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Virtual Heritage in the Cloud: New Perspectives for the Virtual Museum of Bologna

This paper focuses on the integration of Cloud computing tools and user-generated content into an online cultural virtual environment. Our investigation aimed to clarify whether the Metaverse can be used as a spatial interface for aggregation and synestetic visualization of heterogeneous cultural data distributed in the Cloud. The case study we adopted is Nu.M.E. 2010 a virtual reconstruction of Piazza di Porta Ravegnana, a crucial area of late medieval Bologna (Italy), published on the platform Second Life (SL). A newfound awareness and appreciation for the new epistemic scenario introduced by Cloud computing and virtualization techniques has raised the following methodological questions: can Cloud computing help optimize the communication strategy and educational effectiveness of cultural data online? Can historical research and cultural data interpretation benefit from collaborative annotation and user-generated content? The described application entailed the use within SL of some of the most popular virtualization services: Google Maps, Panoramio, Google Docs, and Google Warehouse. The results of our testing activity suggest that Cloud services currently available are in fact useful tools for reshaping an online virtual space into an effective collaborative place, allowing users to share content, take an active part in the interpretation process and, most importantly, to provide valid feedback for cultural reception analysis.