The online virtual museums seem to consolidate as excellent platforms for dissemination of cultur... more The online virtual museums seem to consolidate as excellent platforms for dissemination of cultural heritage, especially in countries with few resources and hard to take conservation and dissemination of their heritage. The Stecci virtual museum, developed by the University of Sarajevo (Bosnia-Herzegovina) is a clear example of how new technologies can contribute to enhancing cultural heritage.
Once upon a time in a small city of Sjenica, Serbia, there was a fortress. The Ottoman Sultan Mur... more Once upon a time in a small city of Sjenica, Serbia, there was a fortress. The Ottoman Sultan Murat IV has built it to protect and control this important region. Today at that location there is an elementary school. There is no trace of the fortress neither at the place nor in the memory of people. But, an old man still remembers it from his childhood. In this paper we describe how we recreated the cultural heritage object of Sultan Murat's fortress in Sjenica from storytelling. We present the created interactive multimedia application and the impressions of Sjenica citizens after a part of their history was returned to their collective memory.
Virtual cultural heritage applications, particularly virtual museums, nowadays include various fo... more Virtual cultural heritage applications, particularly virtual museums, nowadays include various forms of storytelling. Every object, site or artifact is better perceived and understood through the adjoining story. Interactive applications naturally request the storytelling to become interactive as well. This paper describes the concepts of interactive digital storytelling in our virtual museums and cultural heritage presentations and discusses their advantages and drawbacks recognized through user evaluation. We used digital stories not only to introduce visitors with the context and information on the objects, but also to enhance their navigation through virtual environments with purpose of learning and perceiving maximum amount of offered information.
On September 23rd 2014, after 2000 years from Augustus death, 13 countries have met in Rome, Amst... more On September 23rd 2014, after 2000 years from Augustus death, 13 countries have met in Rome, Amsterdam, Alexandria and Sarajevo, for the opening of an extraordinary exhibition, “Keys to Rome”: an interactive journey to discover Roman Culture, starting from the city of Augustus and reaching the entire Roman Empire, through the visit to 4 fascinating venues, 4 museums with their archaeological collections, more than 10 different technologies supporting and enhancing this global experience. This is more than an exhibition on Roman archaeology. "Keys To Rome" is a unique international exhibition, that, for the first time is organized in parallel in four locations:Rome, in the wonderful setting of the Imperial Fora Museum (Museo dei Fori Imperiali); Alexandria, in the Antiquities Museums of the Bibliotheca Alexandrina; Amsterdam, in the recently renovated Allard Pierson Museum; and Sarajevo, in the newly restored CityHall (Vijecnica) and in the Sarajevo Museum. This Catalog, wi...
The Fortress of Old Town in Travnik represents one of the most beautiful and most preserved facil... more The Fortress of Old Town in Travnik represents one of the most beautiful and most preserved facilities of medieval Bosnia, on which later historical periods left their specific marks. Combining modern methods of 3D reconstruction with different methods of visualization such as making photorealistic, high-resolution renderings, video-compositing of animated sequences from 3D environment with video sequences that illustrate life in the fortress in the past, building interactive virtual environment integrated into user-friendly, multimedia interface, it was aimed to provide comprehensive user experience and raise awareness about cultural and historical importance of the reconstructed object. Paper covers all phases in creation of multimedia presentation starting with data collection, planning and design of presentation structure, modeling of the object and the environment, application of photorealistic textures, camera animation, production other planned multimedia content and combining all into final presentation form.
2019 XXVII International Conference on Information, Communication and Automation Technologies (ICAT), 2019
This article presents an overview of integrability of procedural modeling techniques needed to cr... more This article presents an overview of integrability of procedural modeling techniques needed to create a complete virtual city with streets, roads, building lots, exteriors and interiors with arranged furniture. Techniques are distributed into four hierarchies: urban plan, buildings, interior and furniture. Each technique is analyzed from the aspect of control of space definition, style uniformity, automatic interaction with other hierarchies and ability to procedurally generate a result around existing content. Each paper presented in this survey contributes either as a new control feature that has a potential of integrating with other techniques of higher, lower or same level of hierarchy, or as a new important part for creating a complete procedural city from highest to lowest level of hierarchy. The paper is concluded with a discussion of strong links between each area in the chain and important challenges in procedural generation of a complete city.
Information Systems and Management in Media and Entertainment Industries, 2016
Preserving the past within the collective memories of people is one of the ultimate goals of crea... more Preserving the past within the collective memories of people is one of the ultimate goals of creative industries. Virtual cultural heritage applications recreate history by inviting users to travel back in time. One of the more popular approaches for enhancing the immersion of time-travellers within virtual environments is interactive digital story-telling, which enables users to learn while exploring. While the process of developing interactive digital story-telling applications is still complex, involving professionals from various artistic and scientific disciplines, significant technological advances have recently been made towards improving content production. Namely, advanced Earth observation systems are capable of capturing hundreds of thousands of points within a second, thus creating extremely accurate representations of artefacts such as cultural sites. Usually mounted on mobile and airborne platforms, they produce high-resolution point-clouds with densities ranging up to several hundred points per square meter. However, the lack of topology, huge data sizes, and the contained noise, requires new data processing, storage, and management approaches before these data can be successfully utilized. This chapter introduces an advanced pipeline for creating virtual worlds as environments for interactive digital story-telling applications. By considering the challenges and issues arising during this process, recent developments in content creation, warehousing, editing, and postproduction will be demonstrated through the usage scenario of the implemented end-user application.
A team of multidisciplinary experts from computer science, visual arts, literature, film directin... more A team of multidisciplinary experts from computer science, visual arts, literature, film directing, psychology, communicology and human computer interaction developed a new interactive digital storytelling method hyper storytelling. Hyper storytelling offers a solution for narrative paradox in introducing motivation factor into interactive digital story. In this paper we present Kyrenia the first hyper storytelling application. Its purpose is to introduce the Internet users with the oldest sunken ship from 280 B.C., found in 1975 near Kyrenia, Cyprus. CCS Concepts •Human-centered computing → Hypertext / hypermedia; Virtual reality; Web-based interaction; Interaction design; •Computing methodologies → Virtual reality;
2017 40th International Convention on Information and Communication Technology, Electronics and Microelectronics (MIPRO), 2017
Implementation of natural interactive online 3D visualization is difficult process. To keep peopl... more Implementation of natural interactive online 3D visualization is difficult process. To keep people interested in virtual heritage the new ways of immersive interaction must be developed. This paper presents a solution for natural interaction with 3D objects in virtual environments using Android device over WiFi. It describes the principles and concepts of functioning of individual components as well as the principles of operation after the integration of all components into a single software solution.
Bosnia and Herzegovina is very rich with cultural heritage sites. Perhaps the most famous of thes... more Bosnia and Herzegovina is very rich with cultural heritage sites. Perhaps the most famous of these are the stecaks; the monumental gravestones of Bosnian Heretic Christians. The orientation of the stećaks was important to the ancient Bosnians, Unfortunately, their orientation towards the sun has been changed when they were moved from their original locations to more secure sites at museums. This is particularly true of the stećak from Donje Zgosce, one of the most beautiful stećaks in B&H. Using high-fidelity graphics techniques we have created a detailed virtual reconstruction of this stećak and produced a sun simulation in Maya This enables archaeologists to be able to investigate the interaction of the light with the stećak’s carvings as it may have appeared in 14 century.
Interactive digital storytelling has become a popular method for virtual cultural heritage presen... more Interactive digital storytelling has become a popular method for virtual cultural heritage presentations. Combinations of stories and 3D virtual reconstructions are attractive for the audience and have high edutainment values. In this paper we investigate if 360◦ VR videos further contribute to user immersion in the preservation of intangible cultural heritage. It describes a case study of the Mostar bridge diving project, aimed to present and preserve the bridge diving tradition from the Old Bridge in Mostar, Bosnia and Herzegovina. It is a virtual reality application which enables the user to virtually jump off the bridge after watching 360◦ video stories about its history and the bridge diving tradition and upon successfully completing the quiz evaluation of the knowledge gained from the stories. The user experience evaluation study shows that our method was successful in preserving a form of intangible heritage and posits suggestions that can be used in developing an intangible ...
Sarajevo War Tunnel can not be visited any more. It was closed just after the war due to the airp... more Sarajevo War Tunnel can not be visited any more. It was closed just after the war due to the airport runway security. A small part (20m) can be seen in the Tunnel Museum. The only way to experience passing through this object, crucial for Sarajevo survival during the war, is Virtual Reality (VR). The paper describes the Sarajevo War Tunnel VR project, a virtual cultural heritage application combining VR storytelling about the Sarajevo siege with the VR simulation of the tunnel crossing. The user experience evaluation shows the potential of VR technologies in presentation of dark heritage.
2017 9th International Conference on Virtual Worlds and Games for Serious Applications (VS-Games), 2017
Interactive digital storytelling becomes a form of information presentation in many fields. Its a... more Interactive digital storytelling becomes a form of information presentation in many fields. Its application spans from media industry through digital cultural heritage, serious games, information visualization to contemporary theater and visual arts. In order to develop a new digital storytelling methodology hyper-storytelling, we engaged a team of multidisciplinary experts from computer science, visual arts, literature, film directing, psychology, communicology and human computer interaction. In this paper we present the first findings of this team in form of guidelines for interactive digital storytelling presentations of cultural heritage.
Digital Heritage. Progress in Cultural Heritage: Documentation, Preservation, and Protection, 2016
The project iMARECULTURE is focusing in raising European identity awareness using maritime and un... more The project iMARECULTURE is focusing in raising European identity awareness using maritime and underwater cultural interaction and exchange in Mediterranean Sea. Commercial ship routes joining Europe with other cultures are vivid examples of cultural interaction, while shipwrecks and submerged sites, unreachable to wide public are excellent samples that can benefit from immersive technologies, augmented and virtual reality. The projects aim to bring inherently unreachable underwater cultural heritage within digital reach of the wide public using virtual visits and immersive technologies. Apart from reusing existing 3D data of underwater shipwrecks and sites, with respect to ethics, rights and licensing, to provide a personalized dry visit to a museum visitor or augmented reality to the diver, it also emphasizes on developing pre-and after-encounter of the digital or physical museum visitor. The former one is implemented exploiting geospatial enabled technologies for developing a serious game of sailing over ancient Mediterranean and the latter for an underwater shipwreck excavation game. Both games are realized thought social media, in order to facilitate information exchange among users. The project supports dry visits providing immersive experience through VR Cave and 3D info kiosks on museums or through the web. Additionally, aims to significantly enhance the experience of the diver, visitor or scholar, using underwater augmented reality in a tablet and an underwater housing. The consortium is composed by universities and SMEs with experience in diverse underwater projects, existing digital libraries, and people many of which are divers themselves.
2017 9th International Conference on Virtual Worlds and Games for Serious Applications (VS-Games), 2017
Commercial sea routes joining Europe with other cultures are vivid examples of cultural interacti... more Commercial sea routes joining Europe with other cultures are vivid examples of cultural interaction. In this work, we present a serious game which aims to provide better insight and understanding of seaborne trade mechanisms and seafaring practices in the eastern Mediterranean during the Classical and Hellenistic periods. The game incorporates probabilistic geospatial analysis of possible ship routes through the re-use and spatial analysis from open GIS maritime, ocean, and weather data. These routes, along with naval engineering and sailing techniques from the period, are used as underlying information for the seafaring game. This work is part of the EU-funded project iMareCulture whose purpose is in raising the European identity awareness using maritime and underwater cultural interaction and exchange in the Mediterranean sea.
Presentations of virtual cultural heritage artifacts are often communicated via the medium of int... more Presentations of virtual cultural heritage artifacts are often communicated via the medium of interactive digital storytelling. The synergy of a storied narrative embedded within a 3D virtual reconstruction context has high consumer appeal and edutainment value. We investigate if 360° videos presented through virtual reality further contribute to user immersion for the application of preserving intangible cultural heritage. A case study then analyzes whether conventional desktop media is significantly different from virtual reality as a medium for immersion in intangible heritage contexts. The case study describes bridge diving at Stari Most, the old bridge in Mostar Bosnia. This application aims to present and preserve the bridge diving tradition at this site. The project describes the site and history along with cultural connections, and a series of quiz questions are presented after viewing all of the materials. Successful completion of the quiz allows a user to participate in a ...
The online virtual museums seem to consolidate as excellent platforms for dissemination of cultur... more The online virtual museums seem to consolidate as excellent platforms for dissemination of cultural heritage, especially in countries with few resources and hard to take conservation and dissemination of their heritage. The Stecci virtual museum, developed by the University of Sarajevo (Bosnia-Herzegovina) is a clear example of how new technologies can contribute to enhancing cultural heritage.
Once upon a time in a small city of Sjenica, Serbia, there was a fortress. The Ottoman Sultan Mur... more Once upon a time in a small city of Sjenica, Serbia, there was a fortress. The Ottoman Sultan Murat IV has built it to protect and control this important region. Today at that location there is an elementary school. There is no trace of the fortress neither at the place nor in the memory of people. But, an old man still remembers it from his childhood. In this paper we describe how we recreated the cultural heritage object of Sultan Murat's fortress in Sjenica from storytelling. We present the created interactive multimedia application and the impressions of Sjenica citizens after a part of their history was returned to their collective memory.
Virtual cultural heritage applications, particularly virtual museums, nowadays include various fo... more Virtual cultural heritage applications, particularly virtual museums, nowadays include various forms of storytelling. Every object, site or artifact is better perceived and understood through the adjoining story. Interactive applications naturally request the storytelling to become interactive as well. This paper describes the concepts of interactive digital storytelling in our virtual museums and cultural heritage presentations and discusses their advantages and drawbacks recognized through user evaluation. We used digital stories not only to introduce visitors with the context and information on the objects, but also to enhance their navigation through virtual environments with purpose of learning and perceiving maximum amount of offered information.
On September 23rd 2014, after 2000 years from Augustus death, 13 countries have met in Rome, Amst... more On September 23rd 2014, after 2000 years from Augustus death, 13 countries have met in Rome, Amsterdam, Alexandria and Sarajevo, for the opening of an extraordinary exhibition, “Keys to Rome”: an interactive journey to discover Roman Culture, starting from the city of Augustus and reaching the entire Roman Empire, through the visit to 4 fascinating venues, 4 museums with their archaeological collections, more than 10 different technologies supporting and enhancing this global experience. This is more than an exhibition on Roman archaeology. "Keys To Rome" is a unique international exhibition, that, for the first time is organized in parallel in four locations:Rome, in the wonderful setting of the Imperial Fora Museum (Museo dei Fori Imperiali); Alexandria, in the Antiquities Museums of the Bibliotheca Alexandrina; Amsterdam, in the recently renovated Allard Pierson Museum; and Sarajevo, in the newly restored CityHall (Vijecnica) and in the Sarajevo Museum. This Catalog, wi...
The Fortress of Old Town in Travnik represents one of the most beautiful and most preserved facil... more The Fortress of Old Town in Travnik represents one of the most beautiful and most preserved facilities of medieval Bosnia, on which later historical periods left their specific marks. Combining modern methods of 3D reconstruction with different methods of visualization such as making photorealistic, high-resolution renderings, video-compositing of animated sequences from 3D environment with video sequences that illustrate life in the fortress in the past, building interactive virtual environment integrated into user-friendly, multimedia interface, it was aimed to provide comprehensive user experience and raise awareness about cultural and historical importance of the reconstructed object. Paper covers all phases in creation of multimedia presentation starting with data collection, planning and design of presentation structure, modeling of the object and the environment, application of photorealistic textures, camera animation, production other planned multimedia content and combining all into final presentation form.
2019 XXVII International Conference on Information, Communication and Automation Technologies (ICAT), 2019
This article presents an overview of integrability of procedural modeling techniques needed to cr... more This article presents an overview of integrability of procedural modeling techniques needed to create a complete virtual city with streets, roads, building lots, exteriors and interiors with arranged furniture. Techniques are distributed into four hierarchies: urban plan, buildings, interior and furniture. Each technique is analyzed from the aspect of control of space definition, style uniformity, automatic interaction with other hierarchies and ability to procedurally generate a result around existing content. Each paper presented in this survey contributes either as a new control feature that has a potential of integrating with other techniques of higher, lower or same level of hierarchy, or as a new important part for creating a complete procedural city from highest to lowest level of hierarchy. The paper is concluded with a discussion of strong links between each area in the chain and important challenges in procedural generation of a complete city.
Information Systems and Management in Media and Entertainment Industries, 2016
Preserving the past within the collective memories of people is one of the ultimate goals of crea... more Preserving the past within the collective memories of people is one of the ultimate goals of creative industries. Virtual cultural heritage applications recreate history by inviting users to travel back in time. One of the more popular approaches for enhancing the immersion of time-travellers within virtual environments is interactive digital story-telling, which enables users to learn while exploring. While the process of developing interactive digital story-telling applications is still complex, involving professionals from various artistic and scientific disciplines, significant technological advances have recently been made towards improving content production. Namely, advanced Earth observation systems are capable of capturing hundreds of thousands of points within a second, thus creating extremely accurate representations of artefacts such as cultural sites. Usually mounted on mobile and airborne platforms, they produce high-resolution point-clouds with densities ranging up to several hundred points per square meter. However, the lack of topology, huge data sizes, and the contained noise, requires new data processing, storage, and management approaches before these data can be successfully utilized. This chapter introduces an advanced pipeline for creating virtual worlds as environments for interactive digital story-telling applications. By considering the challenges and issues arising during this process, recent developments in content creation, warehousing, editing, and postproduction will be demonstrated through the usage scenario of the implemented end-user application.
A team of multidisciplinary experts from computer science, visual arts, literature, film directin... more A team of multidisciplinary experts from computer science, visual arts, literature, film directing, psychology, communicology and human computer interaction developed a new interactive digital storytelling method hyper storytelling. Hyper storytelling offers a solution for narrative paradox in introducing motivation factor into interactive digital story. In this paper we present Kyrenia the first hyper storytelling application. Its purpose is to introduce the Internet users with the oldest sunken ship from 280 B.C., found in 1975 near Kyrenia, Cyprus. CCS Concepts •Human-centered computing → Hypertext / hypermedia; Virtual reality; Web-based interaction; Interaction design; •Computing methodologies → Virtual reality;
2017 40th International Convention on Information and Communication Technology, Electronics and Microelectronics (MIPRO), 2017
Implementation of natural interactive online 3D visualization is difficult process. To keep peopl... more Implementation of natural interactive online 3D visualization is difficult process. To keep people interested in virtual heritage the new ways of immersive interaction must be developed. This paper presents a solution for natural interaction with 3D objects in virtual environments using Android device over WiFi. It describes the principles and concepts of functioning of individual components as well as the principles of operation after the integration of all components into a single software solution.
Bosnia and Herzegovina is very rich with cultural heritage sites. Perhaps the most famous of thes... more Bosnia and Herzegovina is very rich with cultural heritage sites. Perhaps the most famous of these are the stecaks; the monumental gravestones of Bosnian Heretic Christians. The orientation of the stećaks was important to the ancient Bosnians, Unfortunately, their orientation towards the sun has been changed when they were moved from their original locations to more secure sites at museums. This is particularly true of the stećak from Donje Zgosce, one of the most beautiful stećaks in B&H. Using high-fidelity graphics techniques we have created a detailed virtual reconstruction of this stećak and produced a sun simulation in Maya This enables archaeologists to be able to investigate the interaction of the light with the stećak’s carvings as it may have appeared in 14 century.
Interactive digital storytelling has become a popular method for virtual cultural heritage presen... more Interactive digital storytelling has become a popular method for virtual cultural heritage presentations. Combinations of stories and 3D virtual reconstructions are attractive for the audience and have high edutainment values. In this paper we investigate if 360◦ VR videos further contribute to user immersion in the preservation of intangible cultural heritage. It describes a case study of the Mostar bridge diving project, aimed to present and preserve the bridge diving tradition from the Old Bridge in Mostar, Bosnia and Herzegovina. It is a virtual reality application which enables the user to virtually jump off the bridge after watching 360◦ video stories about its history and the bridge diving tradition and upon successfully completing the quiz evaluation of the knowledge gained from the stories. The user experience evaluation study shows that our method was successful in preserving a form of intangible heritage and posits suggestions that can be used in developing an intangible ...
Sarajevo War Tunnel can not be visited any more. It was closed just after the war due to the airp... more Sarajevo War Tunnel can not be visited any more. It was closed just after the war due to the airport runway security. A small part (20m) can be seen in the Tunnel Museum. The only way to experience passing through this object, crucial for Sarajevo survival during the war, is Virtual Reality (VR). The paper describes the Sarajevo War Tunnel VR project, a virtual cultural heritage application combining VR storytelling about the Sarajevo siege with the VR simulation of the tunnel crossing. The user experience evaluation shows the potential of VR technologies in presentation of dark heritage.
2017 9th International Conference on Virtual Worlds and Games for Serious Applications (VS-Games), 2017
Interactive digital storytelling becomes a form of information presentation in many fields. Its a... more Interactive digital storytelling becomes a form of information presentation in many fields. Its application spans from media industry through digital cultural heritage, serious games, information visualization to contemporary theater and visual arts. In order to develop a new digital storytelling methodology hyper-storytelling, we engaged a team of multidisciplinary experts from computer science, visual arts, literature, film directing, psychology, communicology and human computer interaction. In this paper we present the first findings of this team in form of guidelines for interactive digital storytelling presentations of cultural heritage.
Digital Heritage. Progress in Cultural Heritage: Documentation, Preservation, and Protection, 2016
The project iMARECULTURE is focusing in raising European identity awareness using maritime and un... more The project iMARECULTURE is focusing in raising European identity awareness using maritime and underwater cultural interaction and exchange in Mediterranean Sea. Commercial ship routes joining Europe with other cultures are vivid examples of cultural interaction, while shipwrecks and submerged sites, unreachable to wide public are excellent samples that can benefit from immersive technologies, augmented and virtual reality. The projects aim to bring inherently unreachable underwater cultural heritage within digital reach of the wide public using virtual visits and immersive technologies. Apart from reusing existing 3D data of underwater shipwrecks and sites, with respect to ethics, rights and licensing, to provide a personalized dry visit to a museum visitor or augmented reality to the diver, it also emphasizes on developing pre-and after-encounter of the digital or physical museum visitor. The former one is implemented exploiting geospatial enabled technologies for developing a serious game of sailing over ancient Mediterranean and the latter for an underwater shipwreck excavation game. Both games are realized thought social media, in order to facilitate information exchange among users. The project supports dry visits providing immersive experience through VR Cave and 3D info kiosks on museums or through the web. Additionally, aims to significantly enhance the experience of the diver, visitor or scholar, using underwater augmented reality in a tablet and an underwater housing. The consortium is composed by universities and SMEs with experience in diverse underwater projects, existing digital libraries, and people many of which are divers themselves.
2017 9th International Conference on Virtual Worlds and Games for Serious Applications (VS-Games), 2017
Commercial sea routes joining Europe with other cultures are vivid examples of cultural interacti... more Commercial sea routes joining Europe with other cultures are vivid examples of cultural interaction. In this work, we present a serious game which aims to provide better insight and understanding of seaborne trade mechanisms and seafaring practices in the eastern Mediterranean during the Classical and Hellenistic periods. The game incorporates probabilistic geospatial analysis of possible ship routes through the re-use and spatial analysis from open GIS maritime, ocean, and weather data. These routes, along with naval engineering and sailing techniques from the period, are used as underlying information for the seafaring game. This work is part of the EU-funded project iMareCulture whose purpose is in raising the European identity awareness using maritime and underwater cultural interaction and exchange in the Mediterranean sea.
Presentations of virtual cultural heritage artifacts are often communicated via the medium of int... more Presentations of virtual cultural heritage artifacts are often communicated via the medium of interactive digital storytelling. The synergy of a storied narrative embedded within a 3D virtual reconstruction context has high consumer appeal and edutainment value. We investigate if 360° videos presented through virtual reality further contribute to user immersion for the application of preserving intangible cultural heritage. A case study then analyzes whether conventional desktop media is significantly different from virtual reality as a medium for immersion in intangible heritage contexts. The case study describes bridge diving at Stari Most, the old bridge in Mostar Bosnia. This application aims to present and preserve the bridge diving tradition at this site. The project describes the site and history along with cultural connections, and a series of quiz questions are presented after viewing all of the materials. Successful completion of the quiz allows a user to participate in a ...
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Papers by Selma Rizvic