Eleanna Avouri

Social distancing is currently the international disease control standard as a response to the spread of Covid-19. This situation has brought many significant challenges to Cultural Heritage (CH) professionals and associated institutions. Although physical patronage at museums has dropped significantly, there are opportunities for retaining and possibly increasing viewership by using the latest virtual reality technology (VR) and other advanced multimedia tools. To be better informed, it is helpful to look at sectors outside of CH that have made an effective integration of these systems and methods. A comparative precedent is the international medical sector, which actively employs advanced VR for education, research and daily practice. The field has been highly active in the integration of VR to effectively address issues such as enhanced training, communication, public/professional engagement and remote access.
For both CH and medicine, developing VR content is time-consuming, and the associated computer hardware and associated exhibition equipment can be exceptionally expensive. By drawing upon state-of-the-art research and applied activities from the field of medicine, the proposed paper will look at specific precedents that would be of direct interest and benefit to CH. Looking at methods such as digital documentation, virtualization, 3D presentation, AR interaction, haptic systems, and other VR tools.
The suggested topics will be discussed within the framework of the EU ERA Chair in Digital CH, project “MNEMOSYNE”, which aims to propose systems, guidelines, and standards for the holistic documentation of Digital Cultural Heritage.

Following the action plan implementation of the Virtual Multimodal Museum (ViMM) project, which finished in March 2019, the European Commission issued a Declaration on Cooperation on Advancing Digitisation of Cultural Heritage during the Digital Day in April 2019. One year later, in April 2020, the European Commission (EC) launched a call for tenders to develop a Study on quality in 3D digitisation of tangible cultural heritage (the Study), thus responding to the increasing demand for internationally recognised standards for the holistic 3D documentation of Europe’s rich cultural heritage (CH). To address this lack of standards, the Study aims to map parameters, formats, standards, benchmarks, methodologies and guidelines, relating to 3D digitisation of tangible cultural heritage, to the different potential purposes or uses, by type of tangible cultural heritage, and by degree of complexity of tangible cultural heritage. A team of researchers at the Cyprus University of Technology (...

Following the implementation of the Virtual Multimodal Museum (ViMM) project, which finished in March 2019, the European Commission issued a Declaration on Cooperation on Advancing Digitisation of Cultural Heritage during the Digital Day in April 2019. One year later, in April 2020, the European Commission (EC) launched a commercial call for tenders to develop a Study on quality in 3D digitisation of tangible cultural heritage (the study). The tender theme is to acknowledge the increasing demand for internationally recognised standards for the holistic 3D documentation of Europe's rich cultural heritage (CH) and address the lack of standards. The study aims to map parameters, formats, standards, benchmarks, methodologies, and guidelines relating to 3D digitisation of tangible cultural heritage, the different potential purposes or uses, by type of tangible cultural heritage, and the degree of complexity of tangible cultural heritage. A team of researchers at the Cyprus University of Technology (CUT) leads a consortium of partners from industry and academia across Europe to conduct this unique study. This work in progress paper introduces the research's objectives and methodology and presents some of its first results.