Exploring Collaboration in the Realm of -...

Exploring Collaboration in the Realm of Virtual Museums

NELSON BALOIAN, Department of Computer Science

WOLFRAM LUTHER, Department of Computer Science and Applied Cognitive Science

DANIEL BIELLA, Centre for Information and Media Services

NARE KARAPETYAN, College of Science and Engineering

JOSÉ A. PINO, Department of Computer Science

TOBIAS SCHRECK, Institute of Computer Graphics and Knowledge Visualisation

NANCY HITSCHFELD, Department of Computer Science Virtual museums1 have been very popular since the early days of the World Wide Web and many scientific works published on this topic. Although the rich variety of possibilities for supporting col-laboration among the users of virtual museums, today very few implementations offer support for such kind of activities. This paper aims at settling the value of collaboration in virtual museums by means of depicting and classifying collaborative organization and co-curation activities in establish-ing, designing, planning, realizing, operating, deploying and visiting a virtual exhibition applying action research. As a use case, we present ongoing work to realize a virtual museum devoted to Armenian cross stones (Khatchkars).CCS Concepts: • Human-centered computing → Collaborative and social computing → Col-laborative and social computing systems and tools; Collaborative and social computing theory, con-cepts and paradigms → Computer supported cooperative work;

KEYWORDSVirtual Museums, Taxonomy of Collaborative Activities, Co-curation, Khatchkar museum

1Author’s addresses: N. Baloian, J. A. Pino, N. Hitschfeld, University of Chile, Department of Computer Science, Avenida Beauchef 851, Tercer Piso, Santiago, Chile / C.P. 837-0456; W. Luther, University of Duisburg-Essen, Department of Computer Science and Cognitive Science, LF, Lotharstr. 63, 47057 Duisburg, Germany; D. Biella, University of Duisburg-Essen, Centre for Information and Media Services, LG, Forsthausweg 2, 47057 Duisburg, Germany; N. Karapetian, American University of Armenia, College of Science and Engineering, 40 Marshal Baghramyan Ave, Yerevan 0019, Armenia; T. Schreck, Graz Technical University, Institute of Computer Graphics and Knowledge Visualisation, Inffeldgasse 16c, 8010 Graz, Austria.

This notion will be defined later on.

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DOI: 10.1145/1234ACM J. Comput. Cult. Herit., Vol. xx, No. xx, Article xx. Publication date: Month 2017.

XX:2 • N. Baloian et al.

ACM Reference format:Ben Trovato, G.K.M. Tobin, Lars Thørvӓld, Lawrence P. Leipuner, Sean Fogarty, Charles Palmer, John Smith, and Julius P. Kumquat. 1997. SIG Paper in word Format. ACM J. Comput. Cult. Herit. 9, 4, Arti-cle 39 (March 2010),4 pages.DOI: 10.1145/1234

1 INTRODUCTIONAccording to the European Group on Museum Statistics (EGMUS), which gathered data

from 30 participating countries, 5623 museums were type A)”art, archaeology and history museums”, 1991 were type B)”science and technology museums, ethnology museums” and 7795 were class C) other collection types, e.g. complex museums with various collections, specialized museums, museum complexes with various museums, and outdoor museums. In total, more than a half billion visits per annum were mentioned by EGMUS. Considering that those figures are just a portion of the corresponding ones to the complete world, we can value the significance of the museum sector for tourism, education, leisure and information.

Virtual museums (VMs) are an important supplement to physical museums. VMs propose new forms of participation online or on-site, ubiquitous access and cross-collection content on display. They contribute to the reconstitution and conservation of cultural heritage sites and offer opportunities to enrich on-site visits or help visitors to prepare and reflect on physical museum visits. The whole process of establishing, designing, planning, realizing, operating and visiting a virtual exhibition is quite complex and currently it is only partly supported by appropriate software tools [24].

A VM is a software artifact that presents a reconstruction of physical museums or parts of them; it displays digital reconstructions or born digital art in an exhibition, room and museum setting. Hazan and al. [16] define a VM as “a communication product accessible by a public, focused on tangible or intangible heritage. It uses various forms of interactivity and immersion, for the purpose of education, research, enjoyment, and enhancement of visitor experience. VMs may be typically but not exclusively denoted as electronic when they could be called online museums, hyper museum, digital museum, cyber museums or Web museums”.

The realization of a VM goes on in several stages: Establishing, designing, constructing, running, and operating a VM within its lifespan. Different skills are needed from people working on these various stages; even for one stage, several persons may be related to it. Main roles are curators, software engineers, instructors, architects, experts, sponsors/authorities, and visitors; the latter ones may be museum enthusiasts, special user groups, tourists, students, etc.

Virtual museums have attracted the attention of many researchers. A search in google scholar with the term “Virtual museums” performed in March 2017 produced 6240 results 37 of them from 2017 and 388 since January 2016. By searching the term only in ACM J. Comput. Cult. Herit., Vol. 10, No. 20, Article 25. Publication date: Month 2017.

Exploring Cooperation in the Realm of Virtual Museums • XX:3

the title, 284 documents are retrieved, 11 since January 2016. On the contrary, searching for “co-operation virtual museums” and “collaborative virtual museums” produce one hit each one: [2] and [23], [35–37] respectively, most of them developed for learning purposes before 2004. When searching without the quotation marks (which means words may appear in any place throughout the document) produces 74,000 results, but examining the first 50 results we found only three documents really relevant for the subject [2] [17] [27].

The previous search shows the subject of collaboration in virtual museums has not been explored as much as it should, despite the various interesting possibilities which were highlighted in [2] already in the year 2001. Therefore, in this work, we would like to focus on collaboration possibilities involving stakeholders with different roles in the process of creation, administration and visiting a virtual museum.

In order to achieve this goal, we would like to apply action research [15] to this problem. This means, to make an intervention and then learn from it. In particular, we have a VM under development: a Khatchkar museum, which is explained later on. Although the final product is not finished or evaluated yet, its design and construction has led us to reflect on the novel services to be provided and the ways to implement them, in particular, given the collaborative nature of the creation and use of a VM.

Therefore, this paper may appear atypical in the sense that a succinct evaluation of an artefact is provided. Rather, the outcome of the paper is the set of lessons we have learned on the problem, which we would like to share and which will allow us or the readers to make another cycle of action research on the subject. In the current stage of this research we would like to focus on the roles of curators, software engineers and visitors providing a virtual 3D environment where curators can arrange Armenian cross-stones, also called Khatchkar, exhibitions collaboratively, engineers can crate them and visitors explore them together. In this scenario, we want to try the various possibilities of collaborations that arise between curators, between curators and visitors and between visitors themselves.

The rest of the paper is organized as follows. Section 2 present related work about virtual museums. Section 3 introduces into the history of cross stones and their metadata and explains the reasons for developing a Khatchkar VM. Section 4 studies the collaboration within a VM. Section 5 discusses the construction of a Virtual Khatchkar Museum, a first evaluation and section 6 presents the conclusions.

2 RELATED WORK

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Virtual environments are valuable media for learning and experiencing the world. Vir-tual museums are non-location based and they may be used for completely stand-alone exhibitions. Moreover, they give a unique opportunity and provide additional tools for learning specifics of physical exhibitions. One of the important components of this kind of systems is that they can provide different collaborative opportunities for different types of visitors, thus making the observation or learning process engaging and effective [2].

Virtual museums are used also for educational purposes in schools. It was shown that building a virtual museum in collaboration enhances learning outcomes of students in Brazilian schools [29]. This latter work was based on the virtual museum technologies de-veloped by Panagiotis et al. [19]. In their paper they describe two applications designed for Herbert Museum and Art Gallery that makes visitors’ experiences engaging and edu-cational. The first one is a mobile application that might accompany visitors and the sec-ond one is a serious game targeted to young visitors.

In their work Barbieri et al. [2] defined multiple rules, called collaborative metaphors, for collaboration between users for exploration of virtual environments. This work shows that cooperation among museum visitors in virtual environments is a very important component for learning and exploring. In addition, they provide an overview of technolo-gies that were popular at the time for building such systems. These included Net2Gether, Microsoft Visual Worlds and other platforms, some of which are currently deprecated.

In our previous works we have addressed the question on how to identify preferable 3D or 2D virtual environments, depending on the types of exhibition components [5], [8]. We also have discussed the question of how metadata and existing metadata standards can be used for the administration, layout, storage, retrieval and visualization of Web-based virtual 3D museum environments [9].

Before referring to the previous question, for the last year we have been working on Web-based virtual 3D museum environments with realistic 3D exhibits, which provide a collaborative platform [7] [6] [22]. We have based the creation of the Khatchkar Museum on these advances. Suzanne Beer states precisely the purpose of virtual museums [28] by classifying them according to the type of image technology, authorship class and museological style. This clarifies the criteria under which the specific virtual museums fall. According to this classification, the virtual museum to be described in this paper is a 3D, with text-based communication (metadata) and shared state. Additionally the ex-hibits in this museum are reconstructed regarding collaborative environments, e.g. meta-data collection, Wikipedia and Google Photo sharing.

The work presented in this paper is motivated by the results of one of our previous projects, the Virtual Leopold Fleischhacker Museum [24]. This museum presents work by German-Jewish sculptor and artist Leopold Fleischhacker, whose sculptures were mainly destroyed or otherwise found in private collections. On display there are 200 photo-graphs with metadata and descriptions as well as 30 reconstructed tombstones. This is an example of a successful implementation of a collaborative platform, which allows not only virtual access to museum, but also to reconstruct destroyed art pieces.



3 ESTABLISHING A VIRTUAL KHATCHKAR MUSEUM AS A BASIS FOR EXPLORING COLLABORATION IN VIRTUAL MUSEUMS 3.1 Armenian Khatchkars

Today a museum does not represent a mere display and presentation of collections but a site for creation of experiences responding to the visitors’ evolving needs and expecta-tions. Storytelling becomes central to the visitor’s experience. Being the first, most es-sential form of human learning [11], storytelling establishes a universal way of communi-cation; and because it invites audiences to fill in the blanks with their own experiences, it helps to set emotional connections, which can be deeper than intellectual understanding [3], [26]. Consequently, objects become close and relevant for visitors, conveying various perspectives of the world [31].

Yet sometimes it is difficult to rearrange the exhibition objects to tell different stories, especially when the objects you want to exhibit are difficult to move and bring together because they are too heavy, or they can be damaged, or they cannot be taken away from their original location (cf. [33] and the chapters written by P. Donabédian). These three arguments are especially true for the Armenian cross stones (Khatchkars).

The UNESCO describes cross stones as follows: “Khatchkars reach human dimensions, 1.5 meters in height, and have an ornamentally carved cross in the middle, resting on the symbol of a sun or wheel of eternity, accompanied by vegetative-geometric motifs, carvings of saints and animals. Khatchkars are created usually using local stone and carved using chisel, die, sharp pens and hammers”.2

Important resources are among other the books Armenian Cross Stones (Khatchkars) by A. L. Yakobson [32], Armenia sacra [33], L’art des khatchkars [34] and Lücke’s PhD dissertation Cross-Stone and reliquary chest. On the iconography of Christian works of art in stone and precious metal in the ´near East´ and ´far Europe´ [39]. The following epochs and styles are distinguished:

Table 1. Khatchkar’s styles and locations [32, 33, 34, 39]Timespan Location Style

6-7th Garnahovit, Akarak, Arich, Talin and Mren

Pillars, rich decoration, wine grapes, crosses crowning the pillars, lower end cut palmetto leaves

9-10th Khacharan 898, 952 Ani, Dvin, Talin

Etchmiadzin 996

Oldest khatchkars in group 1

Space between the arms of the cross are filled with palmetto leaves: Ex.: Haghartsin cross within an elongated oval formed by thin pal-

2 http://www.unesco.org/culture/ich/en/decisions/5.COM/6.1



Haghpat arch 1023 metto leaves.

10-11th

Periods of Caliphates

Sanahin, Artsakh Ornamented cross, vegetative sprouts sur-rounding the cross from above and below and ending with rosettes, borders with squares and triple filament trellis

12-13th

Crusades

Geghard stones carved in 1213, probably by master Timot and master Mkhitar

Haghpat stones carved in 1273 by master Vahram

Goshavank, carved in 1291 by master Poghos

Group 2: crosses under a semi-circular arch, with narrow semicolumns, stylobates, horizon-tally spread palmetto leaves under the cross, larger, more decoration, surrounding double or triple ornamental ties

Apparition of Christ and angels, Amenapr-kich1273

Life tree motif: Cross ends in various forms, umbilicus, stomachs, ties, world globe

Xoran: composite of frame, cross and object be-low the cross like a tabernacle becomes more eminent

14-17th

Mamelukes

Ottomans

Vayots Valley and Syunik

Master Momik at Noravank

Master Kiram at Noratus

Masters Arakel and Melikset

Khatchkars in Old Djulfa, mostly de-structed in 1998

Group 3: full of carvings with wide frames in which crosses in various functions are included, blended with the ornamentation

Group 4: smaller (three and more) crosses, or-ganically included in the ornamentation and blended with it: carvings more stylized and higher in relief, rigid and exact. Carvings bring strong light, shade and plasticity

Group 5: artistic stones. Fine carvings of wind-ing volutes like stalks and almond-like or an-thropomorphous figures

Several intension for erection: tombstone, mon-ument of victory, aim intention apotropaic, landmark, accompanying an holy or civil edifice, commemorative day, decoration of churches, walls, columns,

There is a rich literature on Khatchkars and many image collections on the web [32]. Cemeteries, churches and monasteries were digitized using 3D scanners or photographs. Although there are valuable approaches to classify cross stones and to provide a stan-dardized iconography and epigraphy [34], up to this time a systematic generative tool-supported approach to realize a Virtual Khatchkar Museum using standardized metadata and supporting various visitors’ activities is missing. ACM J. Comput. Cult. Herit., Vol. 10, No. 20, Article 25. Publication date: Month 2017.


It would be helpful to segment objects from their background and to bring a few Khatchkars together in a place in order to compare them, show some similarities or dif-ferences in order to explain their dedication and evolution across time and/or geographi-cal areas. On the one hand, it is possible to do this comparison using photographs. On the other hand, the possibilities a virtual environment offers are much richer and more flexible than photographs. It can consist of a large collection of digital 3D reproductions of Khatchkars, all of them associated with metadata, which can ease their selection for arranging a particular exhibition and for displaying only the information about each stone, which is important for the proposed exhibition. In addition, various scenarios can be recognized for arranging the objects of the exhibition, from open air spaces, to 3D re-constructed monasteries, to traditional exhibition halls (cf. Figure 1). A number of exist-ing 3D-based technologies and interaction paradigms is available to make the experience of “visiting” the exhibition realistic, participative and educative. Using digitized exhibition material gives also the possibility to reconstruct missing or destroyed objects from which there are photographs and combine them with existing ones in the same exhibition. Moreover, facilitating visitors’ ubiquitous access to virtual and augmented tours, muse-ums today exhibit collections that would otherwise be difficult to present.

Typical khachkar formationsand arrangements

Entrance guards - Sanahin, Etchmiadzin

Free standing khachkarHaghpat (Amenaprkitch)

Group of khachkars in a caveHaghpat

Khachkars in Court-yard Sevanavank

Framed Khachkars in building front -Etchmiadzin

Integrated into wall - Geghard

Khachkar(s) in alley to entrance - Etchmiadzin

Basket design+ modern CemeteryNoratus

Khachkars in solid rocksalong stairs, inaccessibleGeghard

Khachkar field + panoramaNoravank

Replica + modern cemetery - Chor Virap

Khachkars as buildingelements - samplesGeghard

Group ofKhachkarsNoratus

Integrated intolandscapeGeghard

Fig. 1. Typical design of khatchkar formations and arrangements

The challenges to create a Khatchkar VM are many. First of all, many stones have only one 2D image, and/or the image(s) is (are) very poor in resolution. Second, if one would want to take new photographs of stones it would be difficult because Khatchkars are physically distributed in a large geographic area, spanning all current Armenia and be-yond. Third, building the Khatchkars metadata is a work for specialized historians. Fourth, developing a 3D VM with the features mentioned in the previous paragraph requires spe-cialized 3D software development (for an example cf. Figure 2). These challenges, then,



show that the effort to develop such a VM is a good collaborative enterprise and an ap-propriate scenario to learn about collaboration in the context of a VM, as mentioned in Section 1.

Fig. 2. Khatchkar field in Noravank, photograph and 3D representation

3.2 Metadata of Khatchkars – How to find metadata of digitized Khatchkars?

In recent years, we concentrated our research on the development of the viable Virtual Museum metadata standard, ViMCOX, in the context of existing standards like LIDO and the realization of the multipurpose system ViMEDEAS (Virtual Museum Exhibition De-signer Using Enhanced ARCO Standard). Smaller editors to design and generate virtual 3D and 2D museum environments or to publish and archive virtual exhibition layouts (Biella et al. 2010 [9]) were realized in parallel.



Metadata concern the following issues:

Encoding for machine readability, data types, processing, communication, exchange and storage

Structuring/Classification: Categories, hierarchies, sets, elements, relations, indexing, referencing, linking with similar items

Naming: Headings, types, values, controlled vocabularies, metrics, multilingual support, (fuzzy) search and retrieval support (ontologies)

Content: 3D scene graph modeling, texturing and lighting, assets, objects, identifiers and various attributes, connectors, metaphorical design

Presentation: Various exhibition environments, user support, tour planning, navigation support, co-curation support, interaction, publication, knowledge creation.

There are several classifications of metadata; most of them address the following cate-gories: Administrative Metadata concern administrative aspects of cultural assets, identi-fication, metadata creation, intellectual rights, discovery and management of digital re-sources (artwork and its metadata) within the lifecycle. More precisely

AppellationValue – Title, identifying phrases Creator of metadata Date created Rights, Rights_holder, Time_span, Link_resource – Information about the holder of

the rights, the start and end date of the copyright, the type of the copyright, a URL with information about the rights and values of a work / object.

Information that helps managing the (digital) resources and the metadata itself. Descriptive Metadata concern cultural assets including exhibition environments, their

information resources, classification, work type, title, locations and time. Data include ap-pellation values, a textual description, characteristic attributes (form of stelae, size/mea-surements, material, inscriptions, pictorial elements, physical techniques of processing, creator, date and motive of creation, provenance, events, modifications/versions/replica, owners, classification and indexing, retrieval link/repository and links to related items)

Use Metadata concern presentation issues, user access and navigation, interfacing/de-vices and interaction, co-curation: enrichment and publication, user statistics.

Focusing on cross stones, descriptive metadata concern the

Size: height with the span 0.6 – 3m; width: 0.5 – 1m; thickness: 0.1-0.3m with some exceptions in width and thickness

General location: in monasteries, churches, cemeteries, near springs, street crosses, important buildings, or important places, in Armenia and the countries around



General time span: cross stones have their origin in the centuries following the Christianization of Armenia and were mainly produced from the 9th to the 18th century with a renaissance in the 20th century up to now

Material: usually volcanic red or yellow tuff or gray basalt Content: structured in rectangular or arched fields on face, sides and back:

Crosses as life trees, floral and ornamental pattern, fruits, inscriptions, feudal families, savior scenarios, Christ’s crucifixion, various animals, miniature paintings, plaiting ribbons on the border

Motif: decorative elements carved into stone mainly on the front side - crosses in a geometric arrangement in various modifications, as a fruit-bearing tree, world as a garden, Christ surrounded by prying men

Inscription: year of origin, title, reference to persons, reason of creation or to the cross

Special iconography: human beings or animals, snakes, wing decoration, birds, cross growing from a life giving center – rosette, triangle

Reason of stone placement: grave stone, funerary monument, commemorative function, thanksgiving, significant event, architectural construction, cross stone at entrance, help in disease, complying a wish.

Excellent photographs and rich metadata are provided and complemented by their codes as it was first proposed by the French engineers and experts Haroutioun Khatchadourian and Michel Basmadjian in their book L’art des khatchkars – Les pierres à croix arméniennes d’Isphahan et de Jérusalem [34]. The oeuvre highlights the icono-graphic and epigraphic corpus of both locations, proposes alphanumeric reference codes to classify the stones with respect to the

• Inscriptions by handling encoding and ligatures, transcription of toponyms, anthroponyms and uppercases to lowercases, abbreviations and logograms

• Typology using a repository of front side partitions, borders, structures, crosses, ornaments, plants, flowers, trellis, symbols, etc.

• Epigraphy using a grammar, nonterminals (epigraphy, formula, complement, dedicating, name, title, patronym, origin, dating, etc.), production rules, and terminals

• Ontology for local neighborhood relations. More precisely partitions concern upperparts (MFnn), sides (MMnn) and bottoms

(MBnn), as well as structures with zero to four side elements (Snn).

Various framings (MCnn), Xoran, i.e. border, cross over object (TXnn), interiors with cross type (MXnn), frames with cross type (MTnn), frames with crosses and attributes (ATnn), typical plate schemes with fixed and varying attributes Axx, Cxx, Exx, Pxx, cross over base ornamental or symbolic element (MEnn), ornaments with simple motifs (MSnnn), complex motifs (MCnnn), linear compositions (CLnnn), arced compositions (CAnnn), centered compositions (CCnnn), cruciform compositions (CXnnn).

The book represents an important scientific progress; however, there is no hierarchical coding of the ornaments and its compositions, no tool support and only a limited variety ACM J. Comput. Cult. Herit., Vol. 10, No. 20, Article 25. Publication date: Month 2017.


of khatchkars processed. Therefore, the repositories need completion: without tool sup-port, image and pattern recognition and segmentation, no automatic type recognition and classification is possible.

As an example, we will study P’alik’s Khatchkar located at Norawank monastery within a group of a dozen stones in pairwise order. The richly decorated cross stone demon-strates an apogee in the creation of Khatchkars during the 13th and 14th century. Among forty eminent exemplars commented by professor P. Donabédian it was selected for the Armenia sacra exposition [33] organized under the patronage of the Armenian and French presidents with nearly five hundred specimen as witness of the Christian culture of Armenia.

Table 2. Metadata

Freestanding, degraded sculptural ob-ject in the large courtyard surrounding the Norawank church-es. The khatchkar field consists of a dozen cross stones ar-ranged in couples. The stone has a com-plete border typ S20. A trellis formed by interlacement of triple yarns/ties with eight superposed nodes on top. Two symmetric compositions right and left, on both sides linked rectangles with 5 x 8 nodes/pearls and trellis with three fila-ments CL03, a braid square with 4 crosses and pearls. Six aligned squares with a rosette and 8 petals MS025 and on the ground an inscription; Inside, a patterned arc over pillars with volutes like a circumferential chamfer frame CL074, a cross with eight leaflets like trefoil MT12/CX042 over a circular trellis medallion ME02 with symmetric orna-ments left (part-ly destroyed) and right showing flowers, palmettes.



Fig.3. P’alik’s khachkar [33], p. 316-317

By the will of God, myself Kukor, son of the great Axt'amar, have erected this cross [to remind] my brother P'alik who, in the middle of life, has ascended to Christ

Fig.4. Inscription over four lines in uncial (majuscule script) Armenia sacra khatchkar 135 p. 316-317, translated by P. Donabédian

4 COLLABORATION IN A VIRTUAL MUSEUMThe realization of a VM goes on in several stages: Establishing, designing, constructing,

running, and operating a VM within its lifespan. Main partners are curators, software engineers, visitors complemented with sponsors/authorities, the crowd, museum enthusiasts, special user groups like instructors, architects, experts. We focus on interdisciplinary collaboration; no contribution to collaboration inside groups is intended. The stakeholders concerned in the collaborative co-curation process encompass the coordination of group building, task allocation, motivation of team members, communication in the context of collaborative evaluation and testing, knowledge generation and problem solving via information processing in the creating and visiting process of virtual exhibitions.

Group members are often distributed across a wide area; they constitute a multidisciplinary, multi-professional team. Individuals have various motivations and goals when working together. Co-curation within the generation process is paired with collaboration during a visit to an exhibition. Sacher et al. [23] explain: “The generated data from collaboration can range from visitor’s annotations or comments regarding specific exhibits up to complete exhibit models and room (re-)designs created in a virtual environment. … Collaboration (in virtual environments) is implemented as users being co-located in the VM, which enables information exchange and awareness of user actions via face-to-face communication.”

Recently, a new metadata standard and new modeling language for virtual museums, the VM and Cultural Object Exchange Format (ViMCOX) has been developed in order to provide a semantic structure for exhibits and complete museums [24]. It combines community contributions to administrative and descriptive metadata with technical and ACM J. Comput. Cult. Herit., Vol. 10, No. 20, Article 25. Publication date: Month 2017.


use metadata provided by the institution operating the museum. This partition implies the following classification:

Level 1: Organizational collaboration Level 2: Descriptive process-related collaboration, i.e. co-curation

Level 1: Communication about the nature of the problem (classification, identifying and describing the problem solving approach, depicting the process workflow: hierarchical description and generative metadata-based process modeling, call for crowdsourcing). Coordination: team composition (team description & parameter selection, e.g., team size and structure, task distribution, crowd participation, motivation, remuneration), evaluation planning, etc. [18]

Level 2: Co-curation activities: Exhibition space design (designing VM, expositions – spatial, metaphoric design, software tools, metadata acquisition, tour planning, interaction design), information processing (created, used, modified), communication/interaction (various forms of communication and interaction between group members as well as persons and items during the whole collaborative co-curation process – formal description, mode, technical parameters like frequency, quantity, reliability, intent).

The collaborative work of promoters, curators, and intended users mainly concerns communication and coordination on level one including motivation, aim, need, team building and further administrative tasks. Sacher [24] suggests the use of a conception matrix linking issues, curators and other groups like team building & experts; room design, installation & architects, software engineers; themes & sponsors; presentation goals & museums’ enthusiasts; administrative tasks & experts. Activities are in detail:

Thematic classification, content conception, motivation, need Team building Reviewing old exhibitions General design consideration – participatory design Artwork selection and maintenance throughout its lifecycle (incl. metadata) Gathering of spatial constraints Administrative tasks: financing, regulations, rights, insurances.

N. Simon [25] quotes four main reasons explaining why institutions engage in collaborative projects: To consult with experts or community representatives to ensure the accuracy and

authenticity of new exhibitions, programs, or publications. To test and develop new programs in partnership with intended users to improve

the likelihood of their success. To provide educational opportunities for participants to design, create, and

produce their own content or research.



To help visitors feel like partners and co-owners of the content and programs of the institution.

According to Ellis [14] in order to support collaboration, a groupware system should provide mechanisms for facilitating communication, coordination and cooperation. As Sacher states in [24], there is a number of different roles performing various activities in a VM during its entire life cycle. In this stage of the work we want to focus on requirements.

4.1 Designing and Planning a Virtual MuseumIn level two as defined above, the major challenges in the collaborative work process

faced by curators and software engineers are collaborative problem solving and in-forma-tion processing. This includes the creation of sketches, drawings, mind maps, story-boards, plans and models with respect to the following issues:

creation of exhibition space designs and digitization/selection of exhibit: it involves the crafting or selecting of room models, buildings and outdoor areas as well as their connectors,

import of metadata instances, collection and positioning of artifacts, interactive/ animated exhibits, content and information,

floor planning and tasks layout, metaphorical design: ground plan, lighting, wall layout, guiding visitors, i.e. navigation aids. Spatial parameters and architecture can influence content and form of the digitized content, thus re-scaling may be necessary,

presentation, publication and dissemination: virtual exhibition/museum (local/web), selection of widgets and input/output peripherals, HUD (minimap), monitor, projector, keyboard, touch, gamepad or other VR devices. Preview on-the-fly utilizing various navigation modes and avatar sizes, exhibition catalog, archiving construction plan, archiving user behavior.

The production stage with tasks of designing typography, appearance and texturing (floor, wall, and ceiling), etc. is also assigned to this phase. Other design tasks like adding viewpoints selection, placement of partition walls, designing interaction, tour planning and the linking of rooms should also be tackled at this time. To support metadata-based content construction, in our application example of a Khatchkar museum we have to build a XML-formatted list of Khatchkars with the following metadata: Name/item, cen-tury, master, style, ornaments at the bottom, back side, text, motif, size, purpose for erection, first location/monastery, actual location, function, surrounding, stone parame-ters, source, etc.

Among the many tools for collaborative software development there is gitlab [30], which integrates a complete workflow from writing down an idea, issue tracking, com-menting, planning, code managing, documentation to testing, reviewing, deployment and feedback management. Tools like issue trackers, wikis, distributed software repositories with version control, continuous software integration servers, and deployment engines



have already existed before but gitlab makes all of these accessible in a single web-based platform.

Gitlab’s features are not limited to software development but can also be used for the configuration management. The built-in user management allows the assignment of cura-tors and software developers to the roles they need to plan, design, code, and evaluate a VM in a distributed and collaborative environment.

4.2 Constructing the Virtual MuseumThis stage concerns the following tasks for software engineers, curators, the crowd,

museum enthusiasts and experts in the context of co-curation in galleries, libraries, ar-chives and museums (GLAM) with the aim of using the inspiration/expertise of non-pro-fessional curators to create exhibitions:

Digital 2D/3D model creation: Digitization and reconstruction of Armenian Khatchkars mainly done by students and anonymous collaborators in a crowdsourcing modality, collection of metadata, artwork description and classification respecting the ViMCOX standard with the aid of experts.

Design of artwork settings: Placement in appropriate surroundings with respect to typical arrangements (cf. Figure 1).

Web-based interface for checking and transferring artworks, metadata and rights.

Various presentation modes using WIMP or post WIMP interaction devices. Attendant evaluation and requirement validation during the whole workflow.

If a VM is seen as a piece of software, then the process of constructing a VM can be seen as a mere software development process. However, there are two quality dimen-sions that must be monitored and evaluated at all times: software and content. In addi-tion, one can also try to see the IT experts as the developers of the application and/or the framework, while the curators are the experts for the configuration or parameterizations of this framework. By means of distributed development and continuous integration/con-tinuous development (CD/CI) it is possible to include the roles of non-experts in the con-struction process.

4.3 Operating the Virtual MuseumThis stage encompasses contributions by various user groups, engaged visitors, in-

structors, and the use of reconstruction software and collaborative tools: Tour selection, construction and publication, metadata-based artwork linking, knowledge creation (af-fecting creator, époque, original-replica discussion, style, material, dedication, inscription etc.), interactive artifact (de)construction, storytelling, collaborative scenarios with shared workspaces.

Commenting, improving and publishing (e-guest book opportunity, evaluating visitor’s annotations or comments regarding specific exhibits,



exhibit models manipulation or completion, considering room (re-)designs elaborated in a virtual environment, publishing individual tours and preferential artwork [10]

Navigation and interaction (proposing, tours, points of interest, interacting with artifacts, changing their geometry, scaling, translation, rotation or changing the internal structure)

Institutional collaboration utilizing standardized metadata from other museums or experts as well as social media integration.

4.4 The Virtual Museum LifecycleThe previous steps are iterated and completed by:

Innovation: Technological progress in template and schema-based generation, content, loan (parts of an exposition, changing artwork context, application context) and supplements

Technological progress: Hardware update, innovative interfacing, new presentation platform – museum instance operated by multiple users, automatic completion of metadata, evolving grabbing technology.

Evaluation: The evaluation can be done at any stage of the VM lifecycle and it should have an improvement goal. Considering the VM development as a collaborative project implies the evaluation can be done at various levels: rule-based, role-based or knowledge-based [1].

The value of visibility and transparency in a social coding environment such as gitlab.com has been scrutinized in [13] by Dabbish et al. The authors found that “four key features of visible feedback drove a rich set of inferences around commitment, work quality, com-munity significance and personal relevance”, which “supported collaboration, learning, and reputation management in the community”. However, it needs further research: how a transparent collaborative platform, such as gitlab, can contribute to a virtual museum lifecycle in the long term.

5 A COLLABORATIVE VIRTUAL KHATCHKAR MUSEUMAs we said in the first section, we will start this long-term research with an action re-

search approach. For this we have already developed an application which implements virtual 3D environment in which curators can set up Khatchkars exhibitions in a collabo-rative way and visitors can explore them interacting in various ways with the curators and other visitors. The application was developed using the Unity framework, originally intended for developing 3D collaborative games. It was chosen given its versatility to in-clude various types of 3D models, the way it allows users to navigate and interact with the created environments (including multi-user features) and the fact that the created application can be exported to web format.

5.1 Preliminary Work: Digitizing the KhatchkarsBefore developing the actual application we had to build a library of Khatchkars which

would be available for curators in order to create their expositions. For the first stage of ACM J. Comput. Cult. Herit., Vol. 10, No. 20, Article 25. Publication date: Month 2017.


the work we selected about 80 stones according to following criteria: they must be easily reached, there is some interesting data available about them, and they should be of vari-ous styles, ages and regions. We used mainly two different methods: the first one was a lightweight approach, in which photographs are taken from the front, back, two lateral sides and from above. Then a graphic model is created “by hand” and the

In order to add a stone to the application’s library, metadata should be provided ac-cording to what was described in section 4.1. There is also the possibility to add text to explain some particular characteristic of the stone. All This information will be used by the application and shown to curators and visitors by request. A ground perspective of this work is that the addition of new Khatchkars to the library remains open to additions during the museum’s lifecycle using a crowdsourcing modality.

Fig. 5. Noratus, Sargisents (Sargis') Family graveyard, original Khatchkars and their digitized versions with the lightweight

method

5.2 Description of an Implemented Application (1)A new exposition is created by inputting the name and a short description about what

is intended to show with it. After this, a main menu let curators to choose the scenario to deploy the exposition. Currently there are five options: a countryside, which has two vari-ants, with or without a church on the background, a wall with niches where the stones can be put, an alley and on a rocky mountainside. These are the most typical setting in which Khatchkars can be found in the real world (see figure 6).



Fig. 6. Access to Khatchkar formations and arrangementsThen, a collaborative workspace is accessed in which the chosen scenario is shown

without any stone. At the left hand side a scrollable menu with all the available stones which have been previously digitized and included in the Khatchkars library of the appli-cation (see figure 7). Curators can put stones in the chosen scenario by dragging it from the icons menu and dropping it on the chosen scenario. They can also re-arrange the original setting by rotating and moving the stones. Various awareness elements have been incorporated into this workspace to support the collaborative work among co-cura-tors. One of them is the set of icons representing each one of them, which is surrounded by a frame of a particular distinctive color. When one curator is working with a particular stone on the scenario (for example moving it) this is highlighted with the color associated to the icon of the curator.

Fig. 7. Curators’ collaborative environmentThe most basic interaction for visitors with the exposition is to click on each stone and

see its metadata. A more elaborated interaction the application features is the implemen-tation of suggested “viewpoints” which can be used indistinctively by visitors and cura-tors. Navigation in 3D environments can sometimes be difficult, especially for beginners, ACM J. Comput. Cult. Herit., Vol. 10, No. 20, Article 25. Publication date: Month 2017.


and they may miss some interesting characteristics of the exposition. In order to help vis-itors not to miss a certain important view of the exposition curators can include points of view in it, by saving a certain location and view orientation in the scene. When visiting the exposition these points of view will be shown as avatars in the form of a human sil-houette (see figure 5) and by clicking on it, the view of the visitor will be “teleported” to that location. Each “viewpoint” has a blog associated in which the author can explain the reason for visiting it and visitors can leave comments and feedbacks.

Fig. 8. Scene with viewpoints shown as human silhouettes

5.3 Description of an Implemented Application (2)For purposes of virtual study and exhibition, the provision of high-detailed and accu-

rate 3D objects are needed and many Khatchkars are fragmented. In recent years, tools have been researched in Computer Graphics and Geometry Processing that help with the digital restoration of fragmented and eroded artifacts based on 3D scans of fragments. In [20], a workflow for virtual restoration was introduced, and in [10], semi-automatic shape restoration supported by crowd editing is discussed. Briefly, it is based on an object re-assembly step that matches fractured surfaces of fragments. A completion step can fill in missing object parts in case self-similarity can be exploited, e.g., relying on object sym-metry. Several tools implement parts of this pipeline and are available freely. The PRE-SIOUS Virtual Repair and Measurement System [21] allows to semi-automatically re-assemble fragments based on detection of fracture surfaces using surface roughness measures, and possible external feature curves (see Figure 9 left). The PRESIOUS Sym-metry-based Completion Tool allows completing missing parts for symmetric objects, based on efficient detection of candidate symmetry planes.

The above described tools cover generic restoration tasks which are highly relevant for damaged cross stones [33], [34]. However, in practice often specific and sometimes sub-



tle problems arise depending on the restoration case, goals and data quality available. A restoration case is depicted in figure 9. Uneven erosion can lead to drastically different quality of fragment surfaces (see the different erosion levels on the left and right side of the object in Figure 9 middle). This in turn may lead to failure of the fragment reassembly stage, as joint detection of fracture surfaces based on a common surface roughness mea-sure could fail. Also, feature-based detection of candidate symmetry planes may give un-stable results, as detection and description of local shape features are expected to give divergent results for different levels of erosion. Another problem is expected for the re-assembly and completion of fragments comprising writing or complex symbols (see Fig-ure 9 right). While existing simple feature lines can be extrapolated to guide the frag-ment matching process, such extrapolation will obviously fail for more complex features like symbols, letters or ornamentations.

Fig. 9. PRESIOUS Virtual Repair and Measurement System [21] (left) and problem cases (middle, right) that prompt for advanced virtual

restoration methods.

5.4 Evaluation of the Implemented Application

A preliminary study was conducted in order to have a formative assessment while the system is being developed. The aspects we wanted to evaluate where the following:

1. Navigation: as most 3D developing environments, Unity also imposes a certain HCI navigation model. It is important to find out if the provided navigation model does comply with the requirements for the Khatchkar museum scenario.

2. Features: we wanted to find out if there are some features are there some features in the current development stage, which users are missing, especially those that could help to enhance the navigation and/or the learning aspects of the application.



The collaborative functionalities were not tested at this stage since they require a more specialized setting. For this, we invited 14 users which were recruited from the American University of Armenia (5 lecturers, 5 students, 1 casual visitor, 1 expert in Khatchkars, 1 computer science engineer, 1 other aged between 18 and 68), to a presen-tation of a first version of the program. During a 20 minutes presentation one of the de-velopers explained the goals of the application and showed how to navigate through the scenarios, move, add, delete Khatchkars, and display its metadata. Then the users tried the software themselves for about 30 minutes, with no other instruction than to freely navigate and try the various functionalities they have seen during the presentation. After this, they answered a questionnaire, which consisted on 5 sections. The first was aimed at collecting demographical information and to ask to what extend they could operate the application. All of them had the possibility to add, move and delete stones, and visit more than one scenario.

The second section consisted on 9 assertions which they had to agree/disagree on them according to a Likert scale. These were mainly assertions related to usability and one to utility. Table 1 summarizes the grades given by the users on a 5-levels scale.

Table 1

Statements Com-pletely disagree

Dis-agree

Neutral Agree Com-pletely agree

1. I managed to orient myself in the museum environment

2 8 4

2. I could approach the stones enough

1 7 6

3. I had no problems to change between the scenes

1 3 3 7

4. I had no problems reading the information concerning the stones

8 2 4

5. I liked the free exploration 4 5 5

6. I managed well the navigation within the museum

2 3 9

7. I changed the place of the items

5 9

8. All in all, I like the virtual exposition

5 9



9. I think I can learn more about Khatchkars with the tool

7 7

Table 1 shows users were, in general, satisfied with the features of the virtual mu-seum. About half of the users, however were neutral concerning the statement “I had no problems reading the information concerning the stones”; a new version of the system should improve access to this information.

The third part of the study explored possible new features of the system. These possi-ble features were just mentioned to the users, but it gives an idea of their desirability. Ta-ble 2 presents the results.

Table 2

Features Yes No No an-swer

A tutorial at the beginning of the museum 8 6

A short slide show with spoken information 8 6

An interactive map of Armenia with the sites as navigation aid

14

To modify or enhance the metadata of the Khachkars 7 6 1

To publish my walk in the museum 5 8 1

More information about the inscriptions 10 3 1

For all but two features, users were nearly evenly divided in favor or against the pro-posed new features. One of the exceptions was the proposal for an interactive map of Ar-menia with the sites as navigation aid; this proposal was unanimously accepted. The other accepted proposal was for “more information about the inscriptions” (10 in favor, 3 against it, and one no answer); this proposal relates to the request for better access to information mentioned previously.

In the fourth part, users were asked to rank new features (1 being the highest rank and 6 the lowest) the six features shown in Table 3. The figures were summed up for the 14 users and the result is shown in the Table. Of course, the most desirable feature would be the one with the lowest score. The last column of the Table shows the aggregated rank. It can be seen that “Creating your own Khatchkar” is the most desirable feature, closely fol-lowed by “Storytelling”.

Table 3ACM J. Comput. Cult. Herit., Vol. 10, No. 20, Article 25. Publication date: Month 2017.


Feature Summed score

Final rank

Multi-user tools 65 5

Grouping Khatchkars 49 3

Ability to recommend similar Khatchkar 65 5

Tour planning 63 4

Creating your own Khatchkar 38 1

Storytelling 40 2

In the last part users could write what they most liked/disliked about the application and what functionality are they missing (which is not mentioned in any of the preceding parts) or what would they like to change. Only 9 from the 14 users used this section to make comments and among them 5 said they liked the idea of developing Khatchkar mu-seum. 6 users said they would like to see more Khatchkars models in the menu (the ver-sion used for the evaluation had only 15 stones to choose from) and three users recom-mended to enhance the graphic quality. One mentioned that the textual information as-sociated to the stones was not easy to read and one proposed to add a functionality which allows user to contribute with new Khatchkar models (crowdsourcing).

6 CONCLUSIONSCollaboration is fundamental to ensure quality and limit costs in building and operating

virtual museums. This paper proposes a two-tier classification of collaborative group ac-tivities framing the creation process and use of virtual exhibitions. It highlights a new in-terdisciplinary project devoted to the realization of a virtual Khachkar museum.

The paper also presents a preliminary development of a Virtual museum which imple-ments most of the activities mentioned in this classification. This implementation will al-low us to conduct further research about the way stakeholders of a virtual museum would benefit from cooperating inside the environment by introducing this tool in the community. For this purpose, we have already made the relevant contacts with experts in the area of Armenian ancient architecture and art, including Khachkars, and we have their commitment to support the testing.

Further work should examine intergroup and intra-group collaboration, the automa-tized co-curation and GLAM as special form of crowdsourcing, create a worldwide moti-vating and remuneration concept, and address the question of how we could measure and rate collaboration with respect to the various quoted forms [12].



ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This work was partially supported ……-

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Appendix 1: Complete metadata in ViMCOX-LIDO XML format:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" standalone="true"?>

<ns1:lidoWrap xmlns:ns5="http://www.w3.org/2001/SMIL20/Language" xmlns:ns4="http://www.w3.org/2001/SMIL20/"

xmlns:ns3="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink" xmlns:ns2="http://www.opengis.net/gml" xmlns:ns1="http://www.lido-schema.org">

<ns1:lido>

<ns1:lidoRecID ns1:source="Armenia sacra" ns1:type”URL”>http://editions.louvre.fr/en/titles/exhibition-ACM J. Comput. Cult. Herit., Vol. 10, No. 20, Article 25. Publication date: Month 2017.


catalogs/sites-countries/armenia-sacra.html</ns1:lidoRecID>

<ns1:descriptiveMetadata xml:lang="en">

<ns1:objectClassificationWrap>

<ns1:objectWorkTypeWrap>

<ns1:objectWorkType>

<ns1:term>Cross stone</ns1:term>

</ns1:objectWorkType>


<ns1:term>Khatchkar</ns1:term>



<ns1:term>Monumental Sculpture</ns1:term>


</ns1:objectWorkTypeWrap>

</ns1:objectClassificationWrap>

<ns1:objectIdentificationWrap>

<ns1:titleWrap>

<ns1:titleSet>

<ns1:appellationValue> Khatchkar in memory of P'alik </ns1:appellationValue>

</ns1:titleSet>

</ns1:titleWrap>

<ns1:inscriptionsWrap>

<ns1:inscriptions>

<ns1:inscriptionTranscription> "By the will of God, myself Kukor, son of the great Axt'amar, have erected this cross [to remind] my brother P'alik who, in the middle of life, has ascended to Christ"

</ns1:inscriptionTranscription>

</ns1:inscriptions>

</ns1:inscriptionsWrap>

<ns1:repositoryWrap>



<ns1:repositorySet ns1:type="current">

<ns1:repositoryName>

<ns1:legalBodyID ns1:type="URL">http://.........................</ns1:legalBodyID>

<ns1:legalBodyID ns1:type="local" ns1:source="ULAN">xxxxxxxx</ns1:legalBodyID>

<ns1:legalBodyName>

<ns1:appellationValue xml:lang="en" ns1:pref="preferred"> Noravank Monastery

</ns1:appellationValue>

<ns1:appellationValue> Monastic complex includes the church of S. Karapet, S. Grigor

chapel with a vaulted hall, and the church of S. Astvatsatsin </ns1:appellationVa -lue>

</ns1:legalBodyName>

ns1:legalBodyWeblink>http://xxxxxxxxxxxx </ns1:legalBodyWeblink>

</ns1:repositoryName>

<ns1:workID ns1:type="inventory number"> yyyyyyyyyyyyy</ns1:workID>

<ns1:repositoryLocation>

<ns1:partOfPlace>

<ns1:namePlaceSet>

<ns1:appellationValue> Amaghu Valley, Vayots Dzor Province, Armenia


</ns1:namePlaceSet>

<ns1:gml>

<ns2:Point>

<ns2:coordinates>39.684061 45.232872 </ns2:coordinates>

</ns2:Point>

</ns1:gml>

</ns1:partOfPlace>

<ns1:partOfPlace>

<ns1:placeID ns1:type="Geo location" ns1:source="TGN">7024040</ns1:pla-ceID>

<ns1:namePlaceSet>



<ns1:appellationValue>Vayots' Dzor province</ns1:appellationValue>

</ns1:namePlaceSet>

<ns1:gml>

<ns2:Point>

<ns2:coordinates>39.684972 45.232695</ns2:coordinates>

</ns2:Point>

</ns1:gml>

</ns1:partOfPlace>

</ns1:repositoryLocation>

</ns1:repositorySet>

</ns1:repositoryWrap>

<ns1:displayStateEditionWrap>

<ns1:displayState xml:lang="en">Badly preserved</ns1:displayState>

</ns1:displayStateEditionWrap>

<ns1:objectDescriptionWrap>

<ns1:objectDescriptionSet>

<ns1:descriptiveNoteValue xml:lang="en">Freestanding, degraded sculptural object in the large courtyard surrounding the Norawank churches. The khachkar field consists of a dozen cross stones ar -ranged in couples. The stone has a complete border typ S20, a trellis formed by interlacement of triple yarns/ties with eight superposed nodes on top, two symmetric compositions right and left, on both sides linked rec-tangles with 5 x 8 nodes/pearls and trellis with three filaments CL03, a braid square with 4 crosses and pearls, six aligned squares with a rosette and 8 petals MS025 and on the ground an inscription; Inside, an patterned arc over pillars with volutes like a circumferential chamfer frame CL074, a cross with eight leaflets like trefoil MT12/CX042 over a circular trellis medallion ME02 with symmetric ornaments left (partly destroyed) and right showing flowers, palmettes

</ns1:descriptiveNoteValue>

<ns1:sourceDescriptiveNote>Armenia sacra Khatchkar 135</ns1:sourceDescrip-tiveNote>

</ns1:objectDescriptionSet>

</ns1:objectDescriptionWrap>

<ns1:objectMeasurementsWrap>

<ns1:objectMeasurementsSet>

<ns1:displayObjectMeasurements>Overall: 164 x 70 x 26 cm



</ns1:displayObjectMeasurements>

<ns1:objectMeasurements>

<ns1:measurementsSet>

<ns1:measurementType>height</ns1:measurementType>

<ns1:measurementUnit>cm</ns1:measurementUnit>

<ns1:measurementValue>164.0</ns1:measurementValue>

</ns1:measurementsSet>


<ns1:measurementType>width</ns1:measurementType>





<ns1:measurementType>depth</ns1:measurementType>




<ns1:extentMeasurements>Overall</ns1:extentMeasurements>

<ns1:qualifierMeasurements/>

</ns1:objectMeasurements>

</ns1:objectMeasurementsSet>

</ns1:objectMeasurementsWrap>

<ns1:eventWrap>

<ns1:eventSet>

<ns1:event>

<ns1:eventType>

<ns1:term>production</ns1:term>

</ns1:eventType>

<ns1:eventActor>

<ns1:displayActorInRole>Sculptor of Vayots’ Dzor</ns1:displayActorInRole>ACM J. Comput. Cult. Herit., Vol. 10, No. 20, Article 25. Publication date: Month 2017.


<ns1:sourceAppellation>http://......</ns1:sourceAppellation>

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