Art Scene Investigation: Discovering and supporting cultural heritage conservation through Mobile AR

The current availability and the wide diffusion of ICT technologies are driving us into a scenario where objects and environments intelligence, together with their enhanced capabilities, can play a strategic role in different aspects and activities of our everyday life. A significant one is represented by the case of cultural heritage, where ICT-based strategies can be exploited to disseminate and communicate information about a specific piece of art or a specific historical site. Digital guides on mobile devices are already used during touristic visits in several museums and cultural institutions, but there is an additional and hidden treasure behind the scenes that could be discovered by the audience thanks to smart objects: understanding of the cultural heritage coming from diagnostic analyses. To reach this purpose, this paper presents a prototype of a digital Augmented Reality (AR) mobile app designed and developed for revealing scientific information about a specific historical and cultural site to a broader and non-specialized audience. The case study we took into account is the Koguryo tombs, located in the northern and central parts of the Korean Peninsula, characterized by painted tumuli with a fragile indoor environment and by difficult access.