Weaving the past into the future

An overview of the SILKNOW project

Authors

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.7203/metode.15.27598

Keywords:

Silk heritage, digital humanities, technology, interdisciplinarity, heritage conservation

Abstract

Silk played a crucial role in driving progress in Europe, particularly along the network of production and market centres along the Western Silk Road. The silk trade not only facilitated the exchange of ideas and innovations but also had a huge impact on the economic, technical, functional, cultural, and symbolic levels. However, silk heritage has become critically endangered, despite the existence of many specialised European museums dedicated to its preservation. These museums often lack the resources and capacity to utilise state-of-the-art digital technology. The objective of this paper is twofold: to introduce SILKNOW, an interdisciplinary project funded by the H2020 Program of the European Union to preserve and promote the heritage of silk textiles, and to present the project results which were possible thanks to digital humanities.

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Author Biographies

Cristina Portalés, Universitat de València

Ramón y Cajal Postdoctoral Fellow at the University Research Institute of Robotics and Information and Communication Tecnologies (IRTIC), University of Valencia (Spain). She is also a lecturer in Data Visualization at the School of Engineering (ETSE). She is the director of DINA, a research team in data interaction and augmentation, and co-editor-in-chief of the scientific journal Multimodal Technologies and Interaction (MTI). She is also the coordinator of ChemiNova, a research and innovation project funded by Horizon Europe. Her research interests focus on data visualization, computer vision, augmented reality, and digital cultural heritage. She was the principal investigator of the SILKNOW project.

Mar Gaitán, Universitat de València

Margarita Salas postdoctoral researcher at the Faculty of Geography and History, University of Valencia (Spain). She holds a Master’s degree in Cultural Heritage and a Doctorate in Art History from the University of Valencia. She is a member of ICOM, specialising in communication and cultural management. Her role in the SILKNOW project has focused on dissemination and communication activities, as well as support for management tasks.

Jorge Sebastián, Universitat de València

Lecturer at the Faculty of Geography and History, University of Valencia (Spain). He is an expert in digital humanities and semantic technologies applied to cultural heritage, subjects he has been teaching since 2006 in the Master’s Degree in Cultural Heritage. He has received research grants from the Real Colegio Complutense at Harvard University in 2017 and 2018. On the other hand, he dedicated his doctoral thesis to the visual representation of gender in the Hispanic Monarchy of the Modern Age, and has published several articles and essays on the subject. He has given several courses on the application of ICT to the study and dissemination of historical heritage. He was technical director of the SILKNOW project.

Ester Alba, Universitat de València

Tenured university lecturer at the Faculty of Geography and History of the University of Valencia (Spain). Her research activity focuses on the study and analysis of museology, museography, and art criticism, with particular attention to contemporary art and cultural heritage in relation to the exchange and dissemination of ideas and knowledge, from the perspective of visual studies and gender. She has led research projects on the visibility of women artists. In the field of cultural heritage, she is the principal investigator of several European projects. She has been Vice-Dean and Dean of the Faculty of Geography and History. Principal investigator of the SILKNOW project.

Marcos Fernández, Universitat de València

Director of ARTEC, a research team dedicated to real-time computer graphics, part of the University Research Institute of Robotics and Information and Communication Technologies (IRTIC) at the University of Valencia (Spain). He is also a lecturer at the School of Engineering (ETSE). He is an expert in human-computer interaction, interactive graphics, and graphical user interfaces. He has led several research projects in these areas and coordinated the SILKNOW project.

References

Alba, E., Gaitán, M., León, A., Mladenić, D., & Brank, J. (2022). Weaving words for textile museums: The development of the linked SILKNOW thesaurus. Heritage Science, 10(1), 1–14. https://doi.org/10.1186/s40494-022-00681-x

Alba, E., Gaitán, M., Pitarch, M. D., León, A., Toledo, M. D. M. M., Ruiz, J. M., Vitella, M., Lo Cicero, G., Rottensteiner, F., Clermont, D., Dorozynski, M., Wittich, D., Vernus, P., & Puren, M. (2020). From silk to digital technologies: A gateway to new opportunities for creative industries, traditional crafts and designers. The SILKNOW case. Sustainability, 12(19), 8279. https://doi.org/10.3390/su12198279

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Pérez, M., Casanova-Salas, P., Twardo, P., Twardo, P., León, A., Mladenic, D., Massri, B. M., Troncy, R., Ehrhart, T., Lo Cicero, G., Vitella, M., Gaitán, M., Gimeno, J., Ribes, E., Fernández, M., & Portalés, C. (2020). From historical silk fabrics to their interactive virtual representation and 3D printing. Sustainability, 12(18), 7539. https://doi.org/10.3390/su12187539

Portalés, C., Pérez, M., Casanova-Salas, P., & Gimeno, J. (2021). Virtual loom: A tool for the interactive 3D representation of historical fabrics. Multimedia Tools and Applications, 80, 13735–13760. https://doi.org/10.1007/ s11042-020-10294-w

Schleider, T., Troncy, R., Gaitan, M., Sebastian, J., Mladenic, D., Kastelic, A., Massri, B., Leon, A., Puren, M., Vernus, P., Clermont, D., Rottensteiner, F., Vitella, M., & Lo Cicero, G. (2021). The SILKNOW knowledge graph. Semantic Web, 1, 1–16. https://www.semantic-web-journal.net/system/files/swj2776.pdf

Sevilla, J., Casanova-Salas, P., Casas-Yrurzum, S., & Portalés, C. (2021). Multi-purpose ontology-based visualization of spatio-temporal data: A case study on silk heritage. Applied Sciences, 11(4), 1636. https://doi.org/10.3390/app11041636

Unsworth, J. (Dir.). (2006). Our Cultural Commonwealth: The report of the American Council of Learned Societies commission on cyberinfrastructure for the humanities and social sciences. American Council of Learned Societies. https://www.acls.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/Our-Cultural-Commonwealth.pdf

Published

2024-09-30

How to Cite

Portalés, C., Gaitán, M., Sebastián, J., Alba, E., & Fernández, M. (2024). Weaving the past into the future: An overview of the SILKNOW project. Metode Science Studies Journal, (15). https://doi.org/10.7203/metode.15.27598
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Issue

No. 15: Volume 15 (Online first)

Section

Digital humanities

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