Semantically Annotated 3D Material Supporting the Design of Natural User Interfaces for Architectural Heritage

With the advent of artificial intelligence and natural user interfaces, the need for multimedia material that can be semantically interpreted in real time becomes critical. In the field of 3D architectural survey, a significant amount of research has been conducted to allow domain experts represent semantic data while keeping spatial references. Such data becomes valuable for natural user interfaces designed to let non-expert users obtain information about architectural heritage. In this paper, we present the architectural data collection and annotation procedure adopted in the Cultural Heritage Orienting Multimodal Experiences (CHROME) project. This procedure aims at providing conversational agents with fast access to fine-detailed semantic data linked to the available 3D models. We will discuss how this will make it possible to support multimodal user interaction and generate cultural heritage presentations.

The digital anastylosis and the semantic segmentation: the case of the Magna Graecia masks in the Mediterranean area

Fifty years of archaeological activities carried out in the Aeolian Islands have made it possible to bring to light the most complete collection of theatrical masks of the ancient world, an important testimony of the material culture of the theatrical world, during the Classical era. The theatrical masks, preserved at the ‘L. Bernabò Brea’ of Lipari, may be schematized, from a morphological point of view, in three distinct degrees: ‘whole masks’, whole fragments and ‘mute’ fragments. The digital reconstruction and anastylosis workflow follow the same breakdown of these three degrees of status: they have been developed through an inverted pyramid trend, in a scalar and hierarchical way. The universality of the method makes it repeatable and universally applicable to other archaeological finds belonging to a proto-industrial and serial artisan production.
The research aims to define a series of methodologies and techniques to be adopted for the direct survey of archaeological artefacts in fragments and for the definition of a reconstruction and digital anastylosis protocol, with the aim to restore a new memory to the so-called ‘mute’ finds. In order to clarify the genealogical and filiation relationships between the masks, a geometric grid of conspicuous points was identified on each digital model which allowed to rearrange the finds on the basis of their dimensional relationships and to advance, at the same time, a parallel hypothesis of segmentation and semantic annotation, it experimenting the most modern and innovative semantic annotation practices for the Cultural Heritage, in order to improve the understanding, the cataloging and enhancement of the historical data.