• Skip to content
  • Skip to footer
  • Accessibility options
University of Brighton
  • About us
  • Business and
    employers
  • Alumni and
    supporters
  • For
    students
  • For
    staff
  • Accessibility
    options
Open menu
Home
Home
  • Close
  • Study here
    • Meet us
    • Open days
    • Virtual tours
    • Upcoming events
    • Applicant days
    • Meet us in your country
    • Chat to our students
    • Ask us a question
    • Order a prospectus
    • Our campuses
    • Our four campuses
    • Accommodation options
    • Our halls
    • Helping you find a home
    • What you can study
    • Find a course
    • Full A-Z course list
    • Explore our subjects
    • Our academic departments
    • How to study with us
    • Undergraduate application process
    • Postgraduate application process
    • International student application process
    • Apprenticeships
    • Applying through Clearing
    • Transfer from another university
    • Fees and financial support
    • Undergraduate finance
    • Postgraduate finance
    • Our funding and support options
    • Supporting you
    • Your wellbeing
    • Student support and guidance tutors
    • Study skills support
    • Careers and employability
  • Research
    • Research and knowledge exchange
    • Research and knowledge exchange organisation
    • The Global Challenges
    • Centres of Research Excellence (COREs)
    • Research Excellence Groups (REGs)
    • Our research database
    • Information for business
    • Community University Partnership Programme (CUPP)
    • Postgraduate research degrees
    • PhD research disciplines and programmes
    • PhD funding opportunities and studentships
    • How to apply for your PhD
    • Research environment
    • Investing in research careers
    • Strategic plan
    • Research concordat
    • News, events, publications and films
    • Featured research and knowledge exchange projects
    • Research and knowledge exchange news
    • Inaugural lectures
    • Research and knowledge exchange publications and films
    • Academic staff search
  • About us
  • Business and employers
  • Alumni, supporters and giving
  • Current students
  • Staff
  • Accessibility
Search our site
Museum display includes a 3D replica of a Picasso ceramic, designed to be held, in front of a glass case with the original. Digital screen shows the technologies used in production.
Research and knowledge exchange
  • Postgraduate research degrees
  • Research features
  • Research organisation
  • Research environment
  • Research features
    • Research features
    • Films and publications
    • News
    • project-archive
    • R&E Newsletters
  • Features
    • Features
    • Blood pressure targets for the very elderly: preventing strokes and heart attacks in the over 80s
    • Brighton Waste House
    • Cannibalism in early humans: the calorific significance of human cannibalism in the Palaeolithic era
    • Childhood asthma and eczema treatment: a personalised approach
    • Coexistence with carnivores: how do we better understand inter-relationships between humans and wild carnivores?
    • Communities of Practice and Value Creation Frameworks: how do we learn from each other?
    • Crowd safety: revolutionising crowd management through a better understanding of the psychology of crowds
    • Delayed umbilical cord clamping: research into the health benefits to babies
    • Design history research: how we help to develop a greater understanding of our global cultural heritage
    • Diabetes patient care: providing life-saving therapy and improved quality of life
    • Faecal-borne diseases: research provides life-saving advances in disease control
    • Food recycling: waste solutions through city-scale food recycling policy are developed and tested in China
    • Football4Peace...Rugby4Peace: how sport is bringing intercultural cooperation to communities in conflict
    • Graphic novel research: changing attitudes to reading and publishing
    • Hepatitis C: eliminating the virus among vulnerable communities of drug users and homeless people
    • Heritage technology: helping to augment museum collections and enliven cultural engagement
    • Humanitarian business: our innovation strategy is helping disaster-affected third world relief funds
    • Inclusive arts practice: reaching new understandings of what is truly inclusive
    • LGBTI health care: challenging and improving the inequality in care
    • Liver disease research: medical device innovation and commercialisation to combat liver disease
    • ONSIDE teacher mentoring: re-envisioning mentoring to promote professional development and wellbeing
    • Our research impact
    • Photography research: visualising history from the margins
    • Physiotherapy private practice: raising standards across the UK
    • Politics and arts: how media and visual communication can bring about social and political change
    • Practice-led research: developing the impact of research conducted through art and design practice
    • PrefHER: putting patient choice and preferences at the forefront of breast cancer management
    • Research impact
    • Resilience for social justice: research is bringing an inclusive revolution in mental health
    • Screen archives: fostering audiences for our shared film heritage through archive development and research
    • Sexual health research: understanding HIV and improving health among men who have sex with men
    • Sports science: protecting the health of Paralympic, Olympic and World Cup competitors
    • Stonehenge, where were the stones from? Geochemical fingerprinting research reveals origins of the sarsen stones
    • Street triage and mental health: giving a voice to those in crisis
    • Superfused Brighton: research into how creative and media innovation drives the digital economy
    • Sustainable tourism: collaborative research methodologies to transform the tourism sector
    • The Design Archives: international collections bring partners on board and develop innovative engagement
    • The Shakespeare Hut: forgotten and marginalised histories of theatre heritage
    • Can stress cause cancer? Research examines the relationship between stress and cancer
    • Urban agriculture research: increasing food production for city sustainability
    • Water supply research: providing better, cleaner, cheaper water
  • Heritage technology: helping to augment museum collections and enliven cultural engagement

Heritage technology: helping to augment museum collections and enliven cultural engagement

‘Do not touch!’ The traditional experience of museums has, for many, been one of glass cases and barrier ropes. Fragile objects in museum settings are often at risk  from damaging light and other environmental conditions, meaning that the public’s understanding of historic objects through tactile experience has been largely impossible. This is changing, though. 

Based on their innovative, leading research in heritage technologies, including the internationally renowned 3D-COFORM, researchers from the University of Brighton continue to work with cultural heritage organisations, professionals and community groups to transform how art and cultural heritage collections can best be made available to the public. Thanks to this research and the partnerships formed with the heritage sector, not only can museums bring visitors closer to their precious collections, but artefacts can be made part of a multisensorial experience for all to enjoy. For experts, including archaeologists and historians, this means they are now able to gain new insight into historic artefacts through digital means. 

Moreover, our digital cultural heritage researchers have transformed the practices of organisations and professionals in museums around the world. Leading a network of over 100 experts across three continents, they have created innovative digital technologies and methods that are now deployed by major heritage institutions across the UK, Europe and Brazil, creating tactile and audio-visual experiences that improve access to collections for thousands of users as well as new ways for visually impaired users to enjoy heritage collections.

PhD in heritage computing? Find out more.

Visit our research Centre for Intelligent, Secure and Usable and Systems

 

Karina-banner-image

3D-COFORM and its legacy

The research has been co-developed through the University of Brighton’s partnerships at local, national and international levels, from the Royal Pavilion and Museums Brighton and Hove and Sussex Archaeological Society, to the Victoria & Albert Museum in London, the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin (Germany) and the National History Museum of Brazil. By working directly with institutions, researchers have been able to respond to the rapidly changing environment of the museum and heritage sector. The method informed Brighton’s field-leading and influential EPOCH (2004-2008) and 3D-COFORM (2008-11), pan-European programmes that led to the consolidation of a new field of research in computer graphics for cultural heritage.

Recent international projects that built upon these include Pixel+ (2018-20), led by Katholieke Universiteit Leuven and The Royal Museums of Art and History, Brussels, which has enabled 3D depth images to be reconstructed, creating a better-defined resource to utilise, study and preserve heritage materials. This allows professionals and the public to view centuries-old objects and reveal hidden details, making artefacts more accessible, particularly during the coronavirus pandemic. This technology was used to study the figures in the 13th-century Rijmbijbel (the oldest preserved illustrated manuscript in the Dutch language), which led to the discovery that the heads of some of the figures were painted over at a later date. At The Royal Museums of Art and History, Brussels, the technology was used to make heavily weathered texts on almost 4,000-year-old Egyptian figurines readable again.

The European portal for Cultural Heritage, Europeana, has made provisions for the leading role these 3D technologies will play in education, research and the creative industries and in 2019-2020 established a taskforce with a cohort directly descended from the 3D-COFORM project, developing a framework and providing guidance on publishing 3D content for cultural institutions and other users. Their 3D ICONS project builds on the results of 3D-COFORM and has digitised architectural and archaeological masterpieces of world and European cultural significance providing over 1,000 3D models and related digital content. 

Museum display includes a 3D replica of a Picasso ceramic, designed to be held, in front of a glass case with the original. Digital screen shows the technologies used in production.

(above) "Please touch". Digitally replicated Picasso ceramic allows haptic experience as well as visual in museum displays. 

A Flemish portrait of a man in hat and ruff alongside a 3D image layering scan of the same painting rendered in shades of silver grey.

 

Reconstructing 3D depth images

3D technology requires new approaches to all aspects of digital cultural heritage, its production, documentation, management and exploitation. Through training and dissemination events tailored to the specific needs of different institutions University of Brighton researchers have developed heritage professionals’ technological approaches for digitisation and reproduction of cultural artefacts. Processes and technologies deploying 3D technologies have been disseminated across the sector, many of them designed to be affordable and accessible to professionals, who can go on to introduce or expand the use of 3D documentation methods in their work.

This research has advanced exhibition design and helps to develop curation processes in museums and galleries. The Barbican House Museum and the Brighton Museum and Art Gallery, for example, feature digital reproductions of Sussex archaeological findings including nationally significant human skulls and historical artefacts. Digital heritage researchers have also provided a foundation for these organisations to create historically accurate 3D facial reconstructions by digitally reproducing copies of human skull remains; as well as producing 3D-printed replicas that enabled blind audiences to experience works of art normally inaccessible to non-sighted visitors. Moreover, exhibition designers can create physical 3D puzzle by digitally ‘breaking’ a digitised artefact into fragments, using a computer algorithm, that are later manufactured using 3D printing, without any damage to the original; while young people can creatively connect with cultural heritage in their local area by developing personal narratives in the urban landscape accessible via web-based Augmented Reality technology. Finally, this has not only enabled curators to display previously inaccessible artefacts; but has improved audiences’ access to cultural heritage artefacts across the world.

 

IWD-Karina-pots

Back to top
  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • Instagram
  • TikTok
  • YouTube
  • LinkedIn icon

Contact us

University of Brighton
Mithras House
Lewes Road
Brighton
BN2 4AT

Main switchboard 01273 600900

Course enquiries

Sign up for updates

University contacts

Report a problem with this page

Quick links Quick links

  • Courses
  • Open days
  • Order a prospectus
  • Academic departments
  • Academic staff
  • Professional services departments
  • Jobs
  • Privacy and cookie policy
  • Accessibility statement
  • Libraries
  • Term dates
  • Maps
  • Graduation
  • Site information
  • Online shop
  • COVID-19
  • The Student Contract

Information for Information for

  • Current students
  • International students
  • Media/press
  • Careers advisers/teachers
  • Parents/carers
  • Business/employers
  • Alumni/supporters
  • Suppliers
  • Local residents