Use of Multimedia for Protecting Europe's Cultural Heritage

MUSA - 7523

Keywords multimedia publishing, technology transfer, museums, visual arts, image-processing systems, CD-I/CD-ROM tools, Germany, Italy

Start Date: 1-NOV-92 / Duration: 24 months

[ contact / participants ]

Objectives

The overall goal of the MUSA action is to use the results developed in ESPRIT in the area of digital imaging and multimedia technology to:

• provide the multimedia publishing industry with direct access to high-quality images and data about visual arts from museums, including the visualisation of 3D-models of reconstructed objects.
• give museums new means (including new sources of revenue) for the conservation and dissemination of works of art.

As the museum has two main objectives, conservation and dissemination, two types of data-capture devices will be installed in the museum environment. A VASARI (project 2649) scanner will be used for colour measurement and damage assessment, while input devices such as RGB cameras and slide scanners will enable the museum to build an image database. The objects of this database will be suitable for transfer to the multimedia publisher environment to be used as input for the authoring phase. The idea is that the museum can give the publisher an electronic catalogue containing images and texts, with the text is formatted into records describing the paintings or other artworks. The project will investigate the possible connection between the two scanning systems. It can be expected that the colour measurement sessions will produce results usable for enhancing the RGB images (ie colour correction).

In the multimedia publisher environment there are two main phases: authoring and production. In the authoring phase, the project will supply the publisher's designers with a tool aimed at enriching the image catalogue coming from the museum with any related information, such as text from books and reports, other images (stills or video), and audio. The tool will be able to create every possible (hyper) link between these objects. The authoring system will produce a hyperbase to be used as input for the production phase; this hyperbase will be product-independent. In the production phase, the designers will use other authoring software tools specific for other kinds of delivery system. The delivery system could be a disc or a network, but the type and quality of the products will be different in each case. CD-ROMs are felt to be suitable for information retrieval products (such as multimedia catalogues), and CD-I for education and entertainment applications.

Progress and Results

Work so far has included the following main activities:

• MUSA system architecture design: VASARI integration analysis, cataloguing mechanisms, software platform, hardware platform, multimedia technical survey.
• advanced techniques analysis: digital acquisition techniques, data compression techniques.
• application domain analysis and market analysis.

Exploitation

There are three main market segments addressed with MUSA:

• multimedia art titles on CD
• multimedia tools and systems for title production
• museum laboratory systems and services.

CONTACT POINT

Italy:
Ing Bruno Brunelli
SIDAC SpA
SS. 148 Pontina Km. 29.100
I - 00040 Pomezia (Roma)
tel: + 39 / 6-9119-8223
fax: + 39 / 6-9119-8500

Germany:
Prof. G. Stanke
GFaI
Rudower Chaussée 5
D - 12484 BERLIN
tel: + 49 / 30 63921610
fax: + 49 / 30 63921602

Participants

SIDAC SPA - I - C
SYSTEMS & MANAGEMENT - I - P
UNIVERSITA DI FIRENZE - I - P
MARSILIO EDITORI - I - P
GFAI - D - P
IIEF - D - A
COMPART - D - A
RHEINMETAL - D - A
PERGAMON MUSEUM - D - A

MUSA - 7523, December 1993

please address enquiries to the ESPRIT Information Desk

html version of synopsis by Nick Cook