One of the main goals of the project is to make more understandable and accessible the vast digital information that is already available about European silk heritage, while keeping a special focus on small to medium size institutions. In order to meet this challenge, the following resources have been implemented so far (until April 2019):
- A first version of an image classification system, which predicts information like where and when was created, the technique used in its production, etc.
- An ontology for the project data, built on the Erlangen implementation of CIDOC-CRM.
- A thesaurus focused on specialized silk heritage terminology, in four languages (Spanish, Italian, English, French). Based on the general structure of the Getty AAT, it includes more than 500 terms, and will continue to be expanded.
- Tools for automatic semantic extraction and annotation of textual descriptions.
More than 80,000 images and textual information about European silk cultural heritage, gathered from nine online collections and also from project partners. Those data are now being used for training and testing the project tools.
The Virtual Loom is a software tool, now under development, that will be able to identify weaving techniques of some ancient textiles, based on photographic images. It will generate digital models of their weaving structure, thus allowing to generate 3D graphical representations, or tangible (3D-printed) copies. In this first period, methodologies to extract information from images have already allowed to implement in the VL one figured weaving (damask) and three basic (plain weave, twill and satin) techniques. The key variables and text information that must be provided to the tool have also been identified, so that visual data will be soon complemented with semantic data. During the Lyon meeting in September 2018, project members organized a session with textile creative industries discussing their possible uses and expectations for the Virtual Loom. Ongoing work is also focused on the adaptation of 3D printers for tangible reproductions of the weaves, as modeled by the VL, that could be used for education, research and the fashion industry.
A repository and search engine are being designed, with different user groups in mind: researchers, educators, students, visitors, designers, journalists... The following tasks have been carried out, in this regard:
- Technical design of the search engine website.
- Design and development of the user database with MongoDB.
- Review of map tile servers in order to embed maps in the spatio-temporal data viewer.
- Development of plugin prototypes of the Virtual Loom and data viewer.
- Review of the state of the art in ontology visualization.
Knowledge transference has been accomplished through almost 40 dissemination and communication activities, such as conferences, fairs, workshops, media outlets, etc.
