museum’s exhibition spaces.

EU Grant: EPOCH—Excellence in Processing Cultural Heritage (Completed):
The Centre was a major contributor to the Virtex concept, within the EPOCH project, where we were responsible for the design, implementation and user testing of the Kromstaff multimodal interface. Virtex is a multi-sensory approach for exhibiting valuable museum artefacts that provide the user with a tactile feel of the physical artefact through a sensor enabled replica of the artefact that interfaces to a virtual world in which a virtual artefact is displayed I some form of heritage context. In this way, a museum visitor can explore through touch and virtual reality the meaning and context of the artefact. Our approach is 1) digitisation of the original artefact, 2) creation of a replica through a rapid prototype approach, 3) make the replica interactive through electronic sensor and orientation tracking technology, 4) creation of the virtual artefact, 5) creation of the artefacts virtual context or story, e.g. a virtual heritage world, 6) integration of the interactive application, i.e. integrating the replica to the virtual world, 7) deployment of the interactive in a museum.

TSB Grant: eMove—Personal Motion Sensing Systems (In progress):
The centre currently holds the only Technology Strategy Board (TSB) Creative Industries: Digital Technologies grant at Sussex in collaboration with Animazoo UK to bring to the market(s) a consumer level $400 basic version (6 sensor nodes) upper body motion capture (mocap) suit targeted at several markets, including games, advertising, retail, theme parks, education, museums, etc. The suit can also be upgraded to accept two more orientation tracking devices (advanced version), similar to the one in the EPOCH Virtex project, allowing full upper body mocap. Given this technology, the suit can be used as a low cost mocap based input device for controlling an avatar and actions within a virtual world, such as an MMOG (massively multiplayer online game). Given our mocap suit as an input mode to an MMOG, the MMOG could be used to implement a virtual heritage world, e.g. renaissance Florence, the Church of Santa Chiara or a Roman Villa (see below), where a museum visitor, either within a museum location or at home, could navigate the virtual heritage world, using the mocap suits joystick controls, and interact with the heritage in that virtual world in various ways using the mocap suit as an embodied interaction device. For example, the left arm and joy stick could be used navigate through the world, while the right arm and joystick could be used to point and select artefacts in that world for further exploration—a cultural encounter and exploration using consumer level mocap technology. A gesture level interface would allow various operations to be performed on virtual heritage artefacts.

AHRC Grant: Reanimating Cultural Heritage: digital repatriation, knowledge networks and civil society strengthening in post-conflict Sierra Leone (In progress):
The Centre, together with the Institute of Archaeology at the University College London is engaged on a joint project focused on reanimating cultural heritage through digital repatriation to investigate various anthropological questions. The Centre’s responsibility for this project is focused on providing the heritage science solutions to allow the creation, management and presentation of a digital resource containing three UK museums’ (British Museum, Glasgow Museums, Bright and Hove Museums and Art Gallery) Sierra Leone collections to be digital repatriated, while allowing input in digital form of further material from the Sierra Leone National Museum and others through a Social Networking solution. Our approach is to implement a service oriented architecture to connect social networking APIs (application programming interfaces) such as Facebook, YouTube, Flickr (acting as a community forum and digital resource) via a set of web services to a web 2.0 mashup interface that integrates museum based ARCO (see above) digital resources with the social networking repositories to create an integrated digital resource for use by the community. This research project is resourced with some 1500 digital artefacts from Sierra Leone cultural heritage.

University Consultancy: 3D Digital Reconstruction of the Santa Chiara Church, Florence, Italy and Museum Interactive: (In progress)
The Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A ) are developing a new gallery, Gallery 50b: The Renaissance City: Inside the Church as part of their Medieval and Renaissance Galleries theme. The Centre has been commissioned by the V&A to develop a 3D digital reconstruction of the Santa Chiara Church, Chapel and Altar along with three types of interactive experiences (museum kiosk, web and study centre) that deploy the 3D digital reconstruction. The reconstruction allows all three physical elements (Church, Chapel and Altar) to be brought together for the first time (albeit, in a virtual space) since the church was decommissioned at the turn of the last century. This work involves the creation of a 3D virtual tour of the Church, Chapel and Altar as it was in renaissance Florence. Currently, the actual church is located in Florence, Italy where it has been converted to domestic and commercial use, while the Chapel and Altar are located in Gallery 50 at the Victoria and Albert Museum. Thus, it is impossible for heritage tourists to physically explore the Church of Santa Chiara in Florence (due to its current use), and see the Chapel and Altar (located in Gallery 50) at the same time. A cultural encounter and exploration the Church, Chapel and Altar, both as they are now, and how they were used in medieval and renaissance times can only be done within a virtual world. Such 3D digital reconstructions allow cultural encounters and explorations with past heritage, thus heritage researchers and tourists’ gain a better understanding of how the natural world and human society are represented in art, artefacts, architecture, archaeology and landscapes.

University Consultancy: 3D Digital Reconstruction of the Combley Roman Villa, Isle of Wight and Immersive Virtual tour: (In progress)
In partnership with Immersive Displays Ltd, the Centre has been commissioned to develop a 3D Digital Reconstruction of the Combley Roman Villa, Isle of Wight for display as an immersive virtual tour using a two metre immersive dome display—see www.virtualexpoweb.com for more details. The 3D reconstruction allows exploration of the Roman villa in two modes: 1) photo-realistic 3D movie (where the villa and local landscape are rendered using mental ray) composed of a tour towards and along the front of the villa, a tour inside the bath house complete with particle effect (steam from the hot baths), and a tour around the outside of the villa; 2) it is also possible to present a more interactive X3D/VRML style tour using a suitable client browser online where the user can freely navigate the heritage site. Such 3D digital reconstructions allow cultural encounters and explorations with past heritage, thus heritage researchers and tourists’ gain a better understanding of how the natural world and human society are represented in art, artefacts, architecture, archaeology and landscapes.

Issues and Interests

 

Further reading

 

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