written by Corinna Kühnapfel

Last month, ARTIS members had an inspiring discussion with another exiting EU project team talking about common interests in making arts and culture more accessible and understood across Europe.

A few words about the VAST Project

The Project aims to bring European values to the forefront by using cutting-edge technologies and creates a digital knowledge base that will include narratives from three areas: theatre (focusing on ancient Greek Drama of the 6th BCE Century), science (focusing on Scientific Revolution and natural-philosophy documents of the 17th century) and folklore (focusing on folktales/fairytales of the 19th century).

Through advanced techniques and digital tools, VAST researchers study how the meaning of specific values have been expressed, transformed, and appropriated through time, and how moral values are communicated and perceived today. Additionally, VAST aims to digitise and preserve stories, findings, and experiences as intangible assets, contextualised and linked to theatrical reproductions and museum exhibits. It consolidates digital artefacts and provides additional context for analysis and semantic evaluation of digital assets and resources of cultural heritage.

At the core of the project lies the VAST Digital Platform. The VAST Platform is a digital meeting venue that facilitates the creation of continuously updated knowledge and assists cultural and artistic institutions to curate, re-use, re-purpose the platforms’ materials, improving their communication approaches and enrich their services.

The platform hosts a significant number of tools and services, addressing the needs of both expert and non-expert users. Using the platform, users can browse through the ‘knowledge graph’ to understand people’s perceptions of Intangible Cultural Heritage artifacts. Museums can reuse VAST methodologies to capture and understand visitors’ perceptions about their current exhibitions. Additionally, the users can find annotating tools, repository of annotated artefacts, proposals for educational activities, teaching modules, as well as the space and the tools for conducting their own survey. Through the platform they will also have access to tools for interactive/gamified activities and to the space for performing activities.

For more information about the project, visit their website: https://www.vast-project.eu/
VAST Digital Platform: https://platform.vast-project.eu/