The Museum of Pure Form

1. Massimo Bergamasco PERCRO Simultaneous Presence, Telepresence and Virtual Presence Scuola Superiore S.Anna Pisa, Italy The Museum of Pure Form

2. The Museum of Pure Form A new paradigm of interaction with artistic works possessing a solid shape, such as sculptures, and the design of specific architectural spaces in which the deriving perceptual activity can be performed.

3. Virtual Museums The need of physical space for exhibiting works in a real museum gallery is shifted to the need of large computer memory, mass storage capabilities and to the performances of the communication band (Mitchell, MIT). Real museums will become places where to find the originals.

4. Recent trends in the field of Cultural Heritage for the fruition of the artwork Interest in digitalisation of architectural or art works for 3D virtual representations. Interest on the transposition of 2D pictures into 3D synthetic models. Use of AV, AR or mixed reality representations Need for new paradigms of interaction with the art work based on sensory modalities other than vision

5. Transposition from 2D to 3D Transposition of the picture La Rotonda di Palmieri by Giovanni Fattori (Chiara Evangelista, 1999, PERCRO)

6. Digitalisation of sculptures Pieta’ Fiorentina Michelangelo Buonarroti (Museo dell’Opera di S.Maria del Fiore , Firenze) Virtual reconstruction of Maria Maddalena’s face by IBM

7. Need for touching virtual objects Hands bring us knowledge of the world Exploration (haptic perception) Grasping Manipulation

8. Much life of the hands is a form of knowledge: not a linguistic or simbolic knowledge but something based on more concrete action, such as sculpting plaster or clay. The knowledge is not only physical but also experiential Knowledge of this type: Operative, action-centered, know-how. The most common word is skill. Skill is learned by doing. It is acquired by demonstration and sharpened by practice. Skill is participatory. It is an achievement.

9. Henri Focillon “In Praise of the Hands” The Life of Forms in Art (1934) The givers of form are the hands Learning through the hands shapes creativityitself

10. Haptics A perceptual system that uses both cutaneous(including thermal) andkinesthetic inputs to derive information about objects, their properties, and their spatial layout.

11. Haptic Perception Importance of the purposive aspect of Haptics in terms of the acquisition of information related to object’s features with respect to the sensation resulting, on the contrary, from passive stimulation of the skin performed by external means.

12. Haptics Perception Correlation between the typical hand movement pattern related to a specific exploratory procedure and the particular object knowledge associated.

13. Haptics Perception Bidirectionality is the most prominent characteristic of the haptic channel. Haptic perception always involves exchange of (mechanical) energy - and therefore of information - between the body and the world outside.

14. Haptic Perception Vision, audition and the vestibular sense are not linked to a somatic means of modifying one’s immediate physical neighbourhood. In other terms, with vision, audition or vestibular perception, there is no significant exchange of energy between the body and the world outside. This distinction is most apparent if one considers that vision, auditory and vestibular signals can be recorded and replayed (people watch movies, listen to audio recorderings, or have rides in vehicle simulators). On the other hand, recordering and replaying kinesthetic and tactile sensation does not make sense, except possibly for the display of textures and certain material properties.

15. Haptic Perception Bi-directionality is the single most distinguishing feature of haptic devices when compared to other machine interfaces. A haptic device must be designed to read and write to and from the human hand (or foot, or other). The read part is relatively easy to achieve. The write part is comparatively much more difficult to achieve. More specifically, the function of the haptic display is to recreate constitutive properties (relationship between variables of flow and effort).

16. The Museum of Pure Form Sculptures are not physically present as solid 3D entities but as synthetic virtual 3D models retrieved from specifc data-bases. The perceptual approach of the sculpture shape refers only to haptic perception.

17. Haptic Interfaces at PERCRO

19. Hand Exos V.2 (1994) • .

22. LDOF# at PERCRO

23. 3D model of translating haptic device based on “A3” Type 5 T-leg TOP FRONT

24. The Museum of Pure Form General architecture

25. The Museum of Pure Form Modelling of 3D virtual objects Need for a 3D model for haptic perception

26. The Museum of Pure Form Interactive Collision Detection

27. The Museum of Pure Form 3D Dynamic Morphing

28. The Museum of Pure Form Experimental work for shape recognition 1. Literal approach 2. Metaphorical approach

29. The Museum of Pure Form Different typologies of experimental tests

30. The Museum of Pure Form European network of established Museums

31. CONCLUSION Malcolm McCullough observes that the emergence of computation as a medium, rather than just a set of tools, suggests a growing correspondence between digital work and traditional craft. There is a growing appreciation of new abstractions. Increasingly, computers let us treat abstract relations as visible, workable things. New kinds and levels of work become viable.