From June 23rd to 27th, 2014, CNR-ISTI hosted in Pisa the Summer School on “2D/3D Documentation for Archaeology” as part of the ARIADNE Transnational Access (TNA) activities.
The main goal of the school was to enable scholars and professionals to endorse and implement modern approaches for the visual multimedia documentation of artworks and archaeological sites (i.e. fieldworks and artefacts), including several innovative approaches to digitize and document our heritage using 3D and enhanced 2D media. Download the programme.
Students learn about RTI
The scope of the TNA and of the summer school was to combine a classical programme based on lessons with a more practical activity where hands-on experience on the technologies presented (both hardware and software) was considered a main component of the school experience. Moreover, we have solicited participants to submit specific problems and test cases they are working with; these test beds were an important criterion in the selection of the participants (the evaluation of the participants was based on the CV and on the quality and interest of the test case proposed). Consequently, the program of the school was designed to dedicate sufficient time to supporting the student on the practical hands-on experience and in developing their proposed case study with the help of the technologies presented in the course.
The selected eleven participants (9 were assigned an ARIADNE fellowships and 2 come at their expenses) were from several different countries (Argentina, Belgium, Estonia, Germany, Greece, Italy, Netherlands, UK) and had a mixed background (in the majority a human science background, only a few holding an engineering degree).
Creating 3D models and records
The instructors were a selection of the researchers of the Visual Computing Lab (http://vcg.isti.cnr.it/) at CNR-ISTI: Matteo Dellepiane, Marco Callieri, Gianpaolo Palma, Marco Potenziani and Roberto Scopigno.
The school started with a self-presentation of the students and of the projects/case studies each of them has proposed. After this introductory step we have planned a first lesson to build up a common language and a common background on basic ICT and visual technology concepts. Then the work was organized with a single day dedicated to each specific sub-topic (active 3D scanning and data processing, image-based approaches for 3D digitization, colour acquisition and mapping on 3D models, RTI images). Other topics, like the issues and technologies enabling the publication and visualization of 3D/2D models on the web, the advanced manipulation of 3D models, and the use of 3D in Cultural Heritage projects were touched different times throughout the five days. All the topics have been firstly presented theoretically, and then practically with some hands-on on real datasets.
The schedule of each day was arranged such that some time was left at the end of the day for the students to experiment the presented topics on their own data (or on test dataset we provided), and for individual question-answer sessions with the instructors.
The last day, beside finishing some still open topics, was dedicated to the completion of the test cases proposed by the students, to the presentation of the results obtained and to a final discussion and wrap up.
The course has witnessed a fruitful cooperation between instructors and students, providing benefits to all participants: the students had the opportunity to be instructed on the CNR tools directly by the authors, in a structured context that included also practical hands-on experiences; the instructors had the chance to witness a number of interesting test cases, extremely helpful to better understand the needs of the CH community and to assess the usability of the more recent tools and technologies.
Although we are still waiting for the formal evaluation forms (to be completed after the school finished), from the informal feedback received from the students we are confident to say that this first edition of the TNA was a success.