Digital mediation of cultural content can also happen outside museum walls. The world wide web is therefore home for a potentially infinite number of virtual museums, which can correspond to onsite museums that choose to create a digital twin and make it available on the Internet, or for collaborative platforms such as Europeana or Google Arts and Culture, that require the input of a wide number of contributors, including museums which are interested in having their collections presented by means of such online tools.
Apart from thematic presentation of various collections, Europeana is also focused on storytelling, while Google Arts and Culture on gamification, with an entire palette of games and applications that bring cultural heritage closer to people. One of them is the “Pet Portraits” which enables user to compare their own pet with similar animals that are part of artworks throughout the world, or “Art Transfer” which allows the user to transform the own photographs using features borrowed from famous paintings. As for the games, people can for instance follow two “Mice in the Museum”, discovering a selection of paintings and commenting thereupon, or the “Descent the Serpent” and get to know the gods of Mesoamerica.
Digital mediation outside museum walls is also the one practised by large libraries, such as the Bibliothèque nationale de France and its related online platform Gallica, providing free access to a huge number of digitized collections, summing up to several million items, not only books but also 3D models of archaeological items, 2D images structured thematically in chapters such as: numismatics, history of ancient writing, urban plans, masks, marionettes, portraits, fine arts, music and opera, photography, but also handicraft and know-how, technologies, genealogy, fashion and textiles, etc.
Other famous Internet archives include the Deutsche Fotothek, founded in physical form in 1924, and which nowadays has made available online its collections of more than 30,000 digitized maps, about 108,000 architectural drawings, of 111,000 photographs of non-European lifestyles and landscapes collected since the 1860s.
Maybe one of the most widely used portal of digital mediation which exceeds the world of culture is the Wikimedia Commons, also known simply as Commons, an initiative started in 2004 and focusing on 3D models. Since then, it has incorporated myriads of files uploaded by the National Archives and Records Administration of the USA, the Digital Public Library of America, Europeana, World Health Organization. Among the first 3D models uploaded in the Commons, there is the 3D digital replica of the Lion of Al-lāt statue from the Temple of Al-Lat in Palmyra, Syria, damaged by ISIS actions in 2015.
3D models of heritage sites are particularly useful tools in case of natural or man-caused catastrophes, as these digital twins can help in the reconstruction of the respective monuments. One such example is the use of the 3D BIM model created by Autodesk for the Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris, this French landmark which was almost entirely destroyed in the 2019 fire and was reopened to the public in December 2024.
Resources:
Visit the Gallica website of the National Library of France
Visit the website of the German Photothek
Visit the platform Google Arts & Culture
Check the option Pet Portraits on the Google Arts & Culture platform
Check the option Art Transfer on the Google Arts & Culture platform
Try the game The Descent of the Serpent on the Google Arts & Culture platform
Try the game Mice In The Museum on the Google Arts & Culture platform
Visit the website Wikimedia Commons – Wikipedia
Check the link Notre-Dame 'reborn’ with Autodesk digital twin technology | Construction Digital