Frédéric Kaplan Dorit Raines

Ecole Polytecnique Fédérale de Lausanne Università Ca’ Foscari Venice

The Venice Time Machine

A new way of navigating in the past

Battista Nani (1616-1678), Venetian ambassador, writer, historiographer

Birth act of Battista

Nani in the Venetian

State Archives

The Frari convent – today’s State Archives of Venice

The ambition of The Venice Time Machine project is to transform

this huge archive into a digital information system.

How can one find all records

regarding Battista Nani in

80 km. of documents?

The Venice Time Machine project

aims to address this question by

structuring the information

contained in the records

1. Digitization of all documents

2. Semi-automatic transcription

of handwritten documents

3. Data mining and structured

data base

* We are currently in the experimental phase

Digitization of documents

Virtual X-ray reading

“Reading” manuscripts using x-ray tomography.

A single tomographic set could indeed yield the same information of traditional digitization process with minimized interaction with the document, drastically reducing the risk of damage and speeding up the process.

The X-ray imaging of the writings is made possible by the use, for many centuries and all over Europe, of iron-based inks generically denominated “iron gall”.

There is a direct correlation between the ink iron content and the quality of x-ray attenuation-contrast images: a fundamental issue of the studies is the chemistry of the inks.

Semi-automatic Transcription of

Handwritten Documents

The framework based on machine-vision and machine-learningtechniques is comprised of the following steps:

1. Pre-processing algorithms used to enhance the readability of the textual content

Optimal binarization

2. The pre-filtered images go through a classification process with the purpose of classifying

the document contents in graphical and textual elements and layout structure

3. The textual content is finally processed using a semi-automatic transcription tool in order

incrementally construct a digital version of the documents

Data mining and structured data base

Each archival series will need its own structure (reduced to minimum to match others)

BUT

On a metacontent level ONLY 4 categories are important:

� Persons

� Places

� Institutions

� Objects

The search will be done using the above 4 categories (metacontent), with sub divisions:

METACONTENT: Painting 16th century; GRANULAR LEVEL: Titian; woman

METACONTENT: Pietro Basadonna 1675; GRANULAR LEVEL: Capuchin order;

mansionary

Each source creates the link between dates and facts

+ date

Let’s turn back to Battista Nani

But we can do better still – we can create 3D representations of Venice and link documents to each palace in order to tell its history and the urbanisticchanges throughout the ages

The Rialto bridge area - 1500

A 3D rendering of the Rialto bridge area

And many more projects to come!

Garzoni. Aprenticeship, labor and society, by Valentina Sapienza

The Venice Time Machine ProjectOur website: dhvenice.eu

Partner Institutions

Archivio di Stato di Venezia, direttore Raffaele SantoroÉcole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), president Patrick AebischerUniversità Ca’ Foscari di Venezia, rettore Michele BugliesiWith the support of

Fondation Lombard OdierDirector

Frédéric Kaplan, École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL)Project Management

Giovanni Colavizza, École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL)Isabella di Lenardo, École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL)Katerina Kunz, École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL)Andrea Mazzei, École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL)Giovanni Caniato, Archivio di Stato di VeneziaSimon Levis Sullam, Università Ca’ Foscari di VeneziaDorit Raines, Università Ca’ Foscari di VeneziaPartner projects

“Garzoni project”, coordinator Valentina Sapienza, Université de Lille“Visualizing Venice”, Steering Committee: Caroline Bruzelius, Donatella Calabi, Andrea Giordano, Mark Olson, Andrea Rinaldo, Victoria Szabo, Guido Zucconi. Technical support

4DigitalBooks, Ivo Iossiger, scanner provider, Ecublens, SwitzerlandBread and Butter, digital media, Lausanne, SwitzerlandAMstudio, 3D modelling, Venezia, ItalyOlivo Bondesan, foto-riproduzione, Archivio di Stato di Venezia

Thank you!