UNESCO characterizes “cultural heritage” either by its tangible components (monuments, collections of objects, and any book, manuscript, or physical document attesting culture) or by its intangible components (such as traditions or living expressions inherited from our ancestors and passed to us in non-physical form). Many national and state legislatures define the tangible heritage for which they take responsibility, but heritage value may also be based on what is important to small groups, communities, or diasporas. Anything considered important enough to be passed on to the future can be considered to have heritage value of some kind, independently of how ancient or widely appreciated and protected it is. The unique combination of expertise at the Luddy School supports for such research activity within the following domains.
Today, digital information technologies play a crucial role in exploring, documenting, preserving, analyzing, and disseminating cultural heritage.
Subareas
Virtual heritage
Studies the application of 3D digitization and visualization technologies to ancient artifacts, monument, and sites, as well as their digital restoration and reconstruction. 3D models are used to simulate list scenarios and their complex interactions with the environment. The typical VH research output may be used in museological and pedagogical settings using VR/AR technologies.
Computational literary studies
Applies computational, digital, and statistical methods to the collection, organization, representation, and analysis of texts and related data sets. Research activities include developing standards and best practices for creating digital scholarly editions, building digital text collections and bibliographic databases, and applying probabilistic models to the analysis of literary texts and other textural expressions.
Digital libraries and archives
Develop machine learning models and intelligent systems to explore and mine massive datasets.
The growth of digital archives over the past two decades has resulted in an enormous volume of archival data digitally available. This has produced an underutilized source of large-scale digital data suitable for interrogation by scholars and practitioners. Linked data, metadata, digitization standards and best practices, digital library systems and interfaces, digital curation, and digital preservation are addressed.
Digital history
Historians' use of modern computer and communication technologies to analyze historical timelines and events in new ways - presenting them in innovative and suggestive forms. Digital tools can be used to research, analyze, and visualize patterns in historical information. This topic covers the history of digital technologies and their impact on society.
AI for digital heritage
The power of AI to identify stylistic patterns in 2D and 3D provides people and organizations studying cultural heritage with interpretive tools. Deep learning strategies with cultural heritage data sets (where tagged data are limited by their uniqueness), automatic metadata extraction, automatic digital restoration, 3D recognition, and modeling.
AR/VR for digital twin environments
By leveraging video game engines, it is now possible to create realistic virtual simulations of real-world environments (digital twins); used to study the origins and computational foundations of intelligence, by raising animals and machines in the same environments and testing their cognitive abilities with the same tasks.