Digitisation of dynamic objects, processes and practices
The main focus of 3D digitisation initiatives in the realm of cultural heritage has thus far been the shape and appearance of static objects. Practical techniques and technologies that enable accurate physical simulations of digitised items are mostly unexplored. Mechanical characteristics like stiffness, flexibility, mass distribution and strength, as well as mechanisms and moving parts are still largely undocumented. However, many heritage objects, including human-made devices, machines or practices, exhibit dynamic behaviours. Making adequate and precise digital models of such items and phenomena would enable more realistic simulations of, for instance, ancient artefacts like tissues, mechanisms, tools or practices, which would facilitate more insightful analysis and understanding.

For this use, projects funded under this topic should develop new digitisation approaches enabling the correct capture of mechanical and dynamic characteristics of objects and practices.

Monitoring the evolving status of cultural heritage objects over time
Monitoring the evolution over time of a heritage object is a key task in many cultural heritage contexts. This involves monitoring very slow phenomena (e.g. changes in the reflection attributes of a painted surface) as well as very rapid ones (for example fractures introduced by an abrupt event, such as damages to a loan artwork while traveling, or to a monument due to a seismic impact). The accurate sampling and detection of such changes occurring over time requires a number of new and integrated technologies: shape & colour sampling, use of networks of sensors displaced in a space, data integration, and software technologies able to make comparisons and to assess the changes. Innovative AI-based solutions may be developed to characterise and detect the changes, subject to the validation of human experts.

Projects funded under this topic should develop new digitisation approaches enabling an unprecedented capability to monitor the evolution over time of the status of heritage objects.

Interacting with, cross-mixing and re-mixing different data types
Mixing and integrating different media and media types in effective ways can expand insight capabilities, and lead to new knowledge generation. Projects funded under this topic should develop innovative tools and methods that give the ECCCH ground-breaking capabilities in this area.

Projects funded under this topic should explore how different media can be combined, using both the space and time axes, and how the creative processes involved can be supported. Such new methods will require studying new interaction modes, enabling the navigation over different media types and spaces (2D, 3D, text, …), and creating a common cross-media interaction language. Users should easily be able to use multiple media in a coordinated manner, for instance for the visual presentation and analysis of heritage objects (e.g. interconnecting 3D and text to tell the story of an artwork, intermixing the navigation of a 3D space and panoramic images to present both spatial and surface colour/reflection characteristics in an accurate manner, enabling the navigation of datasets which join 3D scanned external surfaces with computer tomography scanned data of the interior, or using 3D and images in the documentation of restoration). The tools and methods developed should allow the representation of non-static heritage, such as industrial heritage with many complex machines and processes. As an alternative to producing full digital models of complex machinery, which may be excessively expensive, different media may be combined to represent the dynamic essence of such assets with less effort, for instance using 3D models for the static characteristics of a machinery and adding video and sound to enhance the dynamic experience.

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.