Senior Researcher of Digital Content Research Center of Tong Qi Tencent Research Institute
Cultural heritage is a common treasure of humanity. Because of its rarity, fragility and non-renewable nature, the digital preservation of heritage is an inevitable trend. The fire at Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris in 2019 once again sounded the alarm for the world. Thankfully, Notre Dame de Paris has extremely detailed digital scans, and games like Assassin's Creed have carefully modeled it in 3D, providing a prerequisite for restoration. In a way, digital technology has become the hope that Notre Dame will "live".
Heritage and cultural relics are the golden business card of the country and the spiritual blood of the nation, and it has become a new issue of the times to make cultural relics, heritage and writing come alive through innovative ways and technical means. Entering the "14th Five-Year Plan", the five-year plan for the field of cultural relics was upgraded to a national-level special plan for the first time, and the importance of cultural relics protection and scientific and technological innovation was specially emphasized at the national level. The "14th Five-Year Plan for the Protection of Cultural Relics and Scientific and Technological Innovation" deploys key tasks such as building a large database of national cultural relics resources and building a cultural relics scientific and technological innovation system that deeply integrates production, education and research, vigorously promotes the vitality of cultural relics, and promotes the full integration of cultural relics protection and utilization into economic and social development. [1] Although the state has made top-level design and macro planning, the corresponding specific landing situation still needs to be strengthened. How to make cultural relics and heritage come alive requires the participation of more social forces, diversified cooperation, and different experiences.
As the world's most influential digital culture platform, Google Arts and Culture (hereinafter referred to as GAC) has a lot to learn from as the world's most influential digital culture platform, as a global super museum and digital heritage library, and its creative use of digital technology and the activation of cultural heritage and art.
Although there have been sporadic explorations in China, but China does not yet have a platform similar to the scale and influence of GAC, if we can break through the barriers of time and space, create a super digital heritage platform, with the help of the latest technology, more diversified ways to promote the vitality of traditional culture, build a digital chronicle of Chinese civilization, cultural heritage library and even cultural relics metacosm, and carry out holistic, systematic, global, digital exhibitions, then this platform can become part of The soft power of Chinese culture, to achieve heritage, The purpose of cultural relics to live will also further promote the development and integration of culture and science and technology.
Technology as the core to create global impact:
The evolution of GAC
GAC, formerly known as the Google Art Project (GAP), is an art platform launched by Google on February 1, 2011. In the early days of the launch, GAP only opened 17 museums, but included the most well-known MoMA and Tate, which quickly attracted attention. With the advantages of its search, map, and geolocation services, Google uses Street View 360-degree panoramic view technology to present the inside and outside of the museum, allowing users to visit online anytime and anywhere to create an interactive experience; using its ultra-high pixel lens, releasing high-pixel famous paintings, the zoom function (micro-scope view) allows users to carefully observe the artwork in detail, because "billion pixel pictures" can provide the texture, brushstrokes of the canvas, Dust and other details that are difficult to find with the naked eye in the original work have revolutionized the way art is viewed. Google has also partnered with unesco to make this technology available at World Heritage Sites, where visitors can also upload live photos of the sites via Google.
In 2016, GAP changed its name to GAC, and it is diversified through websites, mobile apps, YouTube and other platforms. As a non-profit program, GAC's positioning or goal is to "launch the world's culture and art and bring it to everyone", and strives to break through the limitations of geography, establish a global digital museum, and realize the resource openness and sharing of the cultural wealth of all mankind, and currently includes more than 6 million art collections from more than 2,000 museums and art institutions in 80 countries. Its target users are partners, namely the world's major museums and art institutions, and general audiences, that is, highly educated urban middle-class and art researchers, who have a certain interest and awareness of art and heritage.
For Google, the GAC was built to "enhance Google's brand and innovation capabilities" through different creative initiatives. That is to say, in addition to the digital preservation of global art and cultural relics, the main role of the GAC is to build a new bridge between culture and technology for Google, while attracting users to participate in the process through creative ways. Although it does not directly profit through GAC, this model not only enhances Google's public image, strengthens Google's connection with public cultural affairs in various countries, but also helps it build a huge database and database-based technology upgrades.
In the past five years, GAC has revolutionized the technology and trend of online viewing and exhibition through various artistic experiments, including Google vision AI, Giga pixel AI (ultra-high pixel processing), Google AR core, Google VR Cardboard, t-SNE data visualization algorithm and other technologies, achieving wide influence on a global scale, and obtaining the right to promote and choose different types of cultures in different countries.
The 2019 GAC China version is online, called Wonders of China, and cooperates with more than 40 museums, including the Palace Museum and the CAFA Art Museum. But in fact, the cooperation is not great, for example, the Forbidden City only contains 19 stories and 173 works of art, which is only a drop in the ocean compared to the vast collection of the Forbidden City. Although the test in China is tepid, it is undeniable that GAC is already the most influential digital cultural platform in the world, and it is constantly expanding, gaining artistic discourse and global attention.
Anatomy of a GAC:
Advantages and lessons
1. The ubiquitous global digital museum
In the early days of the launch, GAP's functions were relatively simple, mainly through street view technology to shoot exhibition hall scenes, disseminate high-definition pixel artwork pictures (each museum selected a small number of collections for Google to shoot the 7 billion pixel Giga Pixel), while integrating google map, YouTube and other different applications. With the development of the past decade, GAC's functions have become more and more mature and diverse, and it is committed to creating a multi-perception immersive experience and a super-medium of multi-art content, a global digital archive platform, and a museum museum. In the digital world, the essence of art for all mankind is brought together and an art experience is available all the time and everywhere.
The platform has a very powerful classification label system, according to the author, style, era, color, material, etc. any classification can retrieve high-quality content, and the platform will be the historical art events and art style for detailed and professional interpretation, because it has a very stable audience of academic and art lovers.
The theme displayed by the GAC is not only pure art, but also through the linkage between art and tourism, science and technology, gastronomy, fashion, etc., especially with the official institutions of various countries to promote regional culture and tourism, to create online and offline interaction, but also with other programs such as Google map. This construction method also allows Google to have content advantages and huge databases beyond other platforms, becoming a digital heritage library for all mankind, so Google gets more cross-regional cultural power and platform power to create a very large digital asset.
2. Application and improvement of cultural and technological integration
GAC has become a testing ground for Google to integrate culture and technology, and continues to classify and integrate culture through technological evolution, and the huge cultural data has helped Google's digital technology to further evolve, especially the following aspects. At the same time, Google has digitally turned its culture into an industry standard and a best practice.
1 /AI
Mainly graphics AI and reinforcement learning AI. Google Vision AI, for example, can quickly divide a large number of pictures into thousands of categories. Gigapixel AI improves the actual clarity of enlarged photos by recovering real details in images, which can only be achieved by training and exposing to millions of test images. Some small games in the platform reflect the combination of image analysis and reinforcement learning AI, such as auto draw (user hand drawing, AI will quickly match similar hand-drawn stick figures) and quick draw (drawing answering game), which is the drawing application of image analysis and machine learning technology.
2 /AR、VR
GaC launched Pocket Galley in December 2018, an AR virtual art gallery that Google uses its ARCore and Apple's ARKit to provide on mobile equipment, claiming to be able to put the masterpiece in your pocket and carry it with you. ARcore, which doesn't need to be used on a phone equipped with dual lenses for position detection and motion tracking, is Google's weapon against Apple's ARkit.
Through some application programming interfaces, such as the Maps places API, Google Experiments has also continuously launched new AR experiments, unfolding in different scenarios, such as AR and painting, AR and sound experiments.
The application of VR is mainly through the combination with Google VR Cardboard, Google Tilt brush and Google Daydream, from the software and hardware level to promote the combination of VR technology and art.
3/t-SNE data visualization algorithm
Google not only analyzes the visual similarity of all images/artworks through machine learning, but also uses t-SNE algorithms and machine learning to classify cultural relics according to the degree of association to create an interactive virtual space map that can be navigated. GaC has created a boundless map of art with different visual effects through t-SNE, and you can click on one to see the art and art history connections. As shown in the following figure, because the database is extremely powerful, the presentation effect of data visualization is more shocking.
3. The interaction between artistic creativity and artificial intelligence
GaC has almost opened up the global art field in the past decade, completed the construction of the database, and added up to increase the exploration of multiple applications and interactive experiences, that is, a series of products of Google experiments with Google. In this process, Google has further improved its technical capabilities with the help of these cultural data and cultural scenarios.
One of the most iconic explorations is to strengthen the collaboration between artists and AI engineers to create a artist+machine intelligence model (a detailed video about the project was also launched on YouTube). Google provides cutting-edge open source technology, organizes artist residency programs, and artists and engineers create different possibilities between artificial intelligence and art through experimentation, such as artistic creation through AI, writing hiphop lyrics, and so on. And users are encouraged to submit their own experiments, innovation, open source is the main requirement.
X degree of separation is a product created by artists and programmers, and it is also an experimental test of machine learning. This application mainly refers to the theory of six degrees of separation, only six people can connect two strangers, in this application, as long as the user selects two pictures, the algorithm will find other pictures from the database through visual similarity to connect their structural relationships. Algorithms can at any time through massive databases to establish some correlation between two unrelated art, as well as analyze their approximate position in the entire art system. This combination of creativity and technology is also a good model, guiding more creative talents of different professions to cooperate with artificial intelligence.
4. Gamified design and experience mode
In order to better attract users, GAC has been committed to creating a combination of interactivity and multimedia content, while adopting a gamified design model. The so-called gamification design mode refers to the different reward modes adopted in order to allow users to stay in the game, such as achievement system, level system, medal system and so on. [3] Users can use different functions of the GAC to receive different medal rewards, such as using a magnifying glass to view works of art, they can get the "Art Scout" medal, using the Street View function can get the Explorer Medal, and so on.
At the same time, GAC also continues to superimpose a variety of interactive mini-games and cultural experiments, especially some small games with integrated knowledge, such as looking at pictures to guess the author, comparing the era before and after according to two pictures, etc., which can usually attract users to stay on the site for a long time. These interactive games are also constantly experimenting with the combination of virtual and reality. For example, I often play a game called street galleries, which can be transformed through 360-degree virtual scenes to set up their favorite paintings on the streets of ten cities around the world or outside buildings.
Art selfie, art coloring book, puzzle party, etc., which have gradually been launched since 2017, have brought a surge in traffic to GAC. Artistic selfies, in particular, sparked a wave on social media and became GAC's first interactive product known to the public. Users upload their own selfies, and the platform selects artistic portraits most similar to the user from millions of collections through artificial intelligence to match. Now there is also a pet portrait product, upload pet photos, the system will look for similar historical portraits from the massive data.
The value of building a Chinese digital heritage platform
1. Digital culture infrastructure
Heritage and cultural relics are precious non-renewable resources, and through the help of culture and science and technology, it is to prevent and save the collective memory and bloodline genes of the Chinese nation. If you refer to THE GAC to build a Chinese digital heritage platform, you can continue to participate in the remediation and dissemination of traditional culture through the cross-platform linkage effect, making it a part of the digital culture infrastructure.
In order to better promote the strategy of cultural big data and deeply promote the integration of culture and science and technology, the social forces represented by enterprises can promote the publicization process of culture through their own technical and financial advantages, help build cultural infrastructure, and serve different audiences including the government, cultural institutions, scholars, professional and general audiences, and students of all ages, rather than just building an online art browsing platform. In this process, it is also possible to accelerate the key technical research in the fields of cultural data collection, storage, cleaning, analysis and exploration, visualization, standardization, copyright protection, security and privacy protection. At the same time, the digital culture platform can not only expand the way users receive cultural information, provide users with participation and pleasure, because of its convenient access, can play its public functions and educational intelligence, and promote the open sharing of cultural resources.
2. The integrated preservation of Chinese civilization
At present, most of the Chinese museums are still dominated by traditional displays, and the audience receives information through pictures, cultural relics displays, and exhibition videos. No single museum can show the essence of Chinese civilization, even the national museum, because of the limitation of space and manpower, can not show all the inventory of fine works in front of the audience. The objective reality after the epidemic has forced museums to speed up the pace of digitization, but it has also caused a certain degree of digital barriers, and no platform can break through the restrictions of geography and time and space, and display the crystallization of Chinese civilization and the essence of art in front of the audience. If we can break through the barriers and integrate the fragmented digital resources to create a digital chronicle, cultural heritage library and even a cultural relics metacosm of Chinese civilization, we can carry out an "integrated preservation" of Chinese civilization and construct an overall vision of Chinese civilization through holistic memory construction and technical preservation. While integrating, new technologies can also deconstruct them into categories, and apply the typed Chinese elements more deeply to different scenarios and industries.
3. Modular strategy to save costs
The digitization of museums and artifacts has become a general trend, but the development costs of individual museums are relatively high. If the technical system can be modularized, copied into different projects of each museum, and the grafting of content and technology can establish a better coping strategy and reduce the cost of digitization of individual museums. Similar to the GAC platform, it also helps to establish a set of standard systems for the digitization of cultural relics, such as how to collect cultural relics, how to convert three-dimensional cultural relics into two-dimensional pictures without losing details, and so on. Although some major museums are using digital technology to collect and sort out cultural relics data, the results are uneven, and there is no common platform to open up these different interlibrary differences and promote the open sharing of resources.
4. Digital display for the world
The pandemic has accelerated the digitization of cultures around the world, particularly in heritage exhibitions. Online exhibitions have become an important way for GAC to cooperate with museums, and the degree of participation of museums has been greatly improved. Through the opening of the background permission, the staff of each museum can edit the text, pictures, images and other editing operations on the Google interface, and establish a digital exhibition, which is simple and convenient, but this permission is limited and must maintain a unified style, and Google has the final review right to the finished product [4]. The GAC is still relatively Central to Europe and the United States, and is often criticized for its inadequate performance of Asian history and culture. After the epidemic, Japan also launched an online exhibition platform in 2020 called Cultural Japan, where users can use the collections of 550 Japanese cultural institutions to create their own online museums and exhibitions through the IIIF (International Interoperability Framework) architecture. IIIF can directly use the database API of partner institutions, which is very convenient to access, and to some extent becomes a comprehensive and global display of Japanese culture.
At present, the major museums in the mainland have their own digital plans, but they are relatively scattered and cannot effectively face the global audience and enhance the overall influence of Chinese culture and the soft power of national culture. If a comprehensive platform is created, in addition to global dissemination, it can also connect the Chinese cultural heritage scattered around the world and establish an overseas cultural relics database. If we can connect domestic resources while opening up international resources, we can not only enhance the global influence of the platform, but also make it easier to promote Chinese civilization on a global scale.
Diverse collaborations contribute to the digitization of heritage
Heritage, like history, should be seen as a process rather than a static specimen, bound to have different meanings as times change. [5] In the digital age, how to revitalize heritage requires breaking down barriers, open sharing, and diversified collaboration. In addition to government support, more social forces need to be introduced, and they need to work together to provide financial, technical, creative, and publicity support. The development of the platform requires the accumulation of time, audience and data, the long-term investment of a large development and operation team, the continuous promotion of humanistic and technological innovation, the support of cross-regional museums and art institutions, and the deep participation of users.
Under the participatory cultural structure of the digital age, more and more users are using media technology for content production. GAC can be generally recognized by professionals and ordinary users, mainly because of its universality, professionalism, academicity, interactivity, and fun unity, through technology exhibition, to attract more attention from users, to achieve the empowerment of users. In this context, users become an important force in the dissemination of heritage. After all, the fundamental significance of establishing a digital heritage platform is to bring Chinese civilization closer to the distance and relationship between ordinary people, so that the platform created in this way represents the in-depth application of the integration of culture and science and technology, becomes part of the overall vision of Chinese civilization, and plays the value of making heritage come alive.
bibliography:
[1] Chinese government website, November 8, 2021, "Notice of the General Office of the State Council on Printing and Distributing the 14th Five-Year Plan for the Protection of Cultural Relics and Scientific and Technological Innovation", http://www.ncha.gov.cn/art/2021/11/8/art_722_171712.html
[2] Stone, L. (2018). Digitization, Innovation, and Participation : Digital Conviviality of the Google Cultural Institute. PhD thesis, Department of Journalism and Media Communication, Colorado State University.
[3] Digital Translator Zhi San Dao Liu, December 5, 2020, https://medium.com/artech-interpreter/ Digital Translation Series - Abominable - Direct Hit - Gamification Design - Poison - 1531ab83fbfd
Zeng Yiting. (2021). The Starting Point of Museum Participation: On the Online Curatorial Practice of Google Arts and Culture in the Forbidden City. Museology Quarterly, 35 (2).
[5] Harvey, D. (2001). Heritage and Heritage Presents: Temporality, Meaning and The
Scope of Heritage Studies.International Journal of Heritage Studies, 7(4), 319–338.