Periodic Reporting for period 3 - MNEMOSYNE (EU ERA Chair in Digital Cultural Heritage: Mnemosyne)
Reporting period: 2022-01-01 to 2023-12-31
Cultural Heritage is a finite resource which must be protected if the legacy of past generations is to be handed on to the future. In the age of the great Digital Transformation can new technologies, methods and approaches be used to help protect and preserve this precious resource? Further how can the digitisiation of Cultural Heritage be approached in a way that makes it accessible and meaningful to the public, and available for sustainable and ethical exploitation to benefit society, research and the economy?
The ERA Chair on Digital Cultural Heritage’s project MNEMOSYNE set itself the ambitious objective of exploring these questions over the four years of the project developing a set of best practice principles, recommendations on standards, digitization pipelines and a holistic approach to recording both the physical properties of heritage sites, monuments and artefacts and those less tangible properties, the hidden stories, of objects that make up its unique memory and importance as a unique entity.
The project has developed a wide multi-/interdisciplinary network of expertise from key stakeholder in both the Cultural Heritage and Digital Documentation domain to develop a user approach to the digitalization of Cultural Heritage, the motivations for undertaking digitization, the processes required to document heritage objects, the use and deployment of enriched 3D data sets, the potential for their reuse in diverse sectors and the long-term preservation of digital data.
The pipelines and approaches developed have been tested against seventeen unique case studies covering a wide spectrum of use cases from individual museum artefacts (movable tangible objects), to archaeological sites & monuments (immovable objects) and across different use case scenarios from monitoring and risk management arising from natural and human threats to valorization of heritage as part of sustainable cultural tourism, cultural diplomacy and creative industry.
The ERA Chair on Digital Cultural Heritage’s project MNEMOSYNE set itself the ambitious objective of exploring these questions over the four years of the project developing a set of best practice principles, recommendations on standards, digitization pipelines and a holistic approach to recording both the physical properties of heritage sites, monuments and artefacts and those less tangible properties, the hidden stories, of objects that make up its unique memory and importance as a unique entity.
The project has developed a wide multi-/interdisciplinary network of expertise from key stakeholder in both the Cultural Heritage and Digital Documentation domain to develop a user approach to the digitalization of Cultural Heritage, the motivations for undertaking digitization, the processes required to document heritage objects, the use and deployment of enriched 3D data sets, the potential for their reuse in diverse sectors and the long-term preservation of digital data.
The pipelines and approaches developed have been tested against seventeen unique case studies covering a wide spectrum of use cases from individual museum artefacts (movable tangible objects), to archaeological sites & monuments (immovable objects) and across different use case scenarios from monitoring and risk management arising from natural and human threats to valorization of heritage as part of sustainable cultural tourism, cultural diplomacy and creative industry.
The research of the project has identified six areas of investigation to create a holistic approach to the digital documentation of cultural heritage:
1 How data is acquired and the quantification of the complexity and quantity of the digitization effort,
2 How data is processed to provide enriched metadata, paradata and the objects memory, as well as to increase Data Quality based on the Complexity in Data Acquisition,
3 How data is modelled with specific interest in Building Information Systems for Heritage (HBIM and its extension to Holistic HBIM - HHBIM),
4 How knowledge is used, managed and interpreted,
5 How digital data can be prepared for reuse and reinterpreted across different social, economic and intellectual sectors to maximize its impact and return on investment,
6 How digital assets can be preserved for long-term accessibility and exploitation.
To achieve this, the project has formed key strategic partnerships with the diverse stakeholders required in this multilayered domain. This has been undertaken not only to understand what each sector requires for digital cultural heritage, but also to identify areas of strength within the sector can be built upon and gaps which require bridging to enable the potential of digital cultural heritage to be realized.
The project has therefore been involved in developing policies in digital cultural heritage standards, approaches, best practice and deployment at a national and European level (see for example the results of the EU VIGIE2020/654 Study on quality in 3D digitisation of tangible cultural heritage). The project has been privileged to work with stakeholders at all levels from communities, young citizens, non-governmental agencies and policy makers at a local national, regional, European and International level to train, advise and make recommendations in digital cultural heritage documentation.
1 How data is acquired and the quantification of the complexity and quantity of the digitization effort,
2 How data is processed to provide enriched metadata, paradata and the objects memory, as well as to increase Data Quality based on the Complexity in Data Acquisition,
3 How data is modelled with specific interest in Building Information Systems for Heritage (HBIM and its extension to Holistic HBIM - HHBIM),
4 How knowledge is used, managed and interpreted,
5 How digital data can be prepared for reuse and reinterpreted across different social, economic and intellectual sectors to maximize its impact and return on investment,
6 How digital assets can be preserved for long-term accessibility and exploitation.
To achieve this, the project has formed key strategic partnerships with the diverse stakeholders required in this multilayered domain. This has been undertaken not only to understand what each sector requires for digital cultural heritage, but also to identify areas of strength within the sector can be built upon and gaps which require bridging to enable the potential of digital cultural heritage to be realized.
The project has therefore been involved in developing policies in digital cultural heritage standards, approaches, best practice and deployment at a national and European level (see for example the results of the EU VIGIE2020/654 Study on quality in 3D digitisation of tangible cultural heritage). The project has been privileged to work with stakeholders at all levels from communities, young citizens, non-governmental agencies and policy makers at a local national, regional, European and International level to train, advise and make recommendations in digital cultural heritage documentation.
The MNEMOSYNE project has built upon and synthesized concepts like the Digital-Twin (3D reconstructed object) to create a new paradigm based on user centric approach to developing cultural heritage assets rather than individual models with limited or specific use by combining the technical demands of rigorous digitization with the humanities and community sourced materials. These assets, or #MemoryTwins, serve as a multifunctional repository that can be added too, extended and reused depending on the individual user requirements providing both specific data and insights across domains providing possibilities for cross fertilization research and understanding of what cultural heritage means in the twenty-first century and beyond.