PhD in Technologies for Cultural Heritage - since XXXVI Cycle

Contacts

Supervisor

Vincenzo Lombardo

Phd thesis

Values-based Mapping for Serious Games in Cultural Heritage Communication

Cultural heritage values (CHValues) are essential in guiding what aspects of heritage are preserved, shaping identity and fostering a sense of belonging. Communicating these values is vital for both heritage preservation and education. Although serious games have proven effective in engaging users with cultural heritage, a systematic and not high-level approach to integrating cultural content into game design is lacking. This project seeks to address this by developing a framework and software to help designers incorporate the cultural content into serious games through the use of CHValues. By providing a structured, practical approach, the software will help designers build learning and game mechanics that effectively communicate cultural heritage while also offering tools to assess the success of that communication.

Research activities

Biography: Vittorio Murtas is a passionate and versatile computer science graduate with a master’s degree from the University of Turin in 2022. He has been studying computer science since 2016, with Java being his primary language. Specializing in Virtual Reality and Multimedia, Vittorio is skilled in using Unity and Maya for programming and 3D modeling, creating immersive digital experiences. His research interests center on game design, game theory, and the application of digital and virtual tools in cultural heritage. Vittorio contributed to the European BeArchaeo project, where he developed BeA-ViR, a virtual reality system designed to explore archaeological findings and sites discovered in Japan between 2019 and 2022.

Research

Doctoral Thesis Research Topic: "Values-based Mapping for Serious Games in Cultural Heritage Communication". Cultural heritage values (CHValues) are essential in guiding what aspects of heritage are preserved, shaping identity and fostering a sense of belonging. Communicating these values is vital for both heritage preservation and education. Although serious games have proven effective in engaging users with cultural heritage, a systematic and not high-level approach to integrating cultural content into game design is lacking. This project seeks to address this by developing a framework and software to help designers incorporate the cultural content into serious games through the use of CHValues. By providing a structured, practical approach, the software will help designers build learning and game mechanics that effectively communicate cultural heritage while also offering tools to assess the success of that communication.

Methodology: We propose a values-based approach, given their essential role in the communication process, by trying to take advantage of their usually hierarchical and schematic structure to make an automated and computable tool. The approach involves creating a values-based intermediate layer between the cultural heritage content and the serious game's components. This "middle layer" would serve as a software component that formalizes CH values, pools an existing knowledge base of successful solutions and suggests novel solutions, reducing the workload on the game designer by assisting in content creation. This systematic integration of CH values, formalized in a programming language, would help ensure that the designer's workload is balanced, with significant support from the software component throughout the game's creation and testing phases.

Outcome: The expected outcomes include the development of the software and its successful adoption by game designers. To demonstrate the effectiveness of the values-based approach and the versatility of the model, two case studies will be transformed into serious games. The first is BeA-ViR, a virtual archaeology application that visualizes sites and artifacts excavated and analyzed by the BeArchaeo project between 2019 and 2022. The second is the VEP (Virtual Electronic Poem), a reconstruction of the first multimedia installation in history, presented at the 1958 Brussels Expo and created by Le Corbusier, Xenakis, and Varèse.

Supervisor: Vincenzo Lombardo, Computer Science Department.

Training

PhD T4C Courses (2023-2024):

• Trans-disciplinarity through the digital sciences, Coordinator Prof. Vincenzo Lombardo,
• Materiality, Coordinator Prof. Monica Gulmini
• Humans vs Geomorphological Environments: Concepts and Case studies, Coordinator Prof. Marco Giardino
• Condition assessment, analytical protocol and preservation strategies, Coordinators: Prof. Dominique Scalarone; Prof. Sergio Favero Longo
• Imaging techniques, Coordinators: Prof. Alessandro Re; Prof. Vito Messina
• Workshop: China and chinoiseries, Coordinator: Prof. Eliano Diana

Game Design Courses (2020-2021):

• Workshop: Game Design Laboratory, Coordinator: Prof. Ivan Mosca, Corso di laurea in Scienze della Comunicazione
• History and theory of gaming forms, Coordinator: Prof. Riccardo Fassone, Corso di laurea magistrale in CAM (Cinema, Arti della scena, Musica e Media)

Publications

• Murtas, V. & Lombardo, V., 2024. Rediscovering the Past: Serious Games for Archaeology. In: IEEE TOG (Transactions on Games) Special Issue on Gaming Application for Cultural Heritage [In Submission].
  
  
• Clocchiatti, A., Murtas, V., Cena, F. & Soccini, A.M., 2024. Who Fears the Big Bad Climate Change? Analysis of Emotional Reactions to Global Warming in Virtual Reality. In: G. Casalino, et al., eds. Higher Education Learning Methodologies and Technologies Online. HELMeTO 2023. Communications in Computer and Information Science, vol 2076. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-67351-1_43.
  
  
• Lombardo, V., Lauro, V., Murtas, V. & Ryan, J., 2024. Chronology and Geospace Design in Virtual Reality for Archaeological Data Exhibition. International Journal of Service and Knowledge Management, 8(1), pp. 1–26. http://dx.doi.org/10.52731/ijskm.v8.i1.810.
  
  
• Murtas, V. & Lombardo, V., 2024. Deeply Digging in Serious Games for Archaeology. In: 2024 IEEE Gaming, Entertainment, and Media Conference (GEM), IEEE, pp. 1–6. 10.1109/GEM61861.2024.10585660.
  
  
• Borghesi, F., Murtas, V., Pizzolante, M., Chirico, A. & Cipresso, P., 2023. Affect Dynamics through Virtual Reality. Annual Review of CyberTherapy and Telemedicine 2023, p. 11. 10.4018/978-1-6684-4854-0.
  
  
• Borghesi, F., Murtas, V., Mancuso, V. & Chirico, A., 2023. Continuous Time Elicitation Through Virtual Reality to Model Affect Dynamics. In: International Conference on Computer-Human Interaction Research and Applications, Springer Nature Switzerland, Cham, pp. 258–276. http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-49368-3_16.
  
  
• Murtas, V., Lauro, V. & Lombardo, V., 2023. Virtual archaeology in a multi-platform and multi-lingual setting. In: Adjunct Proceedings of the 31st ACM Conference on User Modeling, Adaptation and Personalization, pp. 422–426. https://doi.org/10.1145/3563359.3596664
  
  
• Murtas, V. & Lombardo, V., 2023. BeA-ViR Game: From Virtual Exploration to Simple Gamification. In: Joint International Conference on Serious Games, Springer Nature Switzerland, Cham, pp. 433–438. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-44751-8_39
  
  
• Lauro, V., Giovannangelo, M., De Riggi, M., Lanzaro, N. & Murtas, V., 2023. RAO Project Recovery: Methods and Approaches for the Recovery of a Photographic Archive for the Creation of a Photogrammetric Survey of a Site Unreachable over Time. Heritage, 6(6), pp. 4710–4721. https://doi.org/10.3390/heritage6060250
  
  
• Lombardo, V., Lauro, V., Murtas, V. & Goud, S., 2023. Merging Archaeological Site Recreation and Museum Exhibition. In: International Conference on Interactive Digital Storytelling, Springer Nature Switzerland, Cham, pp. 68–84. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-47658-7_6
   
• Sarcinella, E.D., Chirico, A., Mancuso, V., Pizzolante, M., Murtas, V., Lauro, V., Bartolotta, S. & Gaggioli, A., 2023. How many degrees of emotional separation are there between real and virtual nature? A pilot study. Annual Review of CyberTherapy and Telemedicine 2023.
  
  

Research Outcomes

• "Deeply Digging in Serious Games for Archaeology" Presented at IEEE Gaming, Entertainment, and Media Conference (GEM), Turin, June 5-7, 2024
• "BeA-ViR: archeologia e archeometria possono essere un gioco?", UNIGHT – European Researchers’ Night 2024, Rettorato dell'Università di Torino (Torino), September 27, 2024.

Publications

All of my research products