Page 161 - AC/E Digital Culture Annual Report

V-MusT projectA team from the CNR ITABC167 (Istituto per le Tecnologie Applicate ai Beni Culturali) and the Italian company E.V.O.C.A.168 developed an inter- active installation reproducing a virtual tour of the Roman villa of Livia, the wife of the Emperor Augustus. The villa was an important residence of the imperial family until the period of Con- stantine (fourth century). The three-dimensional virtual models of the villa were taken from an earlier project called Virtual Museum of the Former Via Flaminia (2008–2010), which used 3D models of the terrain and archaeological site to make a 3D reconstruction of what the villa may have looked like in the past, drawing on existing archaeological studies.An installation was subsequently designed based on body gestures and movements. Virtual reality and natural interaction interfaces were combined to enable the user to follow a route with absolute freedom, exploring the whole space and accessing audiovisual stories in each of the elements high- lighted. The application, developed in Unity3D, used the Kinect motion capture sensor to allow users to act inside the virtual environment.During 2014 and 2015 the installation – a demo169 of which can be found on the internet – was part of the Italia del Futuro170 and Keys to Rome171 exhi- bitions, which toured several cities worldwide.2.2.3 QR codesQR (quick response) codes were the rst types of interactive viewers of the digital medium beyond the screen. They currently enjoy a major presence in the culture sector and were putinto practice in various elds during the rst decade of the twenty- rst century. Despite the emergence of more complex technologies with a greater potential for providing information (such as augmented reality), they are still one of the most widely used for museumising all kinds of heritage sites.We can liken how they work to barcodes – encoded information that requires the use of a readerto identify the information contained in the code. But it should not be forgotten that oneof the key factors responsible for the spread of QR codes in the culture sector is their use in combination with mobile devices, especially the proliferation of smartphones and tablets, which has made them available and familiar to the general public. The appearance of various mobile applications that act as QR code readers led to a signi cant increase in their use.Nowadays the application of these codes varies in accordance with the content associated with them. For example they can be used to access basic information on a particular product or object, making reference to catalogue-type data (and are particularly useful for reserved areas in museums). Another use of QR codes is to pro- vide links to particular website without the user needing to type in a URL. The latter functionis particularly useful with respect to heritage dissemination. The possibility of accessing information hosted on the internet has made QR codes an increasingly commonly used device for accompanying the multimedia content associ- ated with a particular site or cultural object.Town wall of LorcaThe Spanish cultural management company Patrimonio Inteligente Castilla y León,172which applies new technologies in the elds of archaeology, restoration, historic heritage and museums, used QR codes e ciently in a dissem- ination project in the town of Lorca (Murcia). As part of the campaign on the tower known as the Torre Rojano and the town wall,173 in 2013 some panels displaying information on the restoration process were designed featuring text, illustra- tions, photographs and QR codes containing multimedia information hosted on the website. When visitors to the heritage site scanned the QR codes with their mobile devices, they were able to access various audiovisual aids availableAC/E DIGITAL CULTURE ANNUAL REPORT 2017161The use of digital technologies in the conservation, analysis and dissemination of cultural heritage