On the occasion of the UNESCO-UNEVOC international event in Como, IATH Academy Lake Como presents the workshop “COMACINI, the Masters of Cathedrals.” The Maestri Comacini are reborn, with all their characteristic splendor, thanks to Artificial Intelligence.
Thanks to technological installations based on Artificial Intelligence and Virtual Reality, participants of the UNESCO congress can enjoy the results of the TIME TRAVEL LAB, dedicated to the tourist enhancement of cultural heritage.
Going along with the conference theme, Building and Construction, the workshop focused on the tourist enhancement of the MAESTRI COMACINI, known since the early Middle Ages as master builders, the protagonists of Lombard Romanesque architecture, whose innovative solutions they spread throughout Italy and Europe.
The UNESCO-UNEVOC Conference
The UNESCO-UNEVOC International Center focuses on technical and vocational education and training. Through collaboration among the 220 UNEVOC centers around the world, UNESCO-UNEVOC aims to ensure access to quality training for all by developing programs that facilitate young people’s entry into the world of work and lifelong learning. The conference is being held in Como, Italy, from APRIL 22 to 24, at the Cometa Association. It is an institutional event, where several ministers of education from various participating countries are scheduled to attend on-site and online.
The Time Travel workshop “Comacini, the masters of cathedrals.”
Guided by specialized lecturers and Carraro LAB, IATH Academy students experimented with advanced AI/VR/AR technology application labs, designing new products and services that increase opportunities for the development of digitization of Tourism.
The intersection of art, culture and artificial intelligence is opening up new creative horizons, revolutionizing the visual arts landscape. Innovative Regenerative AI methodology, or the regeneration of styles and iconographies of the past, was used to create a new imagery of the Comacini Masters.
This is not only an educational and technological project, but the conception of a new tourism product, a hybrid meta-destination, between real and virtual, which does not replace real travel but promotes and enriches it with innovative digital content and experiences.
The project proposes an immersive Time Travel experience in different modes and technologies, presented through an installation in the Unevoc conference:
A Virtual Cathedral in the metaverse with works of Re-generative Art, usable in the smartphones of conference participants, who can enter in the form of avatars. Artificial intelligence-generated iconographic cycles are displayed in the cathedral, recounting the epic of the Comacine Masters in the language of medieval painting. This is unprecedented imagery developed with the innovative methodology of Re-Generative Art.
-An intelligent screen (Meta Mirror) uses artificial intelligence, specifically Computer Vision, to project attendees into the world of the Comacini regenerated by AI. The Meta Mirror engages congress attendees by taking selfies in the construction sites, workshops, cathedral masters’ quarries, and artworks generated by artificial intelligence. The large Meta Mirror, developed by Carraro Lab, is a kind of intelligent fresco in which, thanks to visual recognition AI technology, visitors literally enter and interact.
A VR-AR corner presents the Digitization of works by the Maestri Comacini found in the Como area, through filming with 360 video cameras and ultra-high-definition gigapixel technologies. Thanks to Meta Quest 3 mixed reality viewers, some sculptures can be manipulated in augmented reality, a feature enabled by the immersive platform of the IATH lab.
The prototype of a tourist itinerary of the Maestri Comacini, in the form of an immersive guidebook, which can be consulted by tourists both on site and remotely before the trip. The tour includes an itinerary by bike, via Lake navigation and on foot and consists of 20 stops with explanatory QR codes on self-standing panels. It is the result of an Innovation Design project of a PTO – homogeneous tourism product.
Re-Generative ART
A Re-Generative ART project, a techno-methodology devised by Carraro lab based on the regeneration of styles and iconographies of the past through Artificial Intelligence, was first developed in the lab. The history of the Comacini, scarcely illustrated in the past, is represented using the language of the different periods in which masters worked, from the early Middle Ages to beyond the Renaissance.
Each historical event of the Maestri Comacini is represented using the artistic style of the time, from medieval miniatures to Renaissance paintings, so that over the various centuries there is a clearly recognizable progressive aesthetic evolution. With Re-Generative Art Carraro Lab has developed a theory and method for “regenerative” (not simply “generative”) artificial intelligence.
“Campus LakeON” technology labs.
TIME TRAVEL LAB is part of the new “Campus LakeON” technology labs project of IATH
Academy Lake Como, founded 10 years ago in Cernobbio. With the PNRR “Campus LakeON” project, IATH Academy puts technology at the center of an evolutionary experiential educational process and confirms the Academy’s role as an engine of territorial development: students have the opportunity to experiment with 4.0 technology solutions and gain immersive learning experiences in laboratory spaces at the service of professionals trained to “govern” new technologies in the Tourism and Hospitality sector, which is distinguished by its interdisciplinary approach and emphasis on applied learning.