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Electro Bacchanalia
– a peep box and an interpretive tool for Old Masters’ paintings

By creating a flirtatious link to contemporary lifestyles, Electro Bacchanalia stimulates visitors’ interests in the motif of an Old Master’s painting within a unique museum installation.
Incorporating the aesthetics of the traditional peep show, Electro Bacchanalia transforms this vision into a modern experience. In place of the still images and objects used in historical peep boxes, the painting is brought to life through technology based on video composites and sensor input.

Authors: Geska Helena Andersson, Robert Brecevic, Halina Gottlieb, David Nilsson

Interactive Storytelling Exhibition
How to produce a virtual interactive story to engage visitors with the real world

By devising a virtual adventure story with accessible characters, the Brighton Fishing Museum presents an enticing example of how to engage young visitors using an interactive storytelling exhibition.
The visitors’ personalised journey takes them through every corner of the museum, encouraging them to explore key points in local history. The intuitive games within the interactive stortelling exhibition lead the visitors to hunt for information provided in the various museum exhibits, bringing to life the traditional displays in their environment.

Author: Michael Danks

Virtex
A multisensory approach for exhibiting valuable objects

At a time when museums are under increasing pressure to both show their valuable artifacts more widely, as well as safeguarding them, with the associated high costs, VIRTEX offers an ideal solution.
By creating digitally enhanced replicas of their precious art objects, museums can allow visitors to have a truly hands on experience, increasing access to the objects and adding virtual information feeds to the user experience. VIRTEX allows museums to transform their arteacts into accessible, distributable and reproduceable exhibits.

Author: Daniel Pletinckx

The ARC 3D Webservice
How to turn images of an object or scene into 3D models for exhibitions and archives

The cultural heritage community has always had a keen interest in the creation of 3D models of objects, monuments, scenes, etc. Such models not only help in creating a more vivid picture of the past in the mind of the general public, but they are also of great value for training and research within the field.

The ARC 3D Webservice enables its users to transform images of scenes or objects into 3D models that enhance the experience of both current and archived collections.

Authors: David Nilsson, Daniel Pletinckx, Luc Van Gool, Maarten Vergauwen

Touch of Kandinsky
How to make a carpet into an interactive or storytelling tool

Touch of Kandinsky, an interactive tool in the form of a carpet with the motif of a painting, can be a playful complement to art galleries, which often challenge visitors’ perceptions.

By encouraging visitors to interact with the motif on the carpet, the museum can enrich the experience of abstract art for both grown-ups and children alike. The carpet can be an important addition to the arranged curator-led activities in the gallery, offering an area for self-directed exploration. Attracting the visitor’s attention to the other paintings, the carpet can stimulate communication between visitors, sharing the experience of their simultaneous exploration. 

Authors: Halina Gottlieb, David Nilsson

How can ICT support cultural heritage?
Basic Guidelines for Cultural Heritage Professionals in the Use of Information Technologies

The watchwords for the future of heritage are place, network, memory, identity and communication. ICT can provide the context and tools for these new approaches to heritage not merely by recording, data processing and visualisation, but by helping to shape the meaning and direction of the entire enterprise.

Working closely together to address the basic themes highlighted in this booklet, and illustrated by the projects described in the other booklets of the KNOWHOW series, digital technologists and cultural heritage professionals can effectively integrate research questions, heritage objectives, and emerging technologies to create more inclusive, sustainable and meaningful methods of preserving and refl ecting on the past.

Authors: Tamara Brizard, Willem Derde, Neil Silberman

Interactive Landscapes
How to read and understand historical landscapes

The human influence in our European landscapes is quite significant. Interactive and explorative applications help us read the landscape and understand the historical processes that shaped our current landscapes.

From the historical data on a landscape, we can make visualisations for several time periods. New software developments allow us to match these visualisations with the landscape of today. In addition to presenting an innovative user interface, this KNOWHOW booklet describes the methodology and techniques required to make an interactive visualisation of the current landscape in a cost-effi cient way, and to relate this landscape to reconstructed landscapes of the past.

Authors: Daniel Pletinckx, Visual Dimension bvba

Interpretation Management
How to make sustainable visualisations of the past

Current technology allows us to easily create three-dimensional models of landscapes and manmade structures and to visualise these models in several interactive and non-interactive ways. However, our knowledge of the past is partial and uncertain. In fact, we are not able to reconstruct the past at all, but we can try to puzzle together all of the information we have about a certain structure in a certain time period, and try to visualise this information in the best possible way.

This KNOWHOW booklet explains the methodology for doing this in a correct and reproducable way. We explain and illustrate methods such as source assessment, source correlation and hypothesis trees, which help to structure and document the transformation process from source material to 3D visualisation. We also discuss the different approaches of 3D visualisation in research and in public presentations, and present a tool to manage the interpretation process.

Authors: Daniel Pletinckx, Visual Dimension bvba

Presenting The Hidden Past
Highlights and impressions from the lowlands

The region Kop van Noord-Holland in the Netherlands shows a remarkable variety of landscapes. The area consists of a combination of various natural structures, such as dunes and Pleistocene deposits, and man-made landscapes, such as polders. Part of the area contains vast quantities of important prehistoric remains, both cultural and natural. The cultural remains are not visible or recognisable in the landscape, and the natural remains are visible on site, but need support to be understood and appreciated.

This KNOWHOW booklet deals with practical ICT solutions for supporting heritage in the tourism domain and helping to create new tourism destinations in the Kop van Noord-Holland region. The suggested developments are based on the Tourism Marketing Framework of the region and can be used as inspiration for other regions hoping to build on their tourism offerings.

Authors: Jan Stobbe, Grand Tour Tourism & Heritage, Daniel Pletinckx, Visual Dimension bvba

Monitoring Monuments
A low-cost digital early warning system for preventive conservation of built heritage

Without preventive maintenance, small problems at monuments and buildings can quickly grow into critical issues. Monitoring is crucial for preventive conservation, but often overlooked for lack of a simple, straightforward process.

Using low-cost digital tools, and building upon more than fi fteen years of experience of Monument Watch of Flanders, this KNOWHOW booklet outlines a practical, easily-replicable process for keeping an eye on buildings and monuments. This approach makes use of simple computer fi eld collection forms, digital photography, and databases to appropriately and systematically monitor and maintain heritage places. Both the well-tested monitoring process and the operational structure of this innovative Belgian not-for-profit are explained in order to help others learn from their success.

Authors: Mario Santana Quintero, Anouk Stulens, Alonzo C. Addison, Daniel Pletinckx, Visual Dimension bvba