In/Tangible European Heritage - Visual Analysis, Curation and Communication

Due to a wide range of digitization initiatives, cultural heritage (CH) databases have greatly enhanced access to cultural and historical data across Europe. On the one hand, tangible cultural objects from museums, archives, and libraries have become accessible online and aggregated transnationally by platforms such as Europeana. On the other hand, intangible assets—such as narrative accounts on the lives of artists—have been organized and shared as biographical databases on a national level. While these developments provide an excellent basis for the enhanced reception, utilization, and promotion of European CH, various restrictions prevent the exploitation of the existing data. The InTaVia project aims to overcome some of these barriers with a deliberate combination of research and development objectives. Firstly, it will draw together tangible and intangible assets of European heritage to enable their mutual contextualization. Secondly, it will develop new means of data creation, curation, and transnational integration. Thirdly, it will develop a visual analytics studio to help CH experts and the interested public to better access, analyze, and communicate cultural collections and related biographical and contextual knowledge. Thereby, InTaVia will develop an information portal for the visual analysis and communication of tangible and intangible cultural assets, supporting the synoptic sensemaking and storytelling about European cultural heritage with implications for research, pedagogy, journalism, cultural consumption, and Europe’s self-description in a global context. The transdisciplinary project consortium extends existing work and collaborations in European research infrastructures and national digital humanities projects. The InTaVia team is composed of computer scientists specialized in visualization and computational linguists, digital humanists, social scientists, cognitive science researchers, and historians.