Digitization of Khachkars: Establishing a Virtual Museum in Armenia (DiKEViMA) Achievements: Artwork creation: Digitization and reconstruction of Armenian khachkars Description: Collection of metadata, artwork description and classification Design of khachkar settings: Placement in appropriate surroundings wrt typical arrangements Generation: Generative metadata-based modeling approach to realize a virtual Khachkar museum using ViMCOX standard Presentation: Various presentation modes using WIMP or post WIMP interaction devices Applications: Co-curation, storytelling, collaborative scenarios with shared workspaces, interactive item (de)construction, metadata-controlled artwork linking, knowledge creation (creator, époque, original-replica, style, material, dedication, inscription etc.,) tour construction and dissemination Evaluation: Attendant evaluation and requirement validation during the whole workflow 1) Khachkars, a vivid symbol of Armenian culture The Khachkar or Cross-Stone is a fundamental symbol of Christianity, a symbol of the oldest Christian nation. A Khachkar is a relief sculpture with a variety of floral and geometric motifs, ancient symbols, ornaments of flowers and trees, birds and grapevines, biblical scenes and imagery. The medieval cemetery Noratus presents one of larges collection of medieval khachkars. There is a rich literature on Khachkars and many image collections on the web. Since most of religious sites suffer from limiting the 1
Transcript
Digitization of Khachkars:
Establishing a Virtual Museum in Armenia (DiKEViMA)
Achievements:
Artwork creation: Digitization and reconstruction of Armenian khachkars
Description: Collection of metadata, artwork description and classification
Design of khachkar settings: Placement in appropriate surroundings wrt typical arrangements
Generation: Generative metadata-based modeling approach to realize a virtual Khachkar museum using ViMCOX standard
Presentation: Various presentation modes using WIMP or post WIMP interaction devices
Applications: Co-curation, storytelling, collaborative scenarios with shared workspaces, interactive item (de)construction, metadata-controlled artwork linking, knowledge creation (creator, époque, original-replica, style, material, dedication, inscription etc.,) tour construction and dissemination
Evaluation: Attendant evaluation and requirement validation during the whole workflow
1) Khachkars, a vivid symbol of Armenian culture
The Khachkar or Cross-Stone is a fundamental symbol of Christianity, a symbol of the oldest Christian nation. A Khachkar is a relief sculpture with a variety of floral and geometric motifs, ancient symbols, ornaments of flowers and trees, birds and grapevines, biblical scenes and imagery. The medieval cemetery Noratus presents one of larges collection of medieval khachkars. There is a rich literature on Khachkars and many image collections on the web. Since most of religious sites suffer from limiting the number of visitors or are inaccessible, famous cemeteries, churches and monasteries were digitized using 3D scanners. Their models were published on the web, like Djulfa cemetery in Azerbaijan, Tatev or Haghpat Monastery area in Armenia, made during a recent 3D and digital heritage documentation project at the World Heritage UNESCO site [1].
Hamlet L. Petrosyan, head of the Department of Cultural Studies at Yerevan State University is author of several publications (Petrosyan 2001 [2], 2008 [3]), about cross stones, their iconography and semantic states. A. Oonen ([4] 2015) entitles a short publication “The Khachkar: A Cornerstone of Armenian Identity” and argues: “The cross is arguably the most familiar symbol of Christianity; but nowhere is this iconography as crucial or culturally entrenched as it is in Armenia.” Oonen continues that “Form and complex iconography were necessary for the Arme-nian Church’s survival; qualities such as permanence, stability and grounded faith were perpetuated by the physical three-dimensional embodiment of the cross-stone.” It was stated in
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several publications (Oonen and Aroyo 2015 [5]; Lücke 2015 [6]) that Khachkars have links to other examples of Christian art, the Celtic High Cross and the Lithuanian Kryždirbystė.
Cross stones have on the front side detailed relief, fine sculptures, complex compositions and decorations carved into the stone. To create a digital instance of a Khachkar, we need sophisticated techniques to include the complex surfaces stone structures into a three-dimensional model and a 3D immersive environment that inspires creativity and engagement of the visitors (Sacher et al. 2015[7]).
An important resource is the book ARMENIAN CROSS STONES (KHACHKARS) by A. L. Yakobson. http://art.am/news.php?side=48&lang=eng
The author defines the following epochs
Time Location Style Examples6-7th 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 from Ani, Dvin, Talin, HaghartsinEtchmidadsin 2312
Oldest group 1space between the arms of the cross are filled with palmetto leaves
Haghartsin cross within an elong- ated oval formed by thin palmetto leaves.
10-11th Ornamented cross, vegetative sprouts surrounding the cross from above and below and ending with rosettes
12-13th Geghard stones, carved in 1213, probably by master Timot and master Mkhitar
Group 2: Crosses under a semi-circular arch, with narrow semicolumns, sylobates, horizontally spread palmetto leaves under the cross, larger, more decoration, surrounding double or triple ornamental ties; Lücke: Life tree motif, Cross ends in various forms, umbilicus, stomachs, ties, world globe
Prominent master-pieces in Haghpat carved by master Vahram in 1273 and in Goshavank, carved by master Poghos in 1291.
14-17th Vayots Valley and Syunik, Master Momik at Noravank and Master Kiram in Noratus
Group 3: full of carvings with wide frames in which crosses in various functions are included, blending with the ornamentationGroup 4: (Three) smaller crosses, organically included in the ornamentation and blended with it: carvings more stylized and higher in relief, rigid and exact. Carvings bring strong light and shade and plasticityGroup 5 Artistic stones: Fine carvings of winding volutes like stalks and almond-like figures anthropomorphous figures (Djulfa)
Khachkar in the village of DseghNoratus Family gravestones(Sargis’ and Artipeks), created by masters Arakel and Melikpet
Current Location: Amaghu Valley, Vayodz Dzor Province, Armenia
Latitude & Longitude 39.684061°N 45.232872°E
Metadata Khachkar 1
Current Location:
Longitude/latitude
Amaghu Valley, Vayodz Dzor Province, Armenia
39.684061°N 45.232872°E
Scenario Freestanding, sculptural object at Noravank Monastery Complex
Setting Narrow gorge
Type of landscape: Mountain
Accessibility: Difficult
Master's name Unknown
Category Standard
Production Period (khachkar): 13th century
Subject/Motive for erection: Erection/Dedication Date: -
Condition of preservation:Bad: the upper part/the cornice of the khachkar and the bottom right part are partially broken.
Inscription/Text: One part of the text is missing because of the broken part
Important features/construction:
The cross is carved in a niche, and the two wings have two triple-loops. The middle loop is stretched and has a form of a flower bud that gives a blossoming and vegetative appearance to the cross. The two little crosses on the right and the left parts of the central cross, symbolize the two bandits crucified with the Christ. Two pomegranates, carved beneath the two wings stimulate the Christian allegory of fruits: under the sour rind, there are sweet seeds (Petrosyan, H.2008). Another interesting component of khachkar is the rosette which might be a modified version of Armenian eternity sign. Rosette is carved within a beautifully decorated circle with vegetative ornaments (mainly palm leaves). The palm décor under the central cross is situated on the rosette, and it appears in the form of snakes. The snakes surround the two parts of the main cross symbolizing symbolizes the defense of the garden-paradise (paradise-tree) (Petrosyan H, 2008). The right and the left sides of the stone represent vertically located decorations. From the bottom of the stone, beneath the inscription, the decorations represent five flowers within a foursquare which are connected with the relief line, foursquare with a swastika and a lace ornaments on both right and left sides. The infinity of the relief line visibly ensures the semblance of eternity and completeness of the composition (Petrosyan H. 2008).
Within the DiKEViMA project we would like to develop a virtual khachkar museum in which curators as well as laymen may arrange their own personalized exhibitions taking objects which are originally located in different places and putting them together in a simulated virtual environment to convey a particular message to the audience. This can have a double educational effect, for the one who prepares the exhibition as well as for the visitor of that exhibition. Another interesting characteristic of this project will be the crowdsourcing aspect, which proved to be of great impact in a previous project.
2) What to expect from a digital Khachkar museum
One of the most interesting fascinating characteristics of museums is that they are storytellers by nature (Bedford 2001 [13]; Johnsson 2006 [19]). In order to make objects accessible to visitors, exhibitions provide interpretations through combinations of meaningfully arranged mediators (Hooper-Greenhill 1999 [18]). During the second half of the twentieth century, exhibitions were transformed into more explicit spatial narratives. Exhibits were arranged thematically; and the museum’s discourse may have presented different points of view (Twiss-Garrity et al. 2008 [26]). At the beginning of the twenty-first century, the influence of digital technologies and social media puts information (the narrative) before objects; explores storytelling on mobile platforms (Galani et al. 2011 [16]; Hansen et al. 2012 [17]; Lombardo & Damiano 2012 [20]); and pushes museums to make exhibitions not only personalized and interactive, but also open to visitors’ opinions and contributions (Pujol et al. 2013 [22], [23]). Today a museum does not represent a mere display and presentation of collections but a site for creation of experiences that respond to their visitors’ evolving needs and expectations, and storytelling is central to the visitor experience. As the first, most essential form of human learning (Bruner 1990 [14]), storytelling establishes a universal way of communication; 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 (Bedford 2001 [13]; Springer et al., 2004 [24]). As a consequence, objects become closer and more relevant for visitors, conveying different perspectives of the world (Twiss-Garrity et al. 2008 [26]).
But 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, they can be damaged, or they cannot be taken away from the original place they are located. These three arguments are true for the Armenian cross stones (Khachkars). It would be difficult to bring a few of them together in a place in order to compare them, show some similarities or differences in order to explain their evolution across time and/or geographical areas. Of course, it is possible to do this, using photographs. However, the possibilities that a virtual environment offers are much more rich and flexible. It can consist of a large collection of digital 3D reproduction of Khachkars, 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. Also various different scenarios can be offered for
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arranging the objects of the exhibition, from open air spaces, to 3D reconstructed monasteries, to traditional exhibition halls. All existing 3D-based technologies and interaction paradigms can be used to make the experience of “visiting” the exhibition more 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, museums today exhibit collections that would otherwise be difficult to present.
Such an environment could not only be used by curators to assemble exhibitions to tell different stories in a flexible and inexpensive way and users to visit them, but we can also use it for learning purposes according to constructivist learning theories. According to this theory, learners learn by constructing artifacts (Vaganou [27], Vygostky 1978 [28]). Further, studies in education and human computer interaction (HCI) have shown how feelings of presence in mediated environment influence users’ attitudes and evaluations toward content and services, leading them to interpret the information more likely than that obtained through their own direct experience (Winn and Jackson 1999 [29]). Education research reveals that by allowing learners to interact directly with information from a first-person perspective, 3D interactive environments can bridge the gap between experiential learning and information representation (Jonassen et al. 1999 [31]), which in turn may enhance learning by providing more opportunities for engagement (Dickey 2005 [32]). Central to this theoretical perspective is the idea that knowledge is constructed not transmitted, and that learners play an active role in the learning process (Duffy and Cunningham 1996 [30]), especially when they have opportunities for exploring and manipulating the learning environment (Dickey 2005 [32]). Several authors have argued that immersive environments can support constructivist learning since they allow learners to control content, sequences and learning strategies; learners thus can create their own discovery activities that encourage diverse thinking and problem representations, all of which help stimulate intrinsic motivation.
3) Previous work
As preliminary work for this project proposal we can present the Virtual Leopold Fleischhacker Museum, a joint-project initiated by Prof. Dr. Michael Brocke, director of the Salomon Ludwig Steinheim-Institut in Essen and the University of Duisburg- Essen (Sacher et al. 2013 [8]). The museum depicts the life and work of the German-Jewish sculptor and artist Leopold Fleischhacker. On display are 200 photographs with metadata and descriptions as well as 30 reconstructed tombstones. The exhibition space is organized into 10 thematic areas that span across 13 rooms and one large outdoor area in style of an Ashkenazic cemetery. The German-Jewish sculptor and artist Leopold Fleischhacker (1882-1946) created busts, medallions, insignias, monuments, memorial tablets and more than 250 tombstones located in cemeteries in the German Rhine-Ruhr area. The majority of Fleischhacker’s artworks were destroyed or are scattered in private collections and are no longer accessible. Thus, the Steinheim-Institut and the Chair Computer Graphics, Digital Image Processing, Scientific Computing at the University of Duisburg-Essen decided to develop a virtual museum depicting the life and work of Leopold Fleischhacker. Most of this work was provided by volunteers and submitted online.
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The impact of the crowd was indispensable. Volunteers contributed work to the extent of about three man-years in different categories of tasks:
• Creating and enhancing digital 3D exhibits and context, mostly tombstones and medals, setup of rooms and outdoor areas, physical support for information, navigation aid etc.
• Developing and completing the metadata standard, checking new sorts of metadata, realizing room and landscape design
• Defining tours, acting as test persons, and contributing to information material and catalogues.
Within the PRASEDEC project between the universities of Duisburg-Essen (UDE) and of Chile (UCH) a memorandum of cooperation was signed by both rectors and the dean of the Faculty of Engineering at Duisburg in 2013 and activities in the field of Smart Museums were carried out together with Prof. Nancy Hitschfeld, her students and Prof. Baloian. A versatile landscape generator with X3D file output was analyzed in a master course and the students have developed typical outdoor environments which can receive various artwork, e.g., cross stones in the ongoing project.
4) Impact of crowdsourcing and co-curating in building virtual museums
It is well known that people have contributed with hundred and hundred millions of hours to crowdsourcing activities on social platforms impacting social interaction and Wikipedia projects installing new forms of content fostering, knowledge generation, and problem solving, that complements well-known practices of collaboration and co-creation. It is quite natural that Galleries, Libraries, Archives and Museums (GLAMs) try to explore the potential of crowdsourcing to develop new models of participation (Oonen and Aroyo 2011 [4]). They identify critical challenges to implement functional and successful deployment of crowdsourcing in the digital content life cycle related to semantic web and linguistic techniques as well as to quality of data. In a recent paper (Biella et al. 2015 [9]) we explore how crowdsourcing and co-curation activities can be used in virtual museums (VMs) by creating and visiting virtual exhibits in various use cases. The main goal of this proposed extension of virtual museums is to establish a taxonomy of various sub-tasks in digital co-curation activities provided by the crowd of interested people and to count on the needed tool support and advice by curators and software engineers.
Colfi et al. (2015 [15]) provides an overview of key issues that are related to social and cooperative interactions—particularly around the design and use of technology—at heritage sites that have emerged in CSCW and that involve the conduct and the activities of visitors, the design and evaluation of interactive installations for guidance and access, and the creation of novel artistic performances and interactions with exhibits (cf. also Taxén 2004 [25])
Digital curation (e.g., Digital Curation Center: (http://www.dcc.ac.uk/) is the maintenance of digital research data throughout its lifecycle: re-usability of metadata, surrogates and other media or digital assets. This includes the development of digital repositories and, more importantly, the
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definition of guidelines and workflow for purposes such as digitization, documentation, presentation, transfer and preservation (interoperability, encoding/formats, standards, vocabularies, tool chains, services) as well as the transformation and combination of artworks to create new instances. Challenges in digital curation include documenting provenance and applying digital rights management (DRM), for example, transfer of ownership. Using content produced by crowdsourcing or by co-curation projects requires an appropriate online platform that eases the transformation of 3D models and metadata into the right formats and support the volunteers with curating tools and standard sheets for metadata following international standards.
In recent years, we concentrated our research on the development of a viable VM standard, ViMCOX, in the context of existing standards like LIDO, the realization of the multipurpose system ViMEDEAS (Virtual Museum Exhibition Designer Using Enhanced ARCO Standard) and smaller editors to design and generate virtual 3D and 2D museum environments or to publish and archive virtual exhibition layouts (Biella et al. 2012 [9]).
There are three important stages of supporting curators in building expositions and visitors in exploring VMs through crowdsourcing:
• Co-curating: Online creation or enhancement of digital 2D/3D exhibits and contributing metadata
• Supporting visitors as they select and publish tours on the museum’s platform, navigate in the 3D environment and interact with exhibits
• Discussing additional content and creating appropriate context using an electronic guestbook. Visitors are invited to use their smartphones to take photos and comment on the exhibit. This material is used to enhance the exhibit.
5) Technical realization of the museum – next steps
In the next few months we will work out a schedule and a call for supporting the realization of the Khachkar virtual museum and its artwork (cf. Figure 1). The schedule concerns the following tasks for software engineers, curators and the public:
• Establishing a list of khachkars and the following metadata: Name/item, century,master, style, ornaments at the bottom, back side, text, motif, size, motif for erection, first location/monastery, actual location, function, surrounding, stone parameter, source
• Creation of digital 3D models, e.g., using 3D Kinect, other Laser scanners, 2D pictures, grid generation via ReconstructMe or Blender, applying texturing and shading. For modern 3D scanning see (NVIDIA and Artec 2015 [11], 3D scanning [12])
• Alternative approaches could be used: Internet services, e.g., Arc 3D web service (www.arc3d.be/), the proprietary 123D Catch from Autodesk (www.123dapp.com/catch) offer 3D digitization using modern smartphones
• Providing metadata respecting XML-based standards (cf. code example and the end of the proposal)
• Proposing a web-based interface for checking and transferring the model, rights and metadata
• Metadata and historical and cultural context knowledge is collected to be proposed to the visitor when exploring these reconstructions
• Appropriate surroundings to receive and highlight the khachkars. A general landscape generator was developed to create outdoor areas with typical vegetation
• Assembling digital object and surroundings in an outdoor - creating the complete virtual museum.
6) Initial members of the project consortium
The project is planned and directed by members of the DCC (Prof. Baloian, Prof. Hitschfeld) at the University of Chile and the University of Duisburg-Essen (Prof. Luther, Dr. Biella), NN of the American University of Armenia. We are confident that we could provide artwork, metadata and historical knowledge and carry out the project with the help of our students, engaged volunteers and the support provided by local experts, members of the German-Armenian Society (Giorgio Bavaj, member of managing board DAG), by museum experts (Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Becker, Aachen) and access to existing material kindly offered by the Research on Armenian Architecture organization RAA, his president Samvel Karapetyan and Jora Manoucherian (president of RAA/US). We plan to engage also students of the American Unversity of Armenia for fieldwork.
2. Petrosyan, H.: The Khachkar or Cross-Stone. In Levon Abrahamian and Nancy Sweezy (eds.): Armenian Folks, Arts, Culture, and Identity. Bloomington, Indiana University Press 2001, 60-70. http://www.khachkar.am/en/
3. Petrosyan, H. L.: Khachkars (Armenian Cross-Stones), Origin, Functions, and Semantics. (In Armenian 2008)
4. Oomen, A.: The Khachkar: A Cornerstone of Armenian Identity, (2015).theculturetrip.com/europe/armenia/articles/the-khachkar-a-cornerstone-of-armenian-identity/
5. Oomen, J., Aroyo, L.: Crowdsourcing in the Cultural Heritage Domain: Opportunities and Chal-lenges. C&T '11 Proceedings of the 5th International Conference on Communities and Technologies, pp. 138-149, ACM New York, NY (2011)
6. Lücke, Ursula, M.: Ornamentik Kreuzstein & Reliquienschrein Zur Ikonographie christlicher Steinmetz- und Edelmetallarbeiten im 'nahen Osten' und 'fernen Europa‘ http://opus.uni-lueneburg.de/opus/volltexte/2015/14356/pdf/15_08_21_Luecke_Promo_Veroef_k.pdf
7. Sacher, D., Weyers, B., Torsten W. Kuhlen, T. W., and Luther, W.: An Integrative Tool Chain for Collaborative Virtual Museums in Immersive Virtual Environments. 21st International Conference, CRIWG 2015, Yerevan, Armenia, September 22-25, 2015, Proceedings LNCS 9334 Springer, pp. 86-94 (2015)
8. Sacher, D. et al.: The Virtual Leopold Fleischhacker Museum, (2013). Available athttp://mw2013.museumsandtheweb.com/paper/the-virtual-leopold-fleischhacker-museum/
9. Biella, D., Sacher, D., Weyers, B., Luther, W., Baloian, N., & Schreck, T.: Crowdsourcing and Knowledge Co-creation in Virtual Museums. 21st International Conference, CRIWG 2015, Yerevan, Armenia September 22-25, 2015, Proceedings LNCS 9334 Springer, pp. 1-17 (2015)
10. Biella, D., Luther, W., Sacher, D.: Schema Migration into a Web-based Framework for Generating Virtual Museums and Laboratories. 18th International Conference on Virtual Systems and Multi-media (VSMM) 2012, pp. 307-314, IEEE Press, Milan (2012)
11. NVIDIA and Artec bring 3D content to life in Armenian monasteryhttp://www.artec3d.com/news/nvidia-and-artec-bring-3d-content-life-armenian-monastery
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34 (2001). doi:10.1111/j.2151-6952.2001.tb00027.x14. Bruner, J. S.: Acts of Meaning. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 208p (1990)15. Ciolfi, L., Bannon, L. J. & Fernström, M. Visitors’ Contributions as Cultural Heritage: Designing
for Participation. In J. Trant & D. Bearman (eds.). International Cultural Heritage Informatics Meeting (ICHIM07). Toronto, Canada: Archives & Museum Informatics (2007)
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17. Hansen, F. A., Kortbek, K. J. & Grønbæk, K.: Mobile Urban Drama: interactive storytelling in real world environments. New Review of Hypermedia and Multimedia 18(1–2), 63–89 (20012); doi:10.1080/13614568.2012.617842.
18. Hooper-Greenhill, E. (ed.): The Educational Role of the Museum (Leicester readers in museum studies). London, UK: Routledge, p. 364 (1999)
19. Johnsson, E.: In C. Adler (ed.): Telling tales. A guide to developing effective storytelling program-mes for museums. London, UK: London Museums Hub, Museum of London, p. 36 (2006)
20. Lombardo, V., Damiano, R.: Storytelling on mobile devices for cultural heritage. New Review of Hypermedia and Multimedia 18(1-2), 11–35 (2012); doi:10.1080/13614568.2012.617846.
21. Othman, M. K.: Measuring Visitors’ Experiences with Mobile Guide Technology in Cultural Spaces. The University of York (2012)Available at http://etheses.whiterose.ac.uk/4067/1/MK_OTHMAN_Thesis_PhD.pdf
22. Pujol, L., Roussou, M., Poulou, S., Balet, O., Vayanou, M. & Ioannidis, Y.: Personalizing interact -tive digital storytelling in archaeological museums: the CHESS project. In G. Earl, T. Sly, A. Chrysanthi, P. Murrieta-Flores, C. Papadopoulos, I. Romanowska, & D. Wheatley (eds.): Archae-ology in the Digital Era. Papers from the 40th Annual Conference of Computer Applications and Quantitative Methods in Archaeology (CAA). Southampton, UK, March 26-29, 2012: Amsterdam University Press (2013). Available at http://dare.uva.nl/cgi/arno/show.cgi?fid=516092
23. Roussou, M., Katifori, A., Pujol, L., Vayanou, M. & Rennick-Egglestone, S. J.: A Life of Their Own: Museum Visitor Personas Penetrating the Design Lifecycle of a Mobile Experience. In CHI 2013 Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing Systems – CHI EA ’13 . New York, New York, USA: ACM Press, 547–552 (2013). doi:10.1145/2468356.2468453.
24. Springer, J., Kajder, S. & Borst Brazas, J.(2004). Digital Storytelling at the National Gallery of Art. In D. Bearman & J. Trant (eds.). Museums and the Web 2004. Arlington, VA, USA: Archives & Museum Informatics (2004)Available at http://www.museumsandtheweb.com/mw2004/papers/springer/springer.html
26. Twiss-Garrity, B. A., Fisher, M. & Sastre, A.: The art of storytelling: enriching art museum exhibits and education through visitor narratives. In J. Trant & D. Bearman (eds.). Museums and the Web 2008. Montreal, Quebec, Canada: Archives & Museum Informatics (2008)
27. Vayanou, M., et al.: Authoring Personalized Interactive Museum Stories. In A. Mitchell (ed.). The Seventh International Conference on Interactive Digital Storytelling (ICIDS 2014), LNCS 8832. Springer International Publishing Switzerland, 37–48 (2014)
28. Vygotsky, L.: Social constructivism. Mind in Society (1978)29. Winn, W., & Jackson, R.: Fourteen Propositions about Educational Uses of Virtual Reality.
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tion. Handbook of research for educational communications and technology, 170-198 (1996)31. Jonassen, D. H.: Designing constructivist learning environments. In C. M. Reigeluth (Ed.),
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Fig. 1. Tombstone and Cross stones in the outside area (On the left: Rosa Gompertz Courtesy M. Karnuth; on the right: Kecharis, cross stones in typical landscape)
7. How to find metadata of digitized Khachars?In recent years, we concentrated our research on the development of a viable VM standard, ViMCOX, in the context of existing standards like LIDO, the realization of the multipurpose system
ViMEDEAS (Virtual Museum Exhibition Designer Using Enhanced ARCO Standard) and smaller editors to design and generate virtual 3D and 2D museum environments or to publish and archive virtual exhibition layouts (Biella et al. 2012 [10]).
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 categories:
A) Administrative MetadataConcern administrative aspects of cultural assets, identification, metadata creation, intellectual rights, discovery and management of digital resources (artwork and its metadata) within the lifecycle 1) AppellationValue – Title, identifying phrases2) Creator of metadata3) Date created4) 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 in-formation about the rights and values of a work / object.
5) Information that helps managing the (digital) resources and the metadata itself B) Descriptive Metadata
Concern cultural assets including exhibition environments, their information resources, classification, work type, title, locations and time with appellation values, a textual description, characteristic attributes (form of stelae, size/measurements, 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)
C) Use Metadata Concern presentation issues, user access and navigation, interfacing/devices and interaction, co-curation: enrichment and publication, user statistics.
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Known khachkars, cited in literature and digitized by us (cf. citation with figure and number of picture on BSCW server). This is up to this moment the only way to harvest metadata
Jurgis Baltrusaitis and Dickran Kouymjan: Julfa on the Arax and its Funerary MonumentsIn Armenian studies/Etudes arméniennes
Three crosses motif Djulfa 1556 and replica EtschmiadsinStone is structured into zones top, center, back, border, ….Top crossesRosetteBorderFabulous animalsFabulous animals
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CIMG 2320
Etchmiadzin and Fig 31 DjulfaCIMG 2335 and https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armenischer_Friedhof_%28Culfa%29
Various examples of Khachkars in Djulfa are cited in Jurgis Baltrusaitis and Dickran KouymjanDjulfa on the Arax and its Funerary MonumentsArmenian studies in memoriam Haig Berberian in Memoriam Haig Berberian, Dickran Kouymjian, Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation 1986Djulfa was in 1581 a florescence town with 40 000 inhabitants and 14000 houses, 10 000 gravestones
Djulfa is situated near a stone bridge that crosses the Arax river107 illustrations from Djulfa
http://armenianhouse.org/aivazyan-a/jugha/illustrations-01-35.htmlhttp://armenianhouse.org/aivazyan-a/jugha/illustrations-36-72.htmlhttp://armenianhouse.org/aivazyan-a/jugha/illustrations-73-107.htmlWe have to identify our digitized examplesDjulfa and Etchmiadzin2341 and Fig 20. Baltrusaitis2320 and Lücke 4.15 Julfa: 1602
Stop 13: Sargisents (Sargis') Family graveyard Five finely carved khachkars, resting upon a single pedestal made of four blocks of stone situated in the north-western part of the cemetery. Khachkars are always looking into the same direction, the front side west, the backside east
A. Cornice: “Let this Holy Cross intercede for Sargis. Master Kiram. 1602”B. Cornice: “Let this Holy Cross intercede for Khonzar”C. Cornice: “Let this Holy Cross intercede for Grigor”D. Cornice: “Let this Holy Cross intercede for Goch”E. Cornice: “Let this Holy Cross intercede for…”http://www.armenianheritage.org/en/monument/Noratus/347:The most important khachkar masters are the carvers Avanes, Mkrtich, Meliqset, Kiram, Nerses, Khachatur the mason and Khabib. Another is Kharib, who created the exquisite S. Kristapor [St. Christopher] Khachkar, now housed at the State History Museum in Yerevan.
http://www.armenianheritage.org/en/monument/Noratus/347Atipeks FamilyImage 17 pedestalThese khachkars were digitized in our model.
Inscriptions from Noravank:https://books.google.de/books?id=mp_IR50_gXMC&pg=PA813&lpg=PA813&dq=suren+salumyan&source=bl&ots=Dd12-3TotI&sig=EW9dujgnIL2fdQCzNsHyYHMI7P4&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjmlerT4sPPAhUFiSwKHX1YB6MQ6AEIIDAA#v=onepage&q=suren%20salumyan&f=false
Michael Stone: Further Armenian inscriptions from NoravankOrientaliALovaniensiaAnalectaCollected by Michael StoneApocrypha, Pseudepigrapha, and Armenian Studies Vol IIPeetersLeuven 2006Here we have to identify the Khachars onsite whose inscriptions are translated.
