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Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 188 ( 2015 ) 138 – 143

Heritage as an alternative driver for sustainable development and economic recovery in South East Europe From local traditions to "augmented reality". The MUVIG Museum of Viggiano (Italy)

Dario Cianciaruloa,*

aDARTEQ EF, Enskede, Sweden

Abstract

This paper describes an experimental augmented reality project made in a small museum in Viggiano (Basilicata Region – South Italy). The MUVIG Museum of Local Traditions of Viggiano is a small museum that describes the local traditions with a big collection of objects from old farms. This paper explains how the use of Augmented Reality (AR) helped to change the usual perception and increase the awareness of visiting small but very specific and locally important museum.

© 2015 The© Authors. 2014 The Published Authors. by PublishedElsevier Ltd. by This Elsevier is an openLtd. Selectionaccess article and under peer -reviewthe CC BY-NC-ND under responsibility license of Institute of National (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/Economy from Romanian Academy ). Peer-review under responsibility of the Scientific Committee of Heritage Sagittarius 2014.

Keywords: darteq, muvig, augmented reality, viggiano, local traditions, museum, education, cultural heritage ______

1. Introduction

Viggiano is a village of 3100 inhabitants in the province of Potenza (Basilicata). The village is situated at a height of 1000 meters and enjoys a great location in relation to the Agri Valley in which it is located. It has always been a privileged place for the management of this part of the Agri Valley thanks to its strategic location. Viggiano has always been a place of pilgrimage due to the presence of the wooden statue of the Black Madonna of Viggiano.

Fig.1. The MUVIG logo

* Corresponding author. Tel.: +46-762-853-879 E-mail address: [email protected]

1877-0428 © 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/). Peer-review under responsibility of the Scientific Committee of Heritage Sagittarius 2014. doi: 10.1016/j.sbspro.2015.03.349 Dario Cianciarulo / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 188 ( 2015 ) 138 – 143 139

Every first Sunday of May, the statue is moved from Viggiano to the church on the summit of Sacro Monte di Viggiano (Holy Mountain of Viggiano - 1725 meters). The statue is brought back in Viggiano on the first Sunday of September. A lot of local traditions depend of the connection between religious and rural world.

In this paper we want to describe the birth and development of the museum of local traditions that bought together not only local traditions but the new technologies as well. It is a strange combination that makes a wonderful and unforgettable educative experience.

2. The birth of the museum and the first steps

Back in 2003 thanks to a project launched in collaboration between the local administration of Viggiano and the group of schools, the first cultural core was created and later on that became the Museum of Local Traditions of Viggiano. The three-year project was completed with the help of student projects and the materials found during searches. After several years of managing by the local Pro-Loco, the museum was closed for a few years. Last year the museum has been reopened and is back to life, mainly where the biggest contribution came from the new management. The new management gave completely different image to the museum and helped the museum to entry into regional and national tourist circuits.

3. Viggiano and its traditions

A country like Italy, rich in history and traditions, is full of many museums and cultural sites. Even Basilicata, a small region of Southern Italy, offers visitors many museums, parks and places of important historical and cultural interest. Viggiano in Basilicata also has its own important history. During the eighteenth and nineteenth century, at the period of the great migrations, many people from Viggiano had to emigrate in search of a new life and luck. The knowledge and skill to play musical instruments or build them was one of the great ability Viggiano inhabitants had. In particular, Viggiano was famous at that time to have very skilled luthiers and still now Viggiano is remembered as the "City of Harp and Music". The population was devoted to the life and rhythms of the rural life. Just as in other parts of Italy, the rural world is important condition to maintain the oldest traditions. The MUVIG Museum of Local Traditions of Viggiano was born to preserve and safeguard the tangible and intangible culture tied to that world. MUVIG displays a collection with many objects of the rural world that has been recovered or donated by local people.

4. The structure of the museum

The structure of the actual museum coincides with the initial idea of the museum that was designed by teachers from the District Schools of Viggiano in 2003. The museum consists of many different rooms and each is dedicated to a different topic. The structure of the museum is the following:

• Entrance hall with depictions of the traditional costumes in Agri Valley;

• The room of artisans: This room of the museum showcases numerous tools related to some of the most popular crafts in Viggiano that survived until a few decades ago. The visitor is able to see the ancient tools of a blacksmith, a shoemaker and a carpenter.

• Bedroom of upper-middle class of the late nineteenth century;

• Kitchen from a farmhouse with fireplace and wood stove:

140 Dario Cianciarulo / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 188 ( 2015 ) 138 – 143

• Room of museum activities with the section on popular sayings and section concerning the religious processions of the Black Madonna of Viggiano;

• Room with agricultural machinery, modern representation of a rural house in miniature and section on water mills;

• Room with equipment for processing milk to produce cheese and ricotta;

• Room with tools from old farms: The local traditions refer specifically to the rural world lived in the past. Every day, every moment was related by the rhythms of rural life. In this part of the museum the visitor is be able to see and understand how the different instruments were used to work the fields.

• Reconstruction of an ancient cellar.

5. Old traditions and modern technologies

Since the early days of the management, we have tried to give the museum a modern and innovative look. The main problem of MUVIG was to “talk to” the objects that in most cases are not used and are even more difficult to interpret. We didn´t want give the idea that the museum is only a collection of objects and tools. Every object, even the smallest, was used during a historical period to perform a specific task. Therefore our task is to find a way to revive majority of the objects and tools that are located in the museum. It is impossible to reuse any instrument or object, so it was decided to select few points in the museum and through the use of a new technology, provide a new interactive service to our visitors. We have created interactive points with the use of Augmented Reality (AR).

6. Augmented Reality: what is this?

The Augmented Reality (often called AR) is used to enhance reality with virtual content: augmented reality is in fact the overlapping of layers with information (of different types such as video and graphics 2D, 3D, audio) to the real environment. The elements that add to the reality can be made through the use of various devices such as a workstation equipped with a webcam (workstation, PC, Mac), camera-equipped mobile devices (smart phones, tablets) or special viewers (smart glasses). The camera, webcam or camera shooting the surroundings and show the augmented reality through the recognition of some target mobile or through the recognition of certain items. The different AR currently available software reworks the live video stream in real time, adding that integrate multimedia content to the context and enrich it through tracking and geo location.

The application of AR is now widespread in various fields: marketing, retail, events, education, culture and tourism, architecture and design, medicine, automation.

Dario Cianciarulo / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 188 ( 2015 ) 138 – 143 141

Fig. 2 Some of the AR spots made in MUVIG

7. “Augmented” spots

As it was mentioned before, we made a selection of some points of interest from the museum. We used these points to test the use of augmented reality. We decided to "augment" some points on the first room, the room of artisans. In this room there are the largest numbers of objects and it is rather hard to interpret each object. The idea to vitalize particular tools with the reality mixture drove us to find videos / interviews about people who have used those tools during their lives. On the Internet we found a few interviews of people who lived in Basilicata or in an area geographically and culturally similar. The shoemaker's bench was "augmented" with an interview of an old shoemaker who explains the way they worked in the last century. The same thing was used to the blacksmith where it´s possible to see a modern video where some people are using the same tools that we have in the museum. There is a video even for the carpenter tools. Apart from that, the wonderful video was recovered 20 years ago and it explains some tools also present in our museum. Some "augmented" points are the other rooms: the bedroom (a picture of a family in which one of the characters helps to discover some popular beliefs), in the religious section (a video from 1954 shows the ancient religious procession) and soon other points will be available in the room of the work in the fields.

Fig. 3 Muvig 142 Dario Cianciarulo / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 188 ( 2015 ) 138 – 143

Fig. 4 The targets with AR - face animation

Fig. 5 The Aurasma QRCode to activate the MUVIG layer in Aurasma http://auras.ma/s/2ZoOq

8. How to activate the hidden layers and use the AR

After trying different software, we chose to use one of those most famous and free software: Aurasma. All the pictures that have been reported in this paper have a hidden layer visible with AR. We suggest you to try it by yourself using Aurasma. Here are the 3 simple steps to follow:

a) Download Aurasma for Android or iOS b) Activate the layer scanning the QRCode or with this link in your browser http://auras.ma/s/2ZoOq c) Frame the figures 3 and 4 in this paper and explore the extra contents.

Conclusions

After one year from the reopening of MUVIG, we saw that with the introduction of Augmented Reality, we increased slightly the number of visitors compared to the first days of opening. It has created extra curiosity around this new technology and many visitors came to the museum just to try and actually experience this innovation. Feedback we got was always really positive and encouraging. In particular, we found that this new way to visit the museum was more enjoyed by kids. We have succeeded in the difficult task of combining technology with educational aspects. Regarding to the great success, we are planning the creation of new "augmented" points inside the MUVIG. For more information please visit the MUVIG website www.muvig.net or the Facebook page www.facebook.com/muvig Dario Cianciarulo / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 188 ( 2015 ) 138 – 143 143

Acknowledgements

The author would like to express his gratitude to all the people that worked for MUVIG in the last year. In particular would like to express my gratitude to Erminia Romagnano and Giovanna Petrone for their fundamental help at the MUVIG, for their suggestions and useful discussions.

References

Haller, Billinghurst, Thomas (2006). Emerging Technologies of Augmented Reality: Interfaces and Design. IGI Global, 2006. Schmalstieg , Wagner (2005), A handheld augmented reality museum guide, In Proc. IADIS International Conference on Mobile Learning. Grigore, Burdea, Coiffet (2003). Virtual Reality Technology. Second Edition. Wiley- Edition. Wiley---Interscience, 2003 Jones, Christal (2002), The Future of Virtual Museums: On-Line, Immersive, 3D Environments, Created Realities Group, 2002. Milgram, P., Takemura, A., Utsumi A., and Kishino, F. (1994) "Augmented Reality: A Class of Displays on the Reality-Virtuality Continuum", SPIE Vol. 2351, Telemanipulator and Telepresence Technologies. Alliegro (2004). Costruire l'identità culturale, l'appartenenza, le radici. Il ruolo dei musei demologici locali. In: Enzo V. Alliegro. Progetto museo delle tradizioni popolari. Un'esperienza didattico-educativa tra ricerca documentaria, allestimento museografico e divulgazione multimediale edigitale, POTENZA:Ermes, ISBN: 8887687374

http://www.muvig.net http://www.facebook.com/muvig http://www.darteq.eu http://www.facebook.com/darteq http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augmented_reality http://www.aurasma.com http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viggiano http://www.comuneviggiano.it/