The Talking Museum Project

Abstract

In this paper, we present an ongoing project, named Talking Museum and developed within DATABENC - a high technology district for Cultural Heritage management. The project exploits the Internet of Things technologies in order to make objects of a museum exhibition able to "talk" during users' visit and capable of automatically telling their story using multimedia facilities. In particular, we have deployed in the museum a particular Wireless Sensor Network that, using Bluetooth technology, is able to sense the surrounding area for detecting user devices' presence. Once a device has been detected, the related MAC address is retrieved and a multimedia story of the closest museum objects is delivered to the related user. Eventually, proper multimedia recommendation techniques drive users towards other objects of possible interest to facilitate and make more stimulating the visit. As case of study, we show an example of Talking museum as a smart guide of sculptures' art exhibition within the Maschio Angioino castle, in Naples (Italy)

Smart Cities and Cultural Heritage – A Review of Developments and Future Opportunities

“…Smart heritage focuses on adopting more participatory and collaborative approaches, making cultural data freely available (open), and consequently increasing the opportunities for interpretation, digital curation, and innovation. This offers potential and unprecedented access to cultural artefacts and experiences across distances, in which cultural consumers are no longer passive recipients (Amato et al 2013, Angelaccio et al 2012, Chianese et al 2015, Roffia et al 2005, Garcia-Crespo 2016, Yovcheva 2014.…”

A Social Media Framework of Cultural Museums

“…As Kelly (2008) implies, the majority of people who visit museums are collegeeducated or higher which implies that the visitors of museums are most likely familiar with the latest technology usage. Amato et al (2013) points out that in order to improve the visitor's experience in museums through multimedia solutions, many museums and cultural heritage sites have adopted several systems and technologies. In the last few decades, museums have started to integrate their programs with interactivity both for learning and entertainment purposes through technological developments applicable to museums.…”

Content-Based Multimedia Retrieval

“…Moreover, we can distinguish between pure tones where "the instantaneous sound pressure is a simple sinusoidal function of time" and complex tones that contain "sinusoidal component of different frequencies." 5 Complex tones are usually categorized into harmonic and inharmonic complex tones that contain partials with frequencies, respectively, at integer or non-integer multiples of the fundamental frequency. Noise can also be classified according to its temporal and spectral characteristics: for example, stationary noise is characterized by "negligibly small fluctuations of level within the period of observation," broad-band noise has no pitch, white noise equally contains all frequencies within a band, and colored noise has a spectral power function of frequency.…”

“…Another interesting application is introduced in [5] by the DATABENC district. The aim of the project is to customize the system for an indoor museum, providing a personalized visiting experience for tourists (e.g., by designing specific "talking objects").…”