Introduction. The digital and Virtual Reality technologies introduced in recent years in the world of museums have promoted the development of innovative products able to provide users and visitors with access modes very different from the traditional ones. Basically, such products are constituted by interactive information units set up in the display rooms, or by digital devices (CDs, DVDs) simulating the path followed by the visitors; they are suitable for didactic purposes and can sell very well if supplied with multilingual audio guides available at the bookshops of the museums. However, if we consider the information available on the net and try to enter a museum of this type which either corresponds to a real one or reflects a typological set of objects actually housed in different and even geographically distant sites, we will certainly be unsatisfied for a number of reasons. Firstly, the few cases available can be looked upon as only partially virtual since the correlated information such as catalogue identification, inventory number, description, etc., has simply been converted into the new condition of digital format. It is true that an artifact that a visitor can see in a low resolution icon catalogue simplifies the information retrieval operations, but it offers no innovative approach capable of justifying the considerable resources invested to produce the digitized objects consultable on-line. Another problem we would like to face is represented by the possible interaction between digital objects and their linguistic captions which we think could highly contribute to the development of a real virtual museum, as long as the environment of navigation and interaction with the user occurs with appropriate paradigms. A number of simple suggestions on this matter will be provided below. The work described here refers to an experiment that was carried out in order to make the visit to a painting gallery, represented by iconographical objects collected in an imaginary space, at the same time virtual and independent of cultural prejudices. Our virtual museum is thus considered as a series of undefined places, e.g. Internet sites or addresses relative to image files in .jpg format, eventually stored in directories available on one or more discs. For each painting it was necessary to produce a text format description of about 400 words, therefore much longer than that of an ordinary caption, but shorter than a monographic essay. In particular, we wanted to check whether and to what extent the element represented by a text would make it possible to create a logical and conceptual association even among elements with apparently no relation (at least for users with low or medium level of culture), as well as among those with evident relations that anybody could identify easily. The system, therefore, functions regardless of the cultural background of the visitor, with the result that anybody, experts and non-experts alike, can see the associations between the iconographic works and the linguistic reasons taken into account by the system for their realization. Let us first anticipate that technology makes it possible nowadays to intervene automatically so that iconographic elements can be identified by digital image analysis; therefore, no linguistic description is actually necessary to associate paintings which have a number of elements in common. However, it should be pointed out that such methods can only highlight the similarities among chromatic elements, graphical patterns, well evident features in the foreground of the image, while many other aspects impossible to capture are missed, thus reducing the number of feasible associations. On the other hand, the associations carried out on linguistic grounds have sometimes shown to be excessive, owing to the considerable amount of information (in particular the profuse sequence of diversified adjectives) contained in historical and artistic works. This negative element which emerged from the experiment can however be exploited to find suitable solutions aimed at reducing the production of partially useless results.
Linguistic Tools for Navigation in a Virtual Museum
Bozzi A;Cignoni L;
2007
Abstract
Introduction. The digital and Virtual Reality technologies introduced in recent years in the world of museums have promoted the development of innovative products able to provide users and visitors with access modes very different from the traditional ones. Basically, such products are constituted by interactive information units set up in the display rooms, or by digital devices (CDs, DVDs) simulating the path followed by the visitors; they are suitable for didactic purposes and can sell very well if supplied with multilingual audio guides available at the bookshops of the museums. However, if we consider the information available on the net and try to enter a museum of this type which either corresponds to a real one or reflects a typological set of objects actually housed in different and even geographically distant sites, we will certainly be unsatisfied for a number of reasons. Firstly, the few cases available can be looked upon as only partially virtual since the correlated information such as catalogue identification, inventory number, description, etc., has simply been converted into the new condition of digital format. It is true that an artifact that a visitor can see in a low resolution icon catalogue simplifies the information retrieval operations, but it offers no innovative approach capable of justifying the considerable resources invested to produce the digitized objects consultable on-line. Another problem we would like to face is represented by the possible interaction between digital objects and their linguistic captions which we think could highly contribute to the development of a real virtual museum, as long as the environment of navigation and interaction with the user occurs with appropriate paradigms. A number of simple suggestions on this matter will be provided below. The work described here refers to an experiment that was carried out in order to make the visit to a painting gallery, represented by iconographical objects collected in an imaginary space, at the same time virtual and independent of cultural prejudices. Our virtual museum is thus considered as a series of undefined places, e.g. Internet sites or addresses relative to image files in .jpg format, eventually stored in directories available on one or more discs. For each painting it was necessary to produce a text format description of about 400 words, therefore much longer than that of an ordinary caption, but shorter than a monographic essay. In particular, we wanted to check whether and to what extent the element represented by a text would make it possible to create a logical and conceptual association even among elements with apparently no relation (at least for users with low or medium level of culture), as well as among those with evident relations that anybody could identify easily. The system, therefore, functions regardless of the cultural background of the visitor, with the result that anybody, experts and non-experts alike, can see the associations between the iconographic works and the linguistic reasons taken into account by the system for their realization. Let us first anticipate that technology makes it possible nowadays to intervene automatically so that iconographic elements can be identified by digital image analysis; therefore, no linguistic description is actually necessary to associate paintings which have a number of elements in common. However, it should be pointed out that such methods can only highlight the similarities among chromatic elements, graphical patterns, well evident features in the foreground of the image, while many other aspects impossible to capture are missed, thus reducing the number of feasible associations. On the other hand, the associations carried out on linguistic grounds have sometimes shown to be excessive, owing to the considerable amount of information (in particular the profuse sequence of diversified adjectives) contained in historical and artistic works. This negative element which emerged from the experiment can however be exploited to find suitable solutions aimed at reducing the production of partially useless results.I documenti in IRIS sono protetti da copyright e tutti i diritti sono riservati, salvo diversa indicazione.
