Preserving and Promoting Art and Culture Through Technology

Preserving Venetian Bell Towers Through Virtual Experiences

Faculty Advisors: Fabio Carrera and Aaron Deskins
Student Researchers: Rachel Huntley, Frederick (Ricky) Metters, Obatola Seward-Evans, and Frederick (Fritz) Brokaw

This project aimed to aid in the preservation of – Venetian bell towers by updating the VPC bell tower database through documenting their state and creating virtual experiences. It was achieved by collecting extensive written, visual, and audio data of the towers and bells. Then the Matterport 3D Pro Camera was used to create virtual tours of the 17 bell towers and 71 bells documented in the sestieri of Dorsoduro, San Polo, and Santa Croce. – Most towers and bells were in fair and average condition, respectively, with three towers needing major repairs and two cracked bells. The resulting data was added to bells.veniceprojectcenter.org. A mobile data collection application was created to assist future groups and campanologists in recording consistent and comprehensive data.

Archiving and Museum with an Interactive Exhibit

Faculty Advisors: Fred Looft and Ingrid Shockey
Student Researchers: Lauren Herchenroder, Nathan Jackson, Emma Lowry, and Lewis Guy

The goal of this project was to work with The Hönnunarsafn Íslands Museum of Design and Applied Art to design and develop an interactive VR exhibit that could showcase museum artifacts not physically on display. We researched digital interactive exhibits in other museums, identified the best practices for developing them, and surveyed the interests of museum visitors. We used this information to develop a user-friendly VR exhibit prototype. After analyzing visitor feedback and our post-interaction prototype results, we drafted recommendations for how the museum could improve and maintain the prototype we put in place.

ENGAGING THE VISITOR WITH DIGITAL TECHNOLOGY IN THE ARMS AND ARMOR COLLECTION

Faculty Advisors: Laura Roberts and Corey Dehner
Student Researchers: Ian Converse, Patrick Long, James O’Hara, Anthony Ratte, Julia Szemiot

The Worcester Art Museum is seeking to incorporate the Higgins Armory collection into its galleries and simultaneously increase visitor engagement by implementing technologies appropriate to the exhibit and target audience. In addition to developing an iPad implementation, our project provided recommendations for accomplishing this in the Meyer Idea Lab and the Medieval Gallery. To accomplish our goal, we visited museums with interactive exhibit designs, interviewed museum staff, observed visitors, and surveyed visitor responses to the available media. Our project culminated with a promotional video on arms and armor, the informational iPad implementation, analysis of visitor survey data, and recommendations for future exhibits at the Worcester Art Museum.

Crowdfunding Heritage Restoration in Venice with Arti.City

Faculty Advisors: Fabio Carrera and Peter Hansen
Student Researchers: Benjamin Child, Victoria Mercouris, Kyle Richards, Harutyun Sadoyan

We developed Arti.City, a global crowdfunding platform intended for cultural heritage projects. We designed and built the Arti.City website and demonstrated its capabilities on PreserVenice, an organization dedicated to restoring public art in Venice. We updated the Venice Project Center’s database of public art with information about inscriptions and used these inscriptions as sample projects in Arti.City. Although we developed Arti.City using Venice as a model, it can be used for cultural heritage projects around the world.