Mosaic Database
The CIDM, International Mosaic Documentation Centre, has promoted and coordinated the creation of a multimedia database for the knowledge, study and exploitation of the musive decorations. With the collaboration of ENEA in Bologna, an innovative computer system designed and implemented that allows the storage of information on the musive decorations, also usable in a network with remote access.
This database aims to document all types of mosaic without any chronological or geographical limit, providing information and indicating knowledge paths as exhaustive as possible, taking into account the different users who will question the system, from students to researchers, and providing multiple levels of in-depth knowledge and interfaces.
The database project has received funding from the European Community, thanks to which has provided grants for research and data implementation.
The targeted use of information technology has long been undertaken, due to the important contribution that can offer to the monitoring and to the recording of reliable data for conservation and restoration, in the field of study and ancient and contemporary mosaics’ documentation. The possibilities of dealing in a systematic and integrated way with relevant problems such as the state of the walls, the detection of the mound background’s detachments, the mapping of the boundaries between original and restored zones, the control of cleaning operations, have recently brought this complex field of study closer to computer science. In the effort at transfering the enormous amount of data collected on the materials used for the music, the new possibilities offered in data processing and, in particular, in images’ interpretation, they play a key role in the research for the comparative and analytical potentials contained in the computer systems mentioned above.
During the last forty years, our knowledge of the mosaic’s works has been greatly increased thanks to the impressive amount of information produced during the numerous restoration interventions, where a substantial amount of material has also been produced through the use of new diagnostic survey technologies.
Through the establishment of a database dedicated to mosaics, the CIDM intends to promote research and study of ancient and modern international mosaics, in relation to history, hermeneutics, stylistic influences, restoration and conservation, as well as developing strategies to facilitate access for all users to national and international cultural resources – heritage of public value – while ensuring the free flow of knowledge.
The choices made for the creation of the multimedia database dedicated to the mosaic have favoured modularity and flexibility, which has led to an open system, where interactivity is the key and where multimedia aspects can follow with the rapid evolution of technologies.
The system thus appears, on the one hand, as a valuable development tool which offers support to experts for the study and elaboration of new cards and, on the other hand, ends up becoming the system which will operationally oversee the management of information.