Special Section on Cultural Heritage


Computers & Graphics 35 (2011) v–vi
Contents lists available at ScienceDirect
Computers & Graphics
0097-84

doi:10.1
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/cag
Editorial
Special Section on Cultural Heritage
Over the last two decades, there have been many high profile
success stories where cutting edge computer graphics (CG) technol-
ogy was used in collaboration with cultural heritage (CH) profes-
sionals to unlock the secrets of humanity’s legacy. Well known
examples include the empirical 3D acquisition of Michelangelo’s
David, the laser scan-based 3D mapping of the tombs found in the
Valley of the Kings and the decipherment of the instructions to and
the operation of the 2nd-century BCE Antikythera Mechanism—
arguably the first computer in human kind history.

This special edition of Computers and Graphics contains new
work that continues this tradition. Jenny and Hurni [1] propose a
series of geometrical transformations that allow assessing the
planimetric and geodetic accuracy of old maps before using the
data for geo-historical studies. Laycock et al. [2] present techni-
ques to aid in the semiautomatic extraction of building footprints
from digital images of archive maps and sketches by aligning the
old maps to modern vector data. Ducke et al. [3] propose an open-
source pipeline for deriving a full 3D model from a series of
overlapping images and illustrate it with data from the archae-
ological site at Weymouth. Osorio et al. [4] discuss novel digitis-
ing techniques for high specular reflection materials based on
a multi-spectral approach and describe new virtual installations in
the context of the Gold Museum in Bogota. Abel et al. [5] present a
study of whether computed tomography is cost effective and can
be used to capture and document the fine surface topology
of flaked stone tools used by early humans. Li et al. [6] propose
a skull completion framework based on symmetry and surface
matching which will benefit subsequent archaeological and
anthropological processing and analysis. Scheiblauer and Wimmer
[7] present an out-of core interactive editing system for point
clouds from a laser scanner. Finally, Blake and Ladeira [8] suggest
a method for preparing users for a foreign cultural experience in
Virtual Reality storytelling and illustrate it with San folklore.

More remarkable examples are sure to follow as leading CH
institutions and professionals continue exploring advanced compu-
ter graphics-based tools and methods in collaboration with CG
specialists. CG research on its own has pointed the way to new
application development opportunities in the cultural heritage
community. These collaborations and advanced CG research under-
score the potential value of integrating robust digital imaging into
ongoing CH working practice.

Regardless of these substantial potential advantages, little adop-
tion of CG tools and methods within the CH community has taken
place over the last twenty years. This slow rate of adoption is due to
many factors. Many of the tools were and remain expensive and
difficult to use by CH practitioners without extensive retraining and
require the expertise of digital specialists from outside of the existing
93/$ - see front matter & 2011 Published by Elsevier Ltd.

016/j.cag.2011.03.041
cultural heritage working cultures. The digital representations them-
selves often lacked transparency due to the absence of the digital
equivalent of the traditional scientific ‘lab notebook’, documenting
the means and circumstances of their generation. The hard truth is
that most CG imaging of CH materials has focused exclusively on
generating a high quality digital representation of the subject without
providing a means for scientific evaluation of the representations
quality. This led to a distrust of their scientific reliability and
infrequent use of these CG representations in CH scholarship. Further,
lack of process history transparency, dependence on closely held
proprietary file formats and software, and an absence of established
and funded long-term data preservation strategies, has led to
concerns about digital data safety. Over the last twenty years, these
concerns were confirmed by the increasing number of large-scale
losses of digitally captured CH data, known today as the dawning of
the Digital Dark Age. When paper records can last centuries, why
adopt digital records that are useless after only ten years?

Only recently has the adoption rate of robust digital imaging
tools by cultural heritage professionals begun to increase. This is
partly due to CG driven work to remove the existing barriers to
widespread adoption of digital technologies by adapting new robust
imaging applications explicitly for use by cultural heritage profes-
sionals that are designed to be compatible with existing CH skill sets
and working cultures. These applications, as well as related tool
research and development road maps, include methods of enhan-
cing scientific reliability of digital representations through the
recording of scientific process history (digital ‘lab notebooks’), and
open source architectures that enhance long-term digital preserva-
tion strategies. Work in this volume examines the advantages of
exclusive use of such open source workflows. Some of these
computer graphics tools enable public access and interactive
engagement both within collections and sites as well as over the
Internet. Through the London and Seville Charters, the Virtual
Reality (VR) community, made up of CG and CH professionals
working together, has taken the lead in ensuring that transparency
and the means for scientific qualitative evaluation are present in
their work products. Museums have a growing interest in using VR
representations to increase public access to their collections both
within the museum and over the Internet. Several contributions to
this Journal explore VR modalities to enrich the public experience of
interaction with collections. These initiatives, along with the adop-
tion by an increasing number of museums, libraries, archives,
archaeologists, epigraphists, numismatists, and many others in the
cultural heritage community of digital photography-based imaging
tools and practices they can use by themselves, are creating an
environment conducive to future widespread digital imaging adop-
tion by CH professionals.

www.elsevier.com/locate/cag
dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cag.2011.01.005
dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cag.2011.01.005


Editorial / Computers & Graphics 35 (2011) v–vivi
References

[1] Bernhard Jenny, Lorenz Hurni. Studying cartographic heritage: analysis and
visualization of geometric distortions. Computers and Graphics
2011;35(2):402–11. doi:10.1016/j.cag.2011.01.005.

[2] Stephen David Laycock, Philip G. Brown, Robert G. Laycock, Andy M. Day.
Aligning archive maps and extracting footprints for analysis of historic urban
environments. Computers and Graphics 2011;35(2):242–9. doi:10.1016/
j.cag.2011.01.002.

[3] Benjamin Ducke, David Score, Joseph Reeves. Multiview 3D reconstruction of
the archaeological site at Weymouth from image series. Computers and
Graphics 2011;35(2):375–82. doi:10.1016/j.cag.2011.01.006.

[4] Maria F. Osorio, Pablo Figueroa, Flavio Prieto, Pierre Boulanger, Eduardo
Londoño. A novel approach at documenting artifacts at the Gold Museum in
Bogota. Computers and Graphics 2011;35(4):894–903. doi:10.1016/j.cag.2011.
01.014.

[5] Richard L. Abel, Simon A. Parfitt, Nick M. Ashton, Simon G. Lewis, Beccy Scott,
Chris B. Stringer. Digital preservation and dissemination of ancient lithic
technology with modern micro-CT. Computers and Graphics
2011;35(4):878–84. doi:10.1016/j.cag.2011.03.001.

[6] Xin Li, Zhao Yin, Li Wei, Shenghua Wan, Wei Yu, Maoqing Li. Symmetry and
template guided completion of damaged skulls. Computers and Graphics
2011;35(4):885–93. doi:10.1016/j.cag.2011.01.015.

[7] Claus Scheiblauer, Michael Wimmer. Out-of-core selection and editing of huge
point clouds. Computers and Graphics 2011;35(2):342–51. doi:10.1016/j.cag.
2011.01.004.

[8] Edwin Blake, Ilda Ladeira. Cultural reinterpretation and resonance: the san
and hip-hop. Computers and Graphics 2011;35(2):383–91. doi:10.1016/
j.cag.2011.01.003.
Alan Chalmers is Professor of Visualisation in the
International Digital Laboratory, WMG, at the Univer-
sity of Warwick. He has published over 190 papers in
journals and international conferences on realistic
computer graphics, parallel processing, multi-sensory
perception and virtual archaeology. He is Honorary
President of Afrigraph and a former Vice President of
ACM SIGGRAPH. In addition, he is Founder and Inno-
vation Director of the spinout company, goHDR, which
is developing software to facilitate the widespread
adoption of high dynamic range (HDR) imaging tech-
nology. His research is working towards achieving Real

Virtuality: high-fidelity, multi-sensory virtual environ-
ments, including developing ‘‘digital taste’’.
Mark Mudge is President and co-founder of Cultural
Heritage Imaging (CHI), a public charity and California
non-profit corporation, incorporated in 2002. Mark has
BA in Philosophy from New College of Florida (1979).
He has worked as a professional bronze sculptor and
has been involved in photography and 3D imaging
for over 20 years. He is a co-inventor, with Tom
Malzbender, of the computational photography tech-
nique, Highlight Reflectance Transformation Imaging.
He has published twelve articles and book chapters
related to imaging cultural heritage materials and
serves on several international committees, including

The International Council of Museums’ (ICOM) Docu-
mentation Committee (CIDOC).
Luis Paulo Santos is an Auxiliar Professor at the
Department of Informatics, Universidade do Minho,
Portugal. His research interests are in interactive high
fidelity rendering and parallel processing. He received
his Ph.D. in 2001 from Universidade do Minho in
Scheduling under Conditions of Uncertainty. Luis Paulo
published several papers on both computer graphics
and parallel processing on international conferences
and journals. He has been a member of several inter-
national program committees, acted as program co-
chair of the 2007 EGPGV symposium and EuroPar 2005
conference and organized EGPGV 2006, VAST 2008 and

VS-Games 2010 in Braga, Portugal. He manages several
nationally funded graphics R&D projects and partici-
pates in several European projects with both academia
and industry. He is a member of the Direction Board of
the Portuguese chapter of Eurographics since 2008.
Guest Editors

Alan Chalmers
Visualisation in the International Digital Laboratory,

WMG, University of Warwick, UK

E-mail address: Alan.Chalmers@warwick.ac.uk
Mark Mudge
Cultural Heritage Imaging (CHI), California, USA
Luis Paulo Santos n

Department of Informatics, Universidade do Minho, Portugal

E-mail address: psantos@di.uminho.pt

Received 31 March 2011
n Corresponding author.

dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cag.2011.01.005
dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cag.2011.01.002
dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cag.2011.01.002
dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cag.2011.01.006
dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cag.2011.01.014
dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cag.2011.01.014
dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cag.2011.03.001
dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cag.2011.01.015
dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cag.2011.01.004
dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cag.2011.01.004
dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cag.2011.01.003
dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cag.2011.01.003
mailto:Alan.Chalmers@warwick.ac.uk
mailto:Alan.Chalmers@warwick.ac.uk

	Special Section on Cultural Heritage
	References