Jonas Bruschke, M.Sc.

Abstract: Photographs and 3D reconstructions of buildings as well as textual information and documents play an important role in art history and architectural studies when it comes to investigating architecture, the construction history of buildings, and the impact these constructions had on a city. Advanced tools have the potential to enhance and support research workflows and source criticism by linking corresponding materials and annotations, such that relevant data can be quickly queried and identified. Images are a primary source in the 3D reconstruction process, with the possibility to create spatializations of additional photographs of buildings which were not part of the initial SfM process, enabling the linking of annotations between these photographs and the respective 3D model. In contrast, identifying and locating respective annotations in text sources requires a different approach due to their more abstract nature. This paper presents concepts for automatic linking of texts and their respective annotations to corresponding images, as well as to 3D models and their annotations. Controlled vocabularies for architectural elements and a graph representation are utilized to reduce ambiguity when querying related instances.

Abstract: We present methods to visualize characteristics in collections of historical photographs, especially focusing on the presentation of spatial position and orientation of photographs in relation to the buildings they depict. The developed methods were evaluated and compared in a user study focusing on their appropriateness to gain insight into specific research questions of art historians: 1) which buildings have been depicted most often in a collection of images, 2) which positions have been preferred by photographers to take pictures of a given building, 3) what is the main perspective of photographers regarding a specific building. To analyze spatial datasets of photographs, we have adapted related methods used in the visualization of fluid dynamics. As these existing visualization methods are not suitable in all photographic situations---especially when a multitude of photographs are pointing into diverging directions---we have developed additional cluster-based approaches that aim to overcome these issues. Our user study shows that the introduced cluster-based visualizations can elicit a better understanding of large photographic datasets concerning real-world research questions in certain situations, while performing comparably well in situations where existing methods are already adequate.

Abstract: The research group on four-dimensional research and communication of urban history (HistStadt4D) investigates and develops methods and technologies to transfer extensive repositories of historical photographs and their contextual information into a three-dimensional spatial model, with an additional temporal component. This will make content accessible to researchers and the public, via a 4D browser as well as a location-dependent augmented reality representation. Against this background, this article highlights users and requirements of both scholarly and touristic usage of digital information about urban history, in particular historical photographs.

Abstract: Archives and museums store vast collections of historical images of urban areas and make them publicly available through online platforms. Many of these images, often containing historic buildings and landscapes, can be oriented spatially using automatic methods such as structure from motion (SfM). Providing spatially and temporally oriented images of urban architecture, in combination with advanced searching and 2D/3D exploration techniques, offers new potentials in supporting historians in their research. We are developing a 3D web environment usable to historians to spatially search online media repositories containing historic photographic images. We combine 3D models of historic buildings with spatially oriented images, replacing text-based searching through meta-data with spatial and temporal browsing with respect to given focus points in historic city models.