U.S.-Turkey Cooperative Research: Museum Audio-Visual Information Management Systems

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9406954 Tewfik Technical Narrative: This is a cooperative research project between the University of Minnesota and Bilkent University in Ankara, Turkey. The investigators are electrical engineers who propose to address the signal processing issues that arise in the design of an Audio-Visual Information Management System (AVIMS). Specifically, the project will advance the technology so that users in the United States will have interactive access to the database of the Topkapi Palace Museum, one of the finest archaeological museums in the world. The database of this museum contains images of Ottoman calligraphic documents and illuminated manuscripts, images of objects, speech signals, and some video signals. A major challenge in building an AVIMS for such a collection of data is to provide users with the capability of querying documents based on a keyword, audio or visual feature or subject. To render the database more accessible to a wider audience in static and mobile settings, the investigators (Drs. A. Tewfik from the University of Minnesota and E. Cetin from Bilkent University) will provide tools to deliver Ottoman manuscripts in a spoken format. Ottoman documents will be recorded in spoken form by experts familiar with the archaic Ottoman script. Users will be provided with the capability of playing the recorded and compressed signals at various speeds with minimal distortion. Time-scale modification will also be used to mask most of the random delays that occur during the transmission of audio data over computer networks. Project funding will enable the two teams to work together in both Minneapolis and Ankara. ***