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Semantic annotation for 3D cultural artefacts: About our MVP

A suite of tools for semantic annotation of 3D cultural artefacts is being developed as part of the NFDI4Culture project across several partner organisations (led by the Open Science lab at TIB, Hannover). Operating within Task area 1: Data capture and enrichment, the proposed toolchain focuses on the annotation of 3D data within a knowledge graph environment, so that 3D objects’ geometry, attendant metadata, as well as annotations remain searchable, while data interconnections are not lost. The project builds on several existing FOSS tools:

• OpenRefine, a data cleaning, reconciliation and batch upload tool;
• Wikibase (the tool behind the interface you are viewing now), a suite of services developed by Wikimedia Germany; it combines the ability to handle large volumes of data points with sophisticated data querying and extraction services via a dedicated SPARQL endpoint;
• Kompakkt, a browser-based open-source 3D- and multimedia viewer Kompakkt with built-in collaborative annotation features.

The integrated suite of tools follows FAIR principles and facilitates linking 3D-objects and annotations, and their cultural context (including historical people and places, geo-location and capture-technology metadata), to the broader semantic web and various national and international authority records (GND, VIAF and more).

By the end of 2021, the toolchain will be developed as an MVP (minimum viable product) to be tested and refined further with more data partnerships. It will allow a wide range of users to interact with 3D- and other types of multimedia objects and annotations, and ultimately open up new digital spaces for research, education and discourse around cultural stewardship and memory preservation without siloing knowledge.

About our case study

This Wikibase instance contains sample data about Weikersheim Castle from the Corpus der barocken Deckenmalerei in Deutschland, provided the MVP data partners at The Institute of Art History at Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität in Munich.

Adding new data in the archive

• Create new item
• Create new property
• Create new text description

Example item pages for different types of data

• An item describing a physical space
• An item describing a 3D model
• An item describing an annotation for a 3D model

Data model reference

• Index of classes and properties with examples

Some example data queries

• Overview query of all items with a description and their type
• All paintings from the cycle "Belagerungsszenen des Langen Türkenkriegs" with some properties
• Items that share an Iconclass notation

Indexes for quick reference

• List of properties
• List of users