Visualising, curating, and sharing Europe’s cultural heritage
Digitisation is revolutionising how we preserve and interact with our rich cultural heritage. “Tangible cultural objects from museums, archives, and libraries have become accessible online,” says Florian Windhager, a researcher at the University for Continuing Education Krems (UWK). “Now, intangible assets – such as language-based accounts on the lives of artists – have been organised and shared as biographical databases on a national level.” These developments provide an excellent basis for the enhanced reception, utilisation, and promotion of European cultural heritage. However, gaps remain. “Countless connections between digitised cultural objects and corresponding cultural information have yet to be made,” explains UWK researcher Eva Mayr. With the support of the EU-funded InTaVia project, a transnational team coordinated by Windhager and Mayr is striving to bridge this gap. Utilising information from various databases on both tangible and intangible assets, the project has developed an open information portal for the visual analysis, curation, and visual communication of these cultural objects and their interrelations.
Artificial intelligence helps draw connections between various data sources
The InTaVia portal was designed for the ingestion, harmonisation, and enrichment of data on cultural objects and related biographies from different European databases. One of its key features is a knowledge graph that contains 24 588 310 structured statements on 713 570 cultural objects and people. The graph uses artificial intelligence and natural language processing to analyse and draw connections between various data sources. The knowledge graph is accompanied by a suite of web-based tools to facilitate the curation, analysis, and communication of the data. These include tools for searching, inspecting, curating, and visualising data, both from the graph and from locally imported sources.
Turning data into compelling – and interactive – stories
Another key feature of the InTaVia portal is its range of tools to enable innovative storytelling. “The portal helps a user turn data into compelling stories that combine visualisations, texts, and various other forms of multimedia,” remarks Mayr. Take, for example, the history of Vienna’s Hofburg palace from the Middle Ages to today. “Pulling data from multiple sources, we can tell an engaging story about the palace’s construction history starting from its founding in the 13th century,” notes Windhager. Using the project’s story viewer tool, this captivating story can be shared both via a web app or a mobile app, both of which include augmented reality elements.
Sharing Europe’s cultural heritage with the world
While there’s still more work to be done to enrich the knowledge base and to disseminate the platform’s methods and tools, the project succeeded at creating a one-stop-shop for connecting Europe’s tangible and intangible cultural heritage and sharing these unique stories with the world. “InTaVia is a great showcase, putting the spotlight on how the riches of European culture can become more accessible globally for experts and the public alike,” Mayr concludes.
Keywords
InTaVia, cultural heritage, cultural history, digitisation, artificial intelligence, AI, natural language processing, data, European culture