Technologies lead to Adaptability & lifelong enGagement with culture throughout the CLOUD
Background
Cultural heritage is an important asset of Europe but largely underexplored. Currently, cultural heritage institutions attempt to attract, engage and retain visitors using a range of digital technologies from relatively cheap interactive websites to expensive on-site 3D visualizations. Nevertheless, the employment of these technologies has not resulted in a significant increase of their visitor base.
Objectives
TAG CLOUD is a European project co-funded by the Seventh Framework Programme of the European Commission that will generate lifelong engagement with cultural heritage through social media, augmented reality and storytelling applications based on the cloud.
The project aims to increase the active participation of the general public in cultural events and experiences, by inviting them to become participants in their own cultural experiences, contributing with new content, opinions, as well as sharing information with other people and heritage institutions, curators and researchers in the cultural area before, during and after the visit. It will be designed to be dynamically personalized and adaptive to the needs, preferences and interests of the individuals and the communities.
The methodology and interactive technologies developed in TAG CLOUD will result in introducing more people to cultural heritage activities, improving the quality of their engagement and increasing the frequency of their visits to cultural sites.
Fraunhofer FOKUS is working on the design and implementation of the TAGCLOUD Data Management Module which performs the harvesting of data and data enrichment. The module provides the foundation for personalization and recommendation services
Tag Cloud Platform and App
Social Media and Augmented Reality to Approach the Alhambra’s Culture to Tourism
The COOLTURA platform is designed as an open data platform that will enable scalable services for cultural engagement. The platform is tested, piloted and firstly exploited with the COOLTURA app at three TAG CLOUD pilot sites: the Alhambra of Granada in Spain, the Barber Institute of Fine Arts in the United Kingdom, and in Sør-Trøndelag in Norway. COOLTURA has a data management layer that allows content curation and harvesting, as well as an intelligent layer to abstract complex data and to transform them into content and processes more convenient for users. The COOLTURA platform provides personalized and adaptive content for the COOLTURA app.
The COOLTURA app accesses the cultural content processed in the COOLTURA platform. It will allow visualizing the cultural content on mobile devices to explore cultural sites through augmented reality, games or social networks.
Fraunhofer Institute for Open Communication Systems