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The London Charter and its Applicability
Conference Paper · January 2007
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Sorin Hermon
The Cyprus Institute
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Go Sugimoto
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Hubert Mara
Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg
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submitted to The 8th International Symposium on Virtual Reality, Archaeology and Cultural Heritage VAST (2007)
The London Charter and its Applicability
Sorin Hermon
Go Sugimoto
Hubert Mara
Vast-Lab, PIN, University of Florence, Italy
Abstract
The London Charter (www.londoncharter.org) aims to define the basic objectives and principles of the use of 3d visualisation
methods in relation to intellectual integrity, reliability, transparency, documentation, standards, sustainability and access. The
Charter seeks to enhance the rigour with which 3d visualisation methods and outcomes are used and evaluated in the research and
communication of cultural heritage, thereby promoting understanding of such methods and outcomes and enabling them to
contribute more fully and authoritatively to this domain. Our paper will discuss two projects having as a main outcome a 3D product
(in one case a 3D reconstruction of an architectonic feature and the other one a 3D model of cultural heritage artefacts) and how
these are related to the principles of the London Charter. The outcomes of this discussion are exemplary templates to guide future
users of the Charter, while future work is aiming towards a codification for the use of the Charter.
Categories and Subject Descriptors: I.3.6 Methodology and Techniques, I.3.6 Standards I.3.8, Applications
1. Introduction
The London Charter (TLC) is an initiative that started in
spring 2005 [BDN06] aiming at establishing internationally
recognized principles for the use of three-dimensional
visualisation by researchers, educators and cultural heritage
organisations (www.londoncharter.org). The Charter
directly addresses the Cultural Heritage (CH) research
community which investigates Virtual Reality (VR) (and
3D outcomes) as an interrogation of data [HND05] and/or
communication tool or makes use of it. Since its launch
some two years ago, the Charter has been reviewed and
discussed by several institutions and research groups;
however, its applicability was yet to be tested. Therefore,
we have decided to revisit two projects with a 3D outcome
and analyse the applicability of the London Charter; one
regards the virtual reconstruction of a mausoleum, using as
the main source a historic document [NC03], while the
other project [MAR*07] is dealing with the use of profiles
of ceramics, originating from their 3D models, using
methods proposed by [MK03] and presented in details in
[MKN*07].
The first example was an exercise in semi-automatically
creation of 3D models from non – structured data (a
historical text as the single source of information), using
X3D (extensible 3D), [NC03] and its final 3D outcome is
available for consultation at a regional museum. The
second example, regarding a 3D documentation of CH
artefacts, created a series of 3D models (obtained by means
of a laser scanner) of ceramic vases, now archived in a
local museum and available upon request. These models
were built in order to test the possibility of an automatic
extraction of pottery profiles, volume measuring and
analysis of design patterns, useful in their classification
process and as an alternative to manual treatment of the
objects, in case they are fragile.
The projects, as a whole, employed 3D models as a
research tool; the 3D outcome of the first one is exhibited
to the public. In the following paragraphs we will try to
relate TLC and its principles to these projects.
2. The London Charter – basic principles
The London Charter is published and at
www.londoncharter.org. Its objectives are to:
x Provide a benchmark having widespread
recognition among stakeholders.
x Promote intellectual and technical rigor in such
uses.
x Enable appropriate evaluative criteria and
methods to be determined and applied.
x Stimulate debate on methodological issues.
x Offer a robust foundation upon which specialist
subject communities can build detailed standards
and guides.
x Ensure appropriate access and sustainability
strategies to be determined and applied.
x Enable 3d visualization authoritatively to
contribute to the study, interpretation and
management of cultural heritage assets.
In order to achieve these objectives, the Charter defined
eight principles that, according to the authors of the
Charter, should be followed and taken into consideration
when 3D outcomes are used as a research and
communication tool of CH content. These principles are:
x Subject communities – each specialist community
should evaluate the use of 3D visualization
according to their research aims, objectives and
methods, and, accordingly, define their principles.
x Aims and methods – the aim of the project should
match with the tool and the methodology employed,
in order to clarify whether 3D visualization is the
most appropriate approach for achieving this aim.
The documentation of the project should report this
choice.
x Sources – according to the aims of the project and
the context of its use and exhibit, relevant material
used in the creation of the 3D outcome should be
he 8th International Symposium on Virtual Reality, Archaeology and Cultural Heritage VAST (2007)
D. Arnold, F. Niccolucci, A. Chalmers (Editors)
submitted to The 8th
International Symposium on Virtual Reality, Archaeology and Cultural Heritage (2007)
12
considered to be published, together with the 3D
outcomes.
x Transparency requirements – the possibility of
the user to deconstruct and analyse the process of
constructing the 3D outcome. According to the
aims of the project, highlighting between
visualization facts based on imagination, scientific
outcomes and hypotheses should be considered to
be published with the 3D outcome.
x Documentation – the creation of the 3D outcome
should be sufficiently documented, in terms of
explicitly presenting, upon needs, the decision
taking processes that led to the creation of the 3D
outcome.
x Standards – Appropriate standards and ontologies
for documenting 3D visualisation should be
identified at subject community level in order to
enable optimum interoperability and comparability
within and between domains.
x Sustainability – as a 3D outcome having the
representation of a CH as subject becomes part of
the Cultural Heritage itself, measures to store,
archive and access it in the future should be taken
into consideration.
x Access – should be provided, either for
consultation, editing, or change, according to the
aims of the project, in order to contribute to the
wider study, understanding, interpretation and
management of cultural heritage assets.
3. Applicability of the London Charter
In the following paragraphs the TLC will be reviewed,
and each of its principles will be discussed, in the light of
the two test projects briefly presented above.
Subject Communities: as stated in several occasions in
the Charter, the field of CH itself is multi – disciplinary.
Adding the 3D modelling aspect, a 3D outcome of CH
reflects a symbiosis between humanities, social sciences
and technology research, at the research community level.
As such, it often may happen that a 3D outcome that is the
result of a research activity in one field end up being used
in another field, perhaps for completely different purposes.
For example, when 3D products developed in order to
answer a computer graphics problem of modelling are used
as a communication means in a museum, web, etc.
Therefore, it is extremely difficult to assess to which
community a 3D outcome addresses – the producer, the
user or the mediator between the 3D outcome, its message,
its physical environment or its sources.
Taking these reservations into consideration, the subject
communities of the first example, the 3D model of a
historic building (the Mausoleum of the Etruscan king
Porsenna), are apparently various: the research community
interested in the use of X3D, CH professionals interested in
the architectonic reconstruction itself or museologists
interested in the communication performances of the 3D
outcome, since the model, even though it started as a pure
research project, ended becoming an exhibit artefact in a
museum, without editing it and adapting it accordingly. As
such, the subject community is an apparent dynamic
concept, depending on the context where the 3D outcome
is exhibited.
The case of the second example is apparently much
simpler to address, since the subject community was
restricted to computer vision specialists, their tasks being
the creation of a system of analysing profiles of ceramics
using 3D data acquisition. In this sense, all methodologies,
requirements and specifications of standards are well
established, while other specifications were developed
during the project [MK03]. At the other end is the user
community, archaeologists who use these models in order
to extract features of their research interest.
Aims and Methods: in both cases the aims of the
projects were clearly stated: the first one explored the
possibility of creating 3D objects from text descriptions,
using a well-defined method (X3D), while the second
project focused on an exhaustive 3D documentation of
vases, the method being employed being the use of a laser
scanner. Therefore, the visualization method in the first
example was the outcome of the exercise, ("translating" a
text description into its 3D representation) itself, while in
the second example, the 3D visualization reflected its aims
– obtaining a measurable object for features extraction.
Hence, the methods proposed in these projects matched
their aims.
Sources: as for the previous principle, the sources used
matched the aims proposed by both projects. Since both
projects aimed at answering a particular, well – defined and
focused in its scope question, the chosen sources were
clearly selected and presented: the historical text describing
the monument to be reconstructed (first example) and the
acquired 3D clouds of points, representing the 3D
documentation of the analysed pottery vases (second
example). It must be stated that these examples were
sought to test and improve technological methodological
problems; therefore, only one (CH) source was explored,
and, from a CH point of view, there was no need for any
interpretation whatsoever.
Transparency requirements:
The problem of uncertainty and its difficult evaluation
and application was already discussed in the past [HNP06],
SIF*06, OGL07]]. It regards the presentation of the raw
data in a format that is usable for interrogation and an
evaluation of the "reliability" of the 3D outcome made by
its author(s). A visualization of "facts" against "fictions" in
the 3D outcome should promote the concept of
transparency.
In the cases of both projects, all data used for the
construction of the 3D outcome was presented in the same
context as the 3D visualization (first case study), or in the
publication regarding the project (second case study).
While the presentation of raw data together with the final
3D visualization may be only technical and design
problems, the evaluation of data reliability is only in its
infancy, and, despite several solutions proposed in the past,
they are yet to be adopted at a large scale, both at a
technological level and at a conceptual level, evaluation of
uncertainty in general being largely discussed but rarely
applied.
Documentation: the projects presented the
documentation process of creating the 3D outcomes in
scientific publications. Since a standard structure of
recording this process is lacking, it was reported as a
narrative focusing on the main steps of the decision making
process, and omitted other aspects, referred in the TLC as
"paradata" (information about human processes of
understanding and interpretation of data objects).
S. Hermon, G. Sugimoto, H. Mara / The London Charter and its Applicability
13
Standards: this principle refers to subject oriented
ontologies that would best describe the documentation
process of metadata and paradata, and less on technical
standards of the 3D outcome. However, since the concept
of paradata has yet to be properly defined and the metadata
of both projects regard mainly technical aspects, this
principle was found to be most challenging in its
applicability.
Sustainability: both case studies aimed at resolving a
technological problem and employed CH subjects as a case
study solely. Therefore, aspects of sustainability were
poorly taken into consideration. In the first example, a CDROM
with the 3D outcome and additional information
regarding the project and its subject is available for the
visitors of the museum, while the second project printed in
hard copies images of the 3D outcomes, while the 3D
objects themselves are stored in an archive to be accessible
in the near future, by a personalized access.
Access: The 3D outcome of the first example is
accessible in a CD-ROM format and as an exhibit in the
museum. The second project printed hard copies of the
images of the 3D outcomes, and is in the process of
enabling a personalized on-line access to an archive
containing the 3D outcomes. Therefore both projects
offered different solutions to the accessibility problem,
according to the aims of the projects.
4. Summary and Conclusions
The London Charter is a relatively new document, having
the ambitious scope of "establishing internationallyrecognised
principles for the use of three-dimensional
visualisation by researchers, educators and cultural heritage
organisations". The document is the result of a series of
discussions among specialists (see www.londoncharter.org
for more details), which focused on defining principles,
conduits of work when employing 3D visualization in the
research activities of the CH domain.
In this paper we focused on some practical problems: we
aimed at analysing the applicability of the London Charter
in practice. For this, we used as case-studies two projects,
one relating to the creation of a 3D outcome using text
descriptions solely and the other using 3D outcomes for
features extractions. While some of the principles detailed
in the TLC were clearly addressed in these projects, others
were more difficult to approach and implement (see
above). This short analysis just emphasized the importance
of such an initiative as TLC; its aim was to stimulate the
collection of as many as possible feedbacks and remarks
regarding the TLC, in order to sharpen its definition and
applicability.
One of the conclusions deriving from this work is that the
principles of TLC are easily applicable in projects aiming
at solving technological problems. This task is more
difficult when dealing with multi – disciplinary projects,
given the fact that, rightly enough, each discipline has an
epistemology of its own, and a coherent integration at
theoretical and methodological level is difficult to obtain.
Another issue regards the life span of 3D outcomes that
represent CH objects or concepts. These may start as
projects in the technological field, but given their apparent
potential as a communication tool, are exhibited in
museums, without further modifications and adjustments,
according to the new requirements of the 3D outcomes, as
a communication medium. This process makes the
application of the London Charter a difficult task, since, for
example, even if at the beginning of the process aims and
methods matched the 3D visualization, at the end the aims
changed, but not the content and its 3D visualization
method. This is apparently not a problem of the London
Charter by itself, but the ways 3D outcomes of CH are
approached in general. However, since in many cases a 3D
CH object has a "shifting nature" (research outcomes used
in the communication strategies of CH institutions), some
aspects of the Charter's principles could reflect this aspect.
A last comment regards the approach of TLC to different
3D visualization outcomes, which are the result of different
processes, such as data acquisition, using for example laser
scanner, 3D visualization as data investigation tools and 3D
visualization employed in the communication strategy of
CH. While all are 3D "stuff", they have completely
different production pipelines, methodologies, objectives
and uses. Therefore, even if all have as content subject CH
objects, clearer principles, addressing these differences,
would be of great benefit. A future work would be
therefore a revision of some of these principles and some
suggestions of technological applications that can be
applied when addressing them.
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