A European Collaborative Cloud for Cultural Heritage – Innovative tools for high-value interactions with visitors and heritage objects

ExpectedOutcome:

Projects should contribute to all of the following expected outcomes:

• The European Collaborative Cloud for Cultural Heritage (ECCCH) is widely used by European cultural heritage professionals and researchers^[1] for creating, sharing and re-using interactive content for high-quality interactions with visitors and cultural heritage objects^[2].
• The ECCCH is widely used by European cultural heritage professionals and researchers in the planning, simulation and design of real and virtual exposition spaces.
• The ECCCH is widely used by European cultural heritage professionals and researchers in the analysis of the effective use of real and virtual exposition spaces, incorporating innovative virtual presentation tools and visitor tracking technologies.
• European cultural heritage professionals and researchers are provided with clear information as well as targeted training modules on the innovative tools and methods developed.

Scope:

This topic aims at developing and implementing a set of innovative tools and methods on the European Collaborative Cloud for Cultural Heritage (ECCCH) for high-quality interactions with visitors and cultural heritage objects. Concrete applications of these tools and methods should be provided for at least the following uses:

• Creating, sharing and re-using interactive content
• Analysing, designing and testing interactions with visitors

Creating, sharing and re-using interactive content

Cultural heritage institutions regularly produce interactive content; for visitors to facilitate the comprehension of the exhibits on display, to entertain them or for research purposes. The platform used to deploy the content may be a simple interactive presentation device (e.g. a PC, a tablet or a mobile app) or more sophisticated immersive devices (large screens, VR rooms, head-mounted displays, specific interaction languages and related devices, etc.).

The common practice in creating interactive content at cultural heritage institutions is single theme – single institution – no cooperation. This approach makes production costs high, often prohibitively high, since the content is designed from scratch and presented only to a limited audience.

The challenge is to popularise and democratise the production and use of interactive content for cultural heritage. Innovation based on the ECCCH should make this possible.

The tools and methods developed should include an easy-to-use authoring system, designed for a community of users which may not be able to master fully-fledged commercial authoring systems. Resources should be developed to facilitate the creation of content and the adoption of a cooperative approach that enables the reuse of components and previous productions. The tools developed should be capable of supporting the entire value chain, including for instance freelancers and small companies, educational institutions, non-profits, etc.

The tools should support creation of multimedia content on top of basic components by using digital data in the ECCCH and as appropriate from other platforms, such as the Common European Data Space for Cultural Heritage. Using existing components should reduce the digitisation costs of interactive media productions, since a considerable part of the required models and images will already be available.

The tools should allow re-using portions of content contributed to the ECCCH by other partners. The ECCCH support for explicit tracking of data (re-)use will be key. Data on provenance and reuse of the digital assets should be acknowledged and maintained.

The tools should also offer the capability to adapt the presentation to more sophisticated contexts, such as non-immersive systems mixing 3D models with high quality visual interfaces and metadata and videos, virtual reality settings providing a strong immersive experience, or virtual worlds/metaverse environments.

Produced content should be deployable seamlessly on interactive kiosks in exhibition spaces and on web-based platforms, allowing to break the physical walls of the institution and widening the potential audience. Its metadata should allow the produced content to be shared also on other European platforms and data spaces.

Analysing, designing and testing interactions with visitors

A common task in cultural heritage is to evaluate if the design of an exhibition – in a real or digital space – is functional and sufficiently impactful and meaningful for the audience. Common queries may include how people move around, which specific content they pay attention to, if they are able to appreciate the exhibits in a proper manner, which areas are most crowded, which points are of more or less interest, etc.

Also, designing an exhibition is a complex task encompassing many activities related to the 3D space and visitors’ perceptions, such as subdivisions of the exposition space, planning the visiting path, distribution of the exhibits and of didactic materials, lighting setup, etc.

A 3D representation of the exposition space is a basic resource for both types of actions. While architectural CAD tools may in some cases provide support, these are often prohibitively complex and do not correspond well to the needs of the cultural heritage sector.

For this use, projects funded under this topic should develop tools and methods for designing and providing simulated and real data mapping over an exposition. Focus should be on the specific needs of cultural heritage professionals, and on the ease of use.

The tools should be capable of generating preliminary assessments based on digital mock-ups, and assessments based on real physical spaces. Digital mock-ups of an exposition space could be navigated with interactive or virtual reality equipment, while specific equipment would be needed to gather data on users’ navigation and interaction with a real physical space.

The tools should also allow to design an exposition space, introducing separations, openings and pedestals etc. which allow creating a planned path, and smaller spaces inside larger physical exposition spaces, positioning the exhibits and setting a proper illumination.

The tools should support collaborative work and sharing of resources and results through the ECCCH.

With a view to use resources efficiently and go beyond the state of the art, projects funded under this topic should, where appropriate, build on previous existing research, methods and solutions. Proposals should therefore ensure that existing tools and methods and their potential (re-)use are properly examined.

Ease of use for the target users is of paramount importance. Therefore, tools and methods should be developed in close collaboration with actively involved representative target users. Furthermore, tools and methods should be thoroughly tested and verified with a significant number of users before the end of the project. Financial support to third parties may be used to facilitate the engagement with users. The financial support to third parties can only be provided in the form of grants.

In order to facilitate the access for less well-equipped users, the developed software tools should to the extent possible be accessible online without requiring installation nor special or particularly powerful equipment. Also, the developed software tools should to the extent appropriate be designed to allow use and avoid loss of work in situations with unstable or limited connectivity.

Projects funded under this topic should demonstrate the potential of the developed tools and methods through representative case studies, conducted in collaboration with relevant users. These case studies should cover a significant share of the range of cultural heritage objects, materials and issues that the tools and methods intend to address. The results of these case studies should produce information that can serve as models for promoting the re-use of the tools and methods in other contexts and by other users within, and where appropriate beyond, the ECCCH.

Proposals should, furthermore, foresee appropriate resources to provide clear information and elaborate targeted training modules for users of the developed tools and methods.

The tools to be developed should be implemented using the low-level libraries established by the project funded under topic HORIZON-CL2-2023-HERITAGE-ECCCH-01-01. The tools developed should be compliant with the design of the ECCCH, and should be integrated with the ECCCH before the end of the project, together with proper documentation. All software and other related deliverables should be compliant with the data model and the software development guidelines elaborated by the project funded under topic HORIZON-CL2-2023-HERITAGE-ECCCH-01-01. If appropriate these tools should be developed with a view to a wider deployment, including in the Common European Data Space for Cultural Heritage, as well as, when appropriate, for reuse via the European Open Science Cloud. Furthermore, content produced by these tools for the ECCCH should be interoperable for sharing, when appropriate, via the Common European Data Space for Cultural Heritage and/or the European Open Science Cloud.

Proposals should furthermore make provisions to actively participate in the common activities of the ECCCH initiative. In particular, projects funded under this topic should coordinate technical work with projects funded under other call topics of the ECCCH initiative, and contribute to the activities and objectives of the project funded under the topic HORIZON-CL2-2023-HERITAGE-ECCCH-01-01. Proposals should include a budget for the attendance to regular joint coordination meetings, and may consider covering the costs of any other joint activities without the prerequisite to detail concrete joint activities at this stage.

Projects funded under this topic should moreover set up their project websites under the common ECCCH website, managed by the project funded under topic HORIZON-CL2-2023-HERITAGE-ECCCH-01-01.

Furthermore, the Commission expects projects funded under this topic to establish regular coordination mechanisms in order to ensure synchronised planning as well as synergy and/or complementarity of deliverables and outcomes.

The Commission recommends considering reporting periods of 12 months when elaborating proposals.

Please also refer to the Destination introduction text to consider some key characteristics of the vision for the ECCCH.

[1]‘Cultural heritage professionals and researchers’ should in the context of the ECCCH be interpreted as including all different professions and disciplines involved in the cultural heritage field, such as curators, conservators, researchers, art managers, educators, etc., that may develop their activities for instance at cultural heritage institutions, research organisations, higher education establishments or in the cultural and creative industries.

[2]‘Cultural heritage objects’ should in the context of the ECCCH be interpreted as including any form of cultural heritage that can be represented in a digital format: tangible, intangible, born digital; movable objects, buildings, documents, inscriptions, etc.