Assessing 3D Geovisualization for the Communication of Public Art

Vincenzo Lombardo and Rossana Damiano

CIRMA and Dipartimento di Informatica, Universit

a di Torino, corso Svizzera 185, Torino, Italy

Keywords:

Contemporary Public Art, 3D, Geovisualization.

Abstract:

This paper presents the assessment of a 3D geovisualization framework and system for the documentation and

communication of contemporary public art. The paper reviews the speciﬁc requirements of the contemporary

public art and discusses the critical issues connected to the visualization of such artworks. The framework

implements a visualization pipeline that relies on both a semantic representation of the artworks and a mixture

of graphic elements acquired from reality or designed for the application. The web-based visualization system

realizes a geolocalized 3D layout that selects the relevant traits that characterize the contemporary public

artworks. The system is implemented in a prototype applied to the visualization of contemporary public

artworks of the municipality of Turin (Italy). The assessment is achieved through the evaluation of a number

of typical tasks that general audiences engage with contemporary public art, the system has revealed to be

more adequate to its design goals.

1 INTRODUCTION

In the last decades, contemporary public art has been

a very dynamic area, involving both public and private

subjects and originating a novel professional artist

category. Public art is peculiarly planned for and

staged in some speciﬁc public space, usually open air

or in publicly accessible buildings, for all people to

enjoy it (Miles, 1997). Contemporary art in general

lacks, on the one hand, an effective documentation for

the institutions (documentation needed for purposes

of maintenance and re-installation), and, on the other,

an effective communication to large audiences (com-

munication needed because of its peculiar, sometimes

obscure languages). We claim that the 3D geovisu-

alization can effectively support these documentation

and communication task for contemporary public art.

The usage of contextualized 3D graphics repre-

sentation is not new in contemporary public art en-

terprise, especially in the design phase. The pre-

visualization of projects (see, e.g., the reStacked

project)

usually employs a 3D model that highlights

the major features of the artwork to provide a quick

overlook on its size, the materials employed, the per-

spectives from a number of relevant points of view,

entrances/exit positioning, etc.. Also, 4D CAD tech-

nology (i.e. 3D plus time as fourth dimension on

http://www.njstudio.co.kr/main/project/2013 reSTAC

Ked [Competition]/2013 reSTACKed [Competition].html

CAD software) is employed by designers and engi-

neers to analyze and visualize construction projects

in order to plan construction operations (Mahalingam

et al., 2010). 3D graphics is also particularly appro-

priate for the case of reconstructions of cultural her-

itage items from the past such as in the case of the

eme

electronique a multimedia installation that was

hosted inside the Philips Pavilion at the 1958 Brussels

World Fair, and never repeated because the pavilion

was turned down at the end of the fair (VEP project

(Lombardo et al., 2006)).

Public art also makes the case for geographic vi-

sualization (geovisualization for short), thanks to its

close relationship with the urban setting. Geovisual-

ization enriches that traditional static maps with the

exploratory capabilities of the interactive maps, in-

cluding several layer representation, zooming in/out,

the possibility of changing the visual appearance

(MacEachren and Kraak, 2001). For the visualization

purposes, the representations of urban maps lately re-

quire a third dimension, which is necessary to rep-

resent the height of the new buildings (of increasing

importance), and the visible and invisible phenom-

ena that happen at several meters above and under

the ground and can be represented using the surfaces

of the buildings as a support (Donolo, 2014). Many

large cities today exist in 3D geolocalized copies,

though in general applications tend to focus on vi-

sual interpretations of statistical data as well as data

314

Lombardo, V. and Damiano, R.

Assessing 3D Geovisualization for the Communication of Public Art.

DOI: 10.5220/0005724503120320

In Proceedings of the 11th Joint Conference on Computer Vision, Imaging and Computer Graphics Theory and Applications (VISIGRAPP 2016) - Volume 1: GRAPP, pages 314-322

ISBN: 978-989-758-175-5

from the urban infrastructure. Noticeable applica-

tions are “We Are Data”

and “OSM Buildings”

“We Are Data”, developed by UbiSoft on the environ-

ment backbone of the videogame “Watch dogs”, is a

promotional website for the game, which visualizes

the infrastructure data of three European cities (Paris,

London, and Berlin), displaying data about message

exchanging, tweets, public transportation timetable,

on an interactive 3D map that also precisely character-

izes the building heights and the major monuments

;

“OSM Buildings” is a library that provides an addi-

tional layer to existing web maps, employed in urban

projects to support the participation of administrators

and citizens in planning processes.

In this paper, we present a 3D geovisualization

framework and a system for the documentation and

communication of contemporary public art. The ma-

jor novelty of the system is a methodology for a 3D

geopositioned system that allows the access to the

documentation of the public artworks and commu-

nicates the attitude of a city towards the contempo-

rary public art. The paper is organized as follows.

The next section introduces the visualization frame-

work, called Invisibilia, and the architecture required

to implement it as a functioning system. The system

features a three–layered visualization structure, with

each visualization layer concerning a different infor-

mation layer. Finally, we evaluate the visualization

system design through an experimental test on a group

of users. The paper ends with some reﬂections on the

lessons learned and conclusion.

2 VISUALIZATION OF

CONTEMPORARY PUBLIC

ART

The visualization of public art monuments, and espe-

cially in the case of contemporary public art, is ad-

dressed by municipalities with simple methods. In

most case, communication is limited to printed cat-

alogues (mostly distributed through pdf ﬁles on web

sites

), which report illustrations of the artwork and

a few explanations. Usually, such catalogues are ac-

companied by interactive maps, that report the po-

http://www.wearedata.org

http://www.osmbuildings.org

Philippa Warr, Watch Dogs website maps

your unprotected social data, 27 JUNE 2013,

http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2013-06/27/watch-

dogs-wearedata

See, e.g., the Chicago public art guide, http://www.city

ofchicago.org/content/dam/city/depts/dca/Public20Art/

publicartguide1.pdf

Figure 1: Interactive map of Boston public art

(http://www.publicartboston.com/map/node). A

similar map is available for public art in Turin

(http://www.comune.torino.it/papum/).

sitions of the artworks with anonymous pins that

provide access to further information, typically the

archival sheet of the municipality or a simpliﬁed form

of it (see Figure 1).

However, the documentation, and thus the com-

munication about contemporary public art can be

more knowledgeable. The Invisibilia project

has in-

vestigated how the digital technologies can support

the documentation of the “invisible” issues concern-

ing contemporary art (including installations, perfor-

mances, and site-speciﬁc situations), that are always

at risk of vanishing. The name Invisibilia refers to the

notion of the “intangible” cultural heritage promoted

by UNESCO, and emphasizes the fact that in contem-

porary art the relationship between the aesthetic ap-

preciation of the single “work” goes beyond its mate-

rial visibility (Lughi, 2014). The artistic and aesthetic

experiences connected and enhanced by digital me-

dia are the foundations for the reﬂexivity, a prereq-

uisite to understanding the new logics of cultural pro-

duction and consumption and the new forms of active

citizenship that are taking shape in the contemporary

landscape.

The project Invisibilia has investigated and de-

veloped a number of proposals to develop the study,

maintenance, reuse and proﬁtability of these partic-

ular heritage. In particular, for the case of contem-

porary public art, the project has addressed the issue

of representing the layout of the artworks at the city

scale and the urban setting of the individual artworks,

together with the access paths (on foot, on a vehicle,

mixed), and the media items that document the indi-

http://www.invisibilia.unito.it

Assessing 3D Geovisualization for the Communication of Public Art

315

Example:)Merz’s)FRBR)

Figure 2: Merz’s igloo fountain in Turin: design, construction, ﬁnal.

vidual artworks. The approach has been to encode

the intangible aspects of contemporary art into a rich

digital semantic representation and exploit such a rep-

resentation for several tasks. In this paper, we address

the visualization framework, which exploits the spa-

tial and urban components of the semantic knowledge

(Lieto et al., 2014).

The case studies of project Invisibilia are four

public artworks of the city of Turin: Merz’s igloo–

fountain “Fontana” (Fountain), Clegg’s “Punti di

vista” (Points of view), Kirkeby’s “Opera per Torino”

(Opus for Torino), and Levi/Cliostraat’s “Baci urbani

– Piercing” (Urban kisses – Piercing). The speciﬁc

descriptions in this paper are exempliﬁed through

the artwork “Fontana” (Fountain) by the artist Mario

Merz (see Figure 2). Released in 2002, it has the

shape of an igloo with the surface consisting of a puz-

zle of plates of slate, emerging from a rectangular wa-

ter tab, with water jets, located in a road widening;

four red neon lights, that light up at evening, mark the

cardinal points. Speciﬁcally conceived for the setting

where it is located, this artwork intends to trigger in

the audience a reﬂection on the meaning of urbaniza-

tion though a basic, yet well construed type of house,

the igloo.

2.1 The Invisibilia Visualization

Framework and System

The visualization framework of Invisibilia (Figure

3) integrates knowledge about the artworks with the

graphic elements representing them and the media

documentation about them. We devised a three-

layered system to visualize the contemporary public

art. The Layer 1 provides a synoptic view of the con-

temporary public artworks in the city: we build the vi-

sualization on a thematic base map, providing a geo-

referenced distribution of the artworks (represented

as 3D graphic elements) that exploits the knowledge

(the GPS data) imported from the public data bases

and additional knowledge from the artwork data sheet

(height, diameter, etc.). The Layer 2 provides the

view of the individual artwork through a graphic rep-

resentation of the artwork itself in relation with the

urban proximity; this representation, which includes

the modalities through which the visitors access the

artwork, exploits the knowledge about the artwork (its

function, its components, etc.), and the knowledge

about spatial layout of the urban area; while the art-

work is a unique 3D model, the neighboring elements

are serial iconic elements that are exploited through-

out the artwork visualizations. The Layer 3 is the doc-

umentation view, staged as an image gallery, each im-

age representing some media concerning the artwork.

The user directly accesses Layer 1 from the home

page: here she/he is presented with the overall lay-

out of public artworks across the city and explores the

3D map through automatic scene rotation and manual

zooming in/out; the graphic elements corresponding

to the contemporary public artworks are highlighted.

Once she/he clicks on some artwork, she/he enters

Layer 2, where she/he can explore the speciﬁc urban

setting of the artwork, switching day/night views and

activating the animations showing the visiting paths

allowed for the artwork (on foot, by car or mixed).

Finally, by clicking on the body of the artwork, the

user accesses Layer 3, where she/he can view the me-

dia repository about the artwork.

The implementation of such a visualization frame-

work is a standard semantic architecture (Figure 4, cf.

(Damiano et al., 2014)): the ontology framework, im-

plemented in the Stanbol framework

, maintains the

ontological knowledge base (the formal descriptions

of the artworks), about the public art, which describes

the artworks, their documentation and their spatial

properties, including their relationship with the ur-

ban context that surround them; the visual renderer,

developed in two versions (one based on the three.js

library, with spatial data encoded in a json data ﬁle,

another based on GoogleEarth, which requires a kmz

ﬁle), displays the visual data, namely, 1) the 3D mod-

els associated with artworks and urban elements sur-

rouding them in the visual scene, 2) the Maps down-

loaded from some repository and employed through

the Leaﬂet libraries, 3) the GeoJSON data extracted

from the Geoportal of the city and augmented with

https://stanbol.apache.org

GRAPP 2016 - International Conference on Computer Graphics Theory and Applications

316

Figure 3: The visualization framework of Invisibilia.

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Figure 4: Prototype architecture of visualization framework.

Figure 5: Top level view. Design in Blender, visualized in three.js.

information on geometry and other attributes.

The user interface dynamically arranges the set of

graphic items (artwork and contextual items), stag-

http://www.comune.torino.it/geoportale/

ing and setting them based on their spatial and vi-

sual properties, as extracted from the semantic knowl-

edge. The presentation metaphor, provided by the

“city map”, drives the visual experience through: an

environment, the base city thematic map, where the

Assessing 3D Geovisualization for the Communication of Public Art

317

graphic elements are located; the active elements, the

public art models, that can be clicked by the user; the

contextual elements, i.e. the serial objects that are

positioned in the environment. The interaction de-

sign is inspired by the notion of guided exploration,

with iconic elements and controls inviting the user to

click on the artworks posited in the urban landscape

(in Layer 1), and on the most signiﬁcant parts of the

artwork (in Layer 2).

The design of the graphic elements and of the

scene layout must reconcile the tasks of supporting

the user in visualizing the invisible aspects of the art-

works with the communication issues related with the

documentation of the artworks. The public artworks

come with a marked visual stance, which makes a vi-

sualization of the artwork documentation more chal-

lenging. We can sum up the following premises about

the visualization: it cannot be a replacement for the

original artwork, though exhibited in virtual terms; it

has to balance between the goals of the visualization

and the peculiarities of the artwork; it must adhere to

the model (of the features) of the artwork; the autho-

rial intervention should be limited to the documenta-

tion section. The visual components that represent the

characteristics of the artworks are derived from the

existing documentation and are augmented with the

serial iconic elements, appropriately designed by the

visualization artist. These elements must be in overt

contrast with the original elements, though creating

an environment that can visually host the original ele-

ments. The idea is to acquire from reality the graphic

elements of the artworks, to design from scratch the

simple iconic elements, and ﬁnally to integrate them

into a single visual framework.

The synoptic view of Layer 1 provides a top-view

cartographic representation of the public artworks on

a city map, with their relative positions; the public

artworks are represented by visual items that display

the actual shape of the artwork; these items can be

original (if they exist in the documentation) or intro-

duced ex-novo. The inspiration for such solution is

the tourist city map, that combine topological and to-

pographical elements

: in our case, we decided to em-

ploy Geoportal data from the Geographical web portal

of the Municipality of Turin. In order to recall sight-

seeing heritage–oriented thematic maps, which have

a longstanding tradition in cartography and are effec-

tive in guiding tourists in picking the preferred sites

in a city, we applied the Geoportal data some graphi-

cal transformations, by enlarging and highlighting the

elements of interest for our domain, without any al-

teration on the geometry of other elements, Also, we

http://www.torino.city-sightseeing.it/eng/percorsi

1.htm

Figure 6: Invisibilia artwork level view: implementation of

Merz’s Fountain in three.js library.

Figure 7: Invisibilia artwork level view: implementation of

Kirkeby’s “Opera per Torino” in three.js library.

augmented the thematic map with a 3D perspective,

positioning the 3D models of the elements of inter-

est. The base thematic map of the synoptic view (see

Figure 5), includes topographic elements, such as the

rivers (in blue), the major access as well as inner roads

(in yellow and white), and the major reference build-

ings (in light grey) in order to provide orientation

cues. The topological elements, one per public art-

work, are colored in a light blue glow to give a sense

of presence against a dark background. The imple-

mentation shown in the ﬁgure has been carried out

with the three.js library, with maps from public repos-

itory imported through the Leaﬂet

js library (actually,

in the current implementation, personalized maps are

rasterized to cover a plan with an exact match of the

references, given the relocation from the central point

through a simple javascript function).

The individual artwork view of the Layer 2 is

a perspective view that is reached through a 3D-

simulated camera motion: this view remains in the

graphic style described above, with superimposed ac-

tive icons for accessing the visualization of the me-

dia documentation. In Figure 6 we can see the art-

work, with contextual elements represented as styl-

ized icons, replicated over the several artwork visual-

izations (cf. Figure 7).

The object representing the artworks are 3D mod-

els with photographic texturing, obtained by means of

photogrammetric techniques. The input data are sets

of digital images, acquired through a compact digital

camera, which have been processed through the soft-

ware Photoscan (see Figure 8). This approach, which

can be carried out by a non 3D professional, such as

GRAPP 2016 - International Conference on Computer Graphics Theory and Applications

318

the personnel of the city hall ofﬁces, makes the project

sustainable from the operational point of view; as in-

tended in the design phase, then, the visual appear-

ance makes the object different from the iconic style

adopted for the other elements.

The documentation about the artwork (Layer 3)

can be accessed from the Layer 2 and it includes doc-

uments of various type, such as video clips, text doc-

uments, pictures, etc., (cf. images in Figure 2) which

illustrate all the phases of the artistic creation, from

conception to realization. In the next section, we pro-

vide an assessment of the visualization methodology

for the layers 1 and 2, which are novel for the case of

public art. The assessment will provide useful indi-

cations for the implementability of the methodology

beyond the prototype level.

3 EVALUATION

Based on the paradigm of the user studies, we con-

ducted a test to assess the effectiveness of the pro-

posed visualization of contemporary public art.

Design and procedure. The test included a set of

tasks, designed to test the achievement of the follow-

ing objectives:

• on a city scale (Layer 1), enabling the user to un-

derstand the localization of the artworks and their

spatial relations with the reference points of the

city;

• on a local scale (Layer 2), enabling the user to

understand the physical features of each artwork

(e.g., location, size and shape), the values it con-

veys, and its interaction with the urban environ-

ment;

At the end of each task, the user was requested to an-

swer some questions about the task and to express

her/his liking for the speciﬁc functionality and the

overall system. The test was conducted on the online

prototype. The users were given a written description

of the tasks and printed questionnaires. As part of the

test methodology, the users were observed during the

execution of the tasks, to collect observations for the

qualitative evaluation of the system (Donolo, 2014).

The test was conducted in September 2015 on 10

users, 6 males and 4 women, with ages spanning from

21 to over 65. All users were acquainted with the city,

since they either lived of studied in Turin. The aver-

age execution time for the testing session was about

20 minutes.

Description and results. The 6 tasks for Layer 1 (city

map) were aimed at assessing the user’s capability

of locating the artworks at the city scale visualiza-

tion and relating them to the relevant geographical

information about the city (reference points, periph-

ery/center, etc.).

1. Detecting a set of geographical and urban refer-

ence points (rivers, main roads, railways, etc.).

The capability of users to orientate themselves on

the map varied signiﬁcantly depending on the ref-

erence point types: all users were able to detect

the city rivers and the city center, most users were

able to detect the main roads (7 users), but only

few were able to ﬁnd the north (4 users) direction

on the map.

2. Detecting the artworks based on their pictures.

The users were generally able to localize the art-

works. In particular, all users were able to locate

the best known artworks on the map (Piercing and

Fontana), 9 and 8 users were able to locate, re-

spectively, Opera per Torino and Punti di Vista.

3. Detecting a set of cultural institutions (museums

and foundations). All users were able to locate

the Contemporary Art Gallery, while only some

(6 users) were able to locate the less known insti-

tutions.

4. Detecting the main monuments of the city. All

users were able to detect the most famous monu-

ment (Mole Antonelliana) on the map, with high

rates for other monuments as well; some of the

city’s main squares (e.g., Piazza San Carlo) were

not recognized (3 users).

5. Marking the artworks that are to the city center

and those situated on the periphery of the urban

area. The selections made by the users (artworks

in the city center and artworks on the periphery of

the urban area) were all acceptable.

Also, the user was request to express her/his liking of

the rotation functionality in the visualization system

(Q1.1), on 5 point scale (1– disliking, 5 – liking). At

the city level, most users preferred to rotate the scene

manually, an observation that is consistent with the

liking of the automatic rotation (3.6 avg.).

The test on the Layer 2 (artwork scale) was aimed

at assessing the user’s understanding of the features

of the single artworks and included 5 tasks on two

artworks (Fontana Igloo and Opera per Torino).

1. Providing a free description of the artwork.

Fontana Igloo was described as an “igloo situated

in a square water basin” by most users, with some

variations concerning the material, opaque glass

for some (1 user), stone for others (2 users), and

unspeciﬁed for most. The shape and the color of

the artwork were correctly perceived by all users.

Assessing 3D Geovisualization for the Communication of Public Art

319

Figure 8: Composition of Merz’s Fountain scans in Photoscan.

All descriptions of Opera per Torino shared the

use of the word “arcades” or its synonyms; the

references to an old industrial building and to a

Roman aqueduct were often present.

2. Assessing the size of the artwork, given an ap-

proximate size scale (small, medium, large, extra

large size). Given this scale, the size of Fontana

Igloo was correctly described by the users as

small-medium and the size of Opera per Torino

was correctly described as medium-large. This

task was accompanied by a question about the

most useful elements for assessing the artwork

size (pedestrians, buildings, roads, green areas,

etc). For Fontana Igloo, the other buildings in

the scene were considered useful by 7 users, while

lampposts by 6 users; only 4 users chose the trees

as a useful element of estimating the size. For

Opera per Torino, streets were chosen by 7 users

and trees by 6, and only 5 users chose the build-

ings. These choices depend on the actual context

were the artworks are locate: while Igloo Fontana

is surrounded by streets and buildings, Opera per

Torino is situated in a green area, farther from

buildings.

3. Activating the day/night visualization function-

ality and assessing whether the appearance of the

artwork changed signiﬁcantly from day to night

or not. This functionality was quite effective in

conveying the dynamic aspects of the artwork ap-

pearance: 9 users out of 10 correctly perceived

Fontana Igloo different from day to night (the

igloo is lit by night), while only 5 users perceived

Opera per Torino as different by night (actually no

difference, except for the light cast by the lamp-

posts). The user was also asked to assess her/his

liking of this functionality on a 5 point scale. The

average liking of this functionality, however, is

similar for both artworks (3.4 for Fontana Igloo,

3.9 for Opera per Torino).

4. Classifying the localization of the artwork with

respect to the elements of the urban road sys-

tem (roadside, pedestrian area, roundabout, etc.).

Most user correctly classiﬁed Fontana Igloo as a

trafﬁc divider (7), and Opera per Torino (8) as lo-

cated in a green area alongside a large road.

5. Activating the visualization of the pedestrian and

vehicular paths across and around the artwork,

and indicating the ways the artwork could be ac-

cessed (by car, on foot, or mixed). Most users

correctly understood that it is not possible to get

near Fontana Igloo on foot (6 users), and the large

majority (9 users) correctly answered that it was

possible to walk across the arcades of Opera per

Torino. The user was also asked to assess her/his

linking of this functionality on a 5 point rank.

This functionality had a positive acceptance (3.7

avg. for Igloo Fontana and 4.3 avg. for Opera per

Torino).

The user was also requested to rate the verisimilitude

of the 3D visualization of the artwork on a 5-point

scale (1 – not at all similar, 5 – very similar). In case

the user was not familiar with the artwork, this ques-

tion was reformulated as the liking of the 3D visual-

ization of the artwork (again on a 5-point scale). The

rating showed a difference between the two visualiza-

tions: 3.0 avg. for “Fontana Igloo” and 3.9 avg. for

“Opera per Torino”.

The ﬁnal questionnaire concerned the overall lik-

ing of the system (Q1, 5 point scale) the easiness of

the navigation (Q2, 5 point scale), a closed list ques-

tion (Q3) about the web sites she/he would consult to

get the same information (such as Google Street View

or Wikipedia), a question (Q4) about the most similar

media (scale model, promotional videoclip, map and

leaﬂet). The analysis of the ﬁnal questionnaire shows

a good acceptance of the system (Q3.1, 4.1 avg.) and

of the 3D navigation (Q4.2, 3.9 avg.). The most sim-

ilar websites chosen by the users were Google Street

View (10 users) and Wikipedia (6 users); the most

similar media were the scale model (6 users), the pro-

GRAPP 2016 - International Conference on Computer Graphics Theory and Applications

320

motional videoclip (5 users), and the map (4 users).

Discussion. To sum up, the evaluation shows that the

visualization system basically attained the goals that

drove the design phase, i.e., conveying the overall lay-

out of the public artworks in the city, their spatial and

artistic values and their relations with the urban sys-

tem. The 3D visualization of the artworks in the city

worked well to locate the artworks and the other ge-

ographical and urban reference points, with the ex-

ception of the cardinal points, not explicitly shown on

the map. The inability of users to localize the cardinal

points provides a clear indication for redesign. As ex-

pected, the familiarity with the artworks and with the

other reference points worked in favor of the users’

ability to locate them on the map, as shown by the

fact that the most frequently recognized entities are

those located in the central area of the city.

At Layer 2, the visualization was effective in de-

scribing both the artworks and the urban context sur-

rounding them, including the paths around and across

the artworks, while the effectiveness of the night/day

visualization can be improved, since it turned out to

be slightly confusing about the dynamic aspects of

the artworks. The analysis of the descriptions of the

artworks provided by the users suggests that the 3D

visualization of the artwork works well to communi-

cate the appearance of the artworks and their values.

However, the quality of the visualization seems to be

relevant for the acceptance, as demonstrated by the

difference between the two artworks: the users pre-

ferred the visualization of Opera per Torino, that is

technically less challenging than Fontana Igloo, due

to the presence of the water and of the stone plates

that form the covering of the igloo. An indication

for redesign is provided by the complaint about the

scarcity of textual information in the visualization.

4 CONCLUSIONS

In this paper, we have described a framework for the

documentation and communication of contemporary

public art via a 3D geovisualization framework. The

paper has analyzed the speciﬁc requirements of con-

temporary public art, discussing the critical issues

connected to the visualization of art forms, that should

not be eclipsed by the visualization.

The visualization framework is arranged onto

three levels: a synoptic view, with the spatial layout

of all the artworks at the city level; an artwork view,

with the model of the artwork and standardized icons

for the context model; a documentation view, with a

dashboard of the documents about the artworks. The

framework has been assessed through an implemen-

tation with off-the-shelf technologies and evaluated

against a number of tasks that generic audiences ad-

dress in the case of contemporary public art.

In the next future, we will test the visualization

framework with professionals and users for the popu-

lating pipeline and the efﬁciency of the web site, re-

spectively. It will also be interesting to address as-

pects related to system immersivity and alternative

interaction methods, that provide access to further in-

formation about the public artworks.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Part of this research was funded through the Invisi-

bilia Project (2012-2014), supported by Compagnia

di San Paolo, Progetti di ricerca di ateneo (2011), DR

n. 247 28.01.2011. We thank Giulio Lughi, coordina-

tor of the project. We thank Alessandro Olivero and

Nadia Guardini for their implementation of the virtual

environment. We also thank Massimo Morelli, Adri-

ana Ramundo e Valentino Chiarla, of Pensativa s.r.l.,

for their collaboration and support in the implementa-

tion process.

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