Spatio-Temporal Approaches for the Fruition of the Cultural Heritage

Adding a temporal dimension to multimedia data is an interesting research topic, in particular with reference to the fruition of the cultural heritage. Time may be viewed either as valid-time or as transaction-time. In the rst sense, planning a virtual visit in time means working out a path that leads through the centuries taking into account the di erent historical contexts when the works of art were produced. In the second sense, moving through time means analyzing how an archeological site or a museum evolved during the centuries. In the rst part of this paper we describe a visual tool which supports the user in planning an itinerary for visiting the Querini-Stampalia Museum in Venice; the tool is based on valid-time. In the second part, we outline a temporal architecture for knowledge representation where the addition of transaction-time allows to represent the evolution of the museum environment. This work was nancially supported by the "Progetto Finalizzato CNR Beni Culturali" of the Italian Council of Research.