Introduction

1.1 History of documentation and referencing

From the beginning of every civilization, there have been various forms of documentation of history, religion, culture and significant structures, most famous being the rock cut frescoes, hieroglyphics, wall paintings, carvings in stone or stone tablets, and papyrus or rice paper scripts. The main purpose behind documentation was to preserve the development and advancement of a particular civilization. The industrial revolution brought forward new and advanced materials and most of the techniques developed into complex methods. We have seen extensive use of long lasting paper and ink and high-density photographs along with various surveying instruments to accurately document the history, religion, culture, archaeological finds and architectural monuments designated as heritage, the main purpose remaining the same. Today we find ourselves into an era of information technology and this has provided even more complex methods of documentation by introducing advanced surveying instruments like laser scanners, metric cameras, and CAD tools.

1.2 So what is cultural heritage and what does it mean to us today?

Cultural heritage is looked at as something to recognize our roots and our identity, preserve the past and educate the new generation. Without any documentation, there would be no record of our ancestors and cases still exist where many civilizations may have gone unnoticed. It also educates us against the mistakes, and advancement made during a particular era without which it would lead to same disasters and reinvention of the wheel (WWW2). Built heritage, particularly, architectural heritage could be simply described as “the way of living in a particular period of time”. The only way to completely safeguard built heritage, LeBlanc (1993), against uncontrollable catastrophes (WWW1) is by documenting and recording all its details accurately and preserving the documents, so that reconstruction is possible. Furthermore, documentation allows remote and background studies for important restoration work and research work, giving an insight to what could have existed. Thus we can conclude that heritage is very important, and hence the need to preserve it in the best preservable form. The importance of heritage and the need to preserve it will not only remain but will grow with the coming generations. What aspect should be designated as cultural heritage is a matter of debate and based on local, national, and international political decisions and is beyond the scope of this discussion, LeBlanc (1993).

Mission of Library of Congress, United States Government:

“The mission of the Library of Congress is to make its resources available and useful to Congress and the American people and to sustain and preserve a universal collection of knowledge and creativity for future generations. The goal of the Library's National Digital Library Program is to offer broad public access to a wide range of historical and cultural documents as a contribution to education and lifelong learning.” (WWW3)

1.3 Virtual heritage – the emerging new methodology of documenting (Top)

With the information technology wave sweeping across every field, the conservation and archaeology fields too, was not spared. Virtual reality was mostly applied to creating games and widely used for entertainment and scientific visualization, Refsland et al (2000). But a few low-resolution models of heritage monuments were also created in the early periods of the technology. These virtual worlds failed to satisfy the needs of conservationists because of lack of accuracy, and realism, Addison (2000). Fortunately, with great advancement in the world of computer graphics, and increasing computing power even at the personal computing level, today things have started brightening for the virtual reality applications to documentation of built heritage. Thus “Virtual Heritage” consists of various new media techniques used to represent or document any built heritage structure. The new media could be in the form of scanned drawings and documents, panoramic views of photographs, stereograms, 3-dimensional models etc.

1.4 Society and the problem today (Top)

Most of the ancient forms of documentation are straightforward and are in the form of story-telling pictures. Hence they are easy for most humans to comprehend and refer. As the mankind progressed, these techniques were further developed and improvised. These techniques involved usage of advanced tools of that period. A major change was seen during and after the industrial revolution, which lead to development of complex methodologies for documenting e.g. surveying techniques and measured drawings, black and white photography and written textual descriptions. These methods are very efficient in accurately documenting the built heritage, but unfortunately, it has restricted the usage of these documents to specialists and people with formal training. Even for specialists, cross-referencing data became very cumbersome and time consuming as data of different formats automatically tended to be stored disjointedly. Yet these methods are still used as the main basis of documentation technique. The second major revolution, the information technology era, has introduced advanced instruments like 3d laser scanner, metric cameras and laser-controlled theodolites. This has greatly reduced the time required for accurate documentation. Unfortunately this development focuses strongly on development of documenting techniques rather than simplifying and producing new methods of referencing a given heritage document.

1.5 Statement of Problem (Top)

Three issues were thus, clearly identified in the field of virtual reality applications to referencing and archiving architectural heritage. First, the methods used for architectural heritage “referencing and archiving”, are still cumbersome and time consuming, while most of the research work is focused on the documentation and technological enhancement of “documentation” process. There is still no easy method to gather and link together the data of varied formats like the measured drawings, photographs and textual data. Second, conservationists feel unsatisfied with virtual reality systems representing the complex structures with lower degrees of accuracy, rendering the system useless for any archiving purposes. And third, the systems are very complex to use or available only on very high configuration machines, making its usability limited to few people and people with formal training.

Considering these three issues, the purpose of this research was clearly defined. It was decided to create an application for linking together the diverse data set, provide a work-around to give accurate data by using currently available technologies, and make the application available on standard configuration, which was easy to use and required very little training.

1.6 Mission statement (Top)

To provide a referencing tool for “architectural heritage conservationists” and “the general population”, which facilitates easy referencing between existing diverse formats of documents, using new media and virtual reality.

1.7 Aim of the project

The aim of the project can be sub divided into two parts, first is to build a referencing tool for “architectural heritage conservationists” and second is to make an easy to use interface for the tool so that general population can take active role in learning about any heritage of their interest. Most of the present documentation exists in different formats, Haval (2000a), such as:

- “Text” format either as electronic documents or typewritten or stored in databases, describing history, cultural, architectural/ archaeological descriptions etc.

- “Measured drawings” either hand drafted or CAD based

- “Photographs”

- “Panoramic views”

- “3-dimensional models” or “virtual worlds” of various accuracies

- “Audio” format giving vocal descriptions and associated traditional music)

- “Video or Audio-Video” format showing live clips of a particular period of time and associated historical events.

Due to the diversity of these formats, they have been stored separately and referred almost in isolation. The only references between these formats have been through usage of natural language. This is highly prone to unavoidable human errors and these errors cannot be accurately located and eliminated completely. The aim of this project thus extends to eliminate these disparities by creating a database capable of storing and providing relations between all these formats and present them visually through a user-friendly interface.

1.8 Significance of Research (Top)

This research is expected to give conservationists, students, researchers and the general population a new revolutionary, yet easy to use method of referring to various types of information related to architectural heritage.

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