“Standards, Prototypes, and Pilot Projects”

Technology and Flexibility in Designing Cultural Heritage Projects in

Challenging Contexts

Alessandro Califano

CDCH 2012

Innsbruck, 4 October, 2012

Satellite Workshop at VL/HCC 2012 – IEEE Symposium on Visual Languages and Human-Centric Computing

(30 September – 4 October 2012)

Introduction

“This paper, introducing our CDCH workshop at IEEE’s VL/HCC 2012 Symposium, on behalf of ICOM Italy, its Commissione tematica audiovisivi e nuove tecnologie, and ICOM-AVICOM, will try to ask questions – rather than to give answers – related to the issues at stake, focusing on Creative Design for Interdisciplinary Projects in Cultural Heritage.

Let me start this by reading out a brief note describing ‘Fourth Dimension’ (you’ll find the full text at the URL http://www.slideshare.net/califano ), a pilot project developed at the Cultural Heritage Department of Rome, inspired by a museum collection data visualization programme implemented in Rotterdam.”

“Fourth Dimension”

“…Like city lights, receding”(William Gibson, Neuromancer)

Migrating to a Different Context

“Now, let us imagine to transplant a pilot project like ‘Fourth Dimension’ to a different context, like the one we find in some central Asian regions.

Which would be the results of a SWOT analysis of the project, if set in such a new context?

Let us examine this anti clock-wise, starting by what can help us in achieving the project’s aims, and ending with what can hinder us in doing so.”

A Different Context…

Fourth Dimension – SWOT Analysis (anti-clockwise)

SWOT analysis diagram in English language, 30 September 2007 (via Xhienne on Wikipedia)

Strengths

• Stable, entertaining, strongly interactive and informing data structure

• Very high data mining and data association potential

Opportunities

• Building a wide knowledge basis

• Building a platform for decision making / resources allocation

• Allowing workflow recognition / fostering work reorganization

Threats

• Significant infrastructural requirements (constant power availability, ITC)

• Uncertain (but probably significant) times / costs for spare parts’ availability

• Direct threat to traditional workflow and work organization

Weaknesses

• Expensive

• Fragile

• Steep learning / training / maintenance curve

Wrapping it up…

We can define this pilot project (like many other hi-tech loaded cultural heritage programmes) as being not very

sustainable, in the new given context.

“In a meeting organized in Bologna (19 May 2011) by ICOM Italy’s Committee for Audiovisual & New Technologies (see next slide), the need was stressed to focus on sustainability and, possibly, on downsizing.

This badly needed trend involves not just architectural solutions, as we will see in a moment, but also requires infrastructures, ITC solutions, and more to be addressed in this context.”

Audiovisual Archives for a “Light” Museum

Notes on a sustainable development model

Alessandro Califano

ICOM Italy - Commissione Tematica Audio-Visivi e Nuove tecnologie

Istituzione Musei del Comune di Bologna

“preserving virtual memories”

Bologna, 19 May 2011

A Provocative Thought, and 2 Case Studies“We have been building expensive museums, and have to

spend almost as much to try protecting artefacts from light and variations in temperature…”

• The glass-and-concrete art museum in Tashkent – an ineffective fight against summer heat

• The Savitsky Museum (Nukus) and the Archaeological Museum (Termez) – high effectiveness of a vernacular architecture approach

Beyond Architecture - OSACA

OSACA, the Open Source Alliance of Central Asia, was founded at ROSCCA 2011, the first Regional Open Source Conference for Central Asia (Kabul, 15-18 October 2011).

It focuses on FOSS (Free and Open Source Software), and on its advocacy and dissemination, in order to facilitate cultural, social, and economic development in the area of concern, once served by the historical Silk Roads.

“One of the case studies, presented at ROSCCA 2011 by Sufyan Kakakhel, described the scale of FOSS-related advantages in a Pakistan based project.” (see next slide)

Software: Different Options

Pakistan: Motorway police emergency helplineProprietary software solutions proposed:• $ 60K US / year• $ 400K US up front + annual sw renewal cost

+ additional costs if number of lines would need to be increased

Open Source solution, developed by local engineers from scratch:

• 3 million rupees ($ 33K US) one time cost

Communication as a Complex Issue

“I would like to attract the attention on three different statements, all contained in the Call for Papers to this workshop.

All of them deal with communication, the need to improve it, and the difficulty in doing so while stakeholders – or audiences, as far as a museum would be concerned – are becoming more and more diverse.”

Communication between Communities

• [There is the] “need to enlarge the level of community involvement in creating and enriching cultural knowledge”

• [The stakeholders’] “variety leads to the rise of communication gaps”

• [All of them] “have different cultural backgrounds, play different roles…, and use different …languages”

(CDCH 2012, Call for Papers)

Communication / Interpretation

“In a museum, communication also means that we have to take into account two different facts:

• Artefacts are - by definition – placed out of their original context, a context that has to be recreated in order for an artefact to again become intelligible

• The cultural background of an artefact can’t be taken for granted, so that many more clues have to be given than might have been originally needed to convey its meaning

This, as we’ll see in the next slides – taken from a presentation for a UNESCO workshop in Afghanistan

(May 2009) showing 6 case studies – can become very complex, but it is still to be considered as routine work.”

Audiences and Communities

About Guides, Interpreters, and Contexts

Alessandro Califano

UNESCO Training

"Risks and Opportunities: Difficult Challenges for Museum Professionals"

May 17 – 23, 2009Kabul, Afghanistan

Descriptions and Interpretations: 5 Case Studies…

Interpretations – 5 Case Studies + One In the previous slide:• Head of Bodhisattva, Central Asia (Guimet Museum,

Paris)• Horse rider, 19° century, Nuristan (National Museum of

Afghanistan, Kabul)• Shiva Nataraja, 11° century, Tamil Nadu – India (Guimet

Museum, Paris)• Annunciation, by Simone Martini & Lippo Menni, ca.1333,

Siena (Uffizi Museum, Florence)• Raven and the First Men (Haida creation myth), by Bill

Reid, 1980 (Museum of Anthropology, Vancouver)In the next slide:• Pop culture, movies, and TV icons form the background of

an Adoration of the Magi

Isabel Samaras – “Song of Birth: the 3 Magi”

Planning “Differently”

Way beyond the development of new strategies for differing storytelling needs, radically

different settings call us to deeply rethink our assumptions in planning.

“Standard requirements may well remain the same, but the way to achieve them will vary,

according to the new context:”

Fire Fighting Measures (Murad Khane, Kabul)

Ensuring an effective security systems against fire risks where reliable water / power sources may not – or not always – be readily available.

Energy Saving and Artefacts Protecting Measures

With the substitution of neon and incandescence lights with LEDs we can achieve up to over 90% of energy saving, while both heat and lux affecting the artefacts are very effectively kept under control.

Infrastructures

Could being a latecomer be an advantage,vs. being an early adopter?

Tajikistan:• 400 K phone land lines• 6.5 M cell phones• 2.5 Internet users – most on smart-phones

(via Talat Noumonov and Asomiddin Atoev, conversation in Kabul, 15 Oct. 2011)

Flexibility as the Paramount Factor

Our technology-charged delivery of cultural heritage programmes in critical contexts will be adequate only

whenFLEXIBILITY

is set as the paramount feature of our planning

Thus, and to conclude, paraphrasing the Poet, we could say…

“There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,Than are dreamt of in your technology.”

William Shakespeare, Hamlet (Act I, scene V)

...Tashakor! Vielen Dank! Thank you.

“A nation stays alive when its culture stays alive” – Kabul, National Museum of Afghanistan