(IN)TANGIBLE HERITAGE(S)

Abstract

The CRAFTED project is a Generic Service project funded by the CEF Telecom grants of the European Commission. CRAFTEd brings together 14 project partners from 9 different EU countries together to work on craft and artisan heritage. It aims to enrich and promote craft heritage through digitisation of cultural heritage objects, enrichment of object data and metadata, use of machine learning algorithms and crowdsourcing for enrichment tasks, and capacity building in the use of these tools for more valuable digital cultural heritage. This paper explores why there is a need for more focus and valuation of intangible heritage in the digital sphere. It goes on to explain the different ways in which the tangible and intangible parts of craft heritage can be captured in a digital cultural heritage object. A rundown is given of the editorial formats that are being used to highlight the historical narratives that run through these digital heritage objects, including the use of digital galleries, exhibitions, blogs, and video formats. The technical tools and methodologies are explained that are used to enrich the cultural heritage objects with valuable additional metadata. Several machine learning algorithms are deployed that perform disambiguation, semantic extraction and tagging. More advanced visual and audio recognition models perform speech-to-text and OCR work that generates transcripts of audiovisual content. We go over how these enrichments are modelled in the Europeana Data Model (EDM), are ingested to europeana.eu and displayed on our platform. These digital cultural heritage objects are ideal for use and re-use by different user groups, including the design and architecture community. Using digitised cultural heritage objects as a starting point for the development of new design project or the reconstruction of historical sites is a key method to keep fostering traditional crafts, embedding them in contemporary projects. This paper concludes by showcasing how digitisation and accessibility of craft heritage can bridge the gap between traditional and modern design, taking the example of the New European Bauhaus initiative as a case study.