Project facts

Duration: 2022-10-01 - 2025-09-30
Project coordinator: SIMAVI SOFTWARE IMAGINATION & VISION SRL
Project consortium: Software Imagination & Vision (SIMAVI), Idryma Technologias Kai Erevnas (FORTH), Massive Dynamic Sweden AB (MDS), audEERING GmbH (AUD), Universitaet Augsburg (UAU), Magyar Nemzeti Múzeum – Semmelweis Orvostörténeti Múzeum (SOM), The National Association of Librarians and Public Libraries in Romania (ANBPR), Stiftung Preussischer Kulturbesitz (SPK), The Balkan Museum Network (BMN), The Heritage Management Organization (HERITΛGE), Eticas Research and Consulting (ERC), German Federation of the Blind and Partially Sighted (DBSV), Queen Mary University of London QMUL
Funding bodies: EUROPEAN COMMISSION - HORIZON EU
Subject areas: AI, AR/VR, Built Heritage, Collections, Digital Heritage, Digital storytelling, Digitization, Heritage Management, ICT tools, Immersive technologies, Intangible Heritage, Museums, Tangible Heritage, Technologies - Scientific processes
Contact: contact-shift@simavi.ro
Budget: 3.527.250

Presentation

SHIFT (MetamorphoSis of cultural Heritage Into augmented hypermedia assets For enhanced accessibiliTy and inclusion) supports the adoption of digital transformation strategies and the uptake of tools within the creative and cultural industries (CCI), where progress has been lagging. It is one of a cluster of six projects funded under HORIZON-CL2-2021-HERITAGE-01-04: Preserving and enhancing cultural heritage with advanced digital technologies.

SHIFT is leveraging advances in Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) to improve cultural heritage access for European citizens experiencing sensory impairment. It aims to enrich the experience of interacting with cultural assets through visual, auditory, and sensory modalities, e.g., using haptics. SHIFT is also developing tools and methodologies to enable contemporary description of cultural assets through language evolution models.

Impacts & Results

Results are thematically clustered into visual-auditory-haptics components:

  • Visual toolkit: using AI and ML algorithms will enable automatic transcription of the cultural heritage content. The toolkit will identify objects and actions, which assist in transcribing the historical depictions at economies of scale.
  • Auditory toolkit: the toolkit will deliver an emotional response to the audience by using advances in auditory synthesizers. Human-like correspondence will minimize barriers to effective interaction by people with sensory impairments.
  • Haptics toolkit: this will enable multi-sensory interaction with digital objects, through a novel approach that delivers haptic feedback emulating the feeling of touch in a digital object.
  • IPR toolkit: To address the challenge of protecting the digital native content, SHIFT will adopt international standards on copyrights and digital protection of derivative copyright.