The i-Treasures Project: “From Pottery to Rare Romanian Dancing: Scientists and Sensors Preserve Cultural Heritage”

From the European Commission:

In our modern world, what happens to traditional craftsmanship such as pottery or to rare dancing styles typical for some regions in Greece, Romania or Wallonia? They fall gradually out of use and may eventually be completely forgotten. A European research initiative tries to prevent that.
The i-treasures project does not stop at making audio and video recordings of men and women who still possess these skills. Since the scientists are interested in multimodal analysis, modelling and recognition they use additional sensors of various complexity and detail, as project coordinator Dr Nikos Grammalidis from the Centre for Research and Technology Hellas in Thessaloniki explains: “Kinect sensors are easy to use and inexpensive but their accuracy may vary. For example, they cannot provide sufficient information about finger positions.”
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The project, which also preserves rare singing styles from Corsica, Sardinia and from Mount Athos in Greece, has a total budget of €7.3 million over 4 years. The EU contributes €5.2 million.

Read the Complete Article
A New Video Report About the i-Treasures Project is Available from Euronews: “European Digital Database Aims to Keep Cultural Traditions Alive”

Additional Resources (via EC)

• Blog post by project coordinator Dr Nikos Grammalidis

• i-Treasures Project Website

• Project Video

• Further Project Videos (e.g. the Pottery Game)

• Article on i-treasures for ICT2015

• Project Fact Sheet

Filed under: News, Video Recordings