Virtual cultural heritage applications, particularly virtual museums, nowadays include various forms of storytelling. Every object, site or artifact is better perceived and understood through the adjoining story. Interactive applications naturally request the storytelling to become interactive as well. This paper describes the concepts of interactive digital storytelling in our virtual museums and cultural heritage presentations and discusses their advantages and drawbacks recognized through user evaluation. We used digital stories not only to introduce visitors with the context and information on the objects, but also to enhance their navigation through virtual environments with purpose of learning and perceiving maximum amount of offered information.

Summary form only given. We present a method how to create locally and globally interesting stories for virtual museums in a relatively short time. The local interestingness is understood in a Koestlerian way (AH, AHA, HAHA bisociation effects). Global interestingness is achieved by discovering, within the given unique material, options for relating unrelated contexts, internal poetry and/or change of the narration mode. The craft of storytelling resulted in five short movies, completed during the South-East European Virtual Heritage School: Digital Storytelling for Virtual Museums. These intereStories“ are intentionally aimed at overcoming multiple limitations of backtelling, frequent in virtual museums. The five themes include Bosnian blues Sevdah, fate of Sephardic Jews, existing and nonexisting urban area, and traditional Bosnian coffee. The stories were coauthored by 15 beginners storytellers in groups (24 authors) in 5 days alongside with the 12 lectures on theory and narrative case studies from V-must network good practice. Besides the brainstormings, speed-up focused brainwritting feedback was provided twice: once for preexistent stories, second for betaversions. The final creations were produced in Adobe Premiere Pro and published at YouTube.

Abstract. This paper introduces the aims and early activities of Colour and Space in Cultural Heritage (COSCH), an interdisciplinary European network of experts in the latest optical measuring techniques and electronic imaging applied to documentation of artefacts. COSCH is a forum open to organisations, institutions and companies interested in collaboration within the emerging field of precise spectral and spatial imaging techniques, in physical and chemical sciences applied to cultural heritage objects, as well as in research and applications to conservation and art-historical analysis of such objects. COSCH started in November 2012. Funded by COST, an intergovernmental framework for European Cooperation in Science and Technology, COSCH networking activities enable knowledge exchange and coordination of nationally-funded research on a European level with occasional contribution of experts from other countries. Funding has been made available for four years (2012–2016). Participation is open to researchers across a wide range of disciplines, including computer scientists and museum professionals, art historians and academics in heritage-related fields. COSCH is a trans-domain Action (TD1201) of the COST Domain Materials, Physics and Nanosciences (MPNS) which facilitates and promotes innovation in material science. The work of COSCH is defined in the Memorandum of Understanding between the COST Office and the Chairman of COSCH. The Memorandum is available from http://www.cost.eu/domains_actions/mpns/Actions/TD1201 alongside the latest progress report and other documents. The scientific work draws on earlier and current research of the participants and is organised around the following areas: spectral and spatial object documentation; algorithms and procedures; analysis and restoration of surfaces and objects of material culture; visualisation of cultural heritage objects and its dissemination. Up-to-date information about COSCH activities, including its scientific and training programmes, abstracts of presentations and a list of participants, can all be found on the Action website at http://www.cosch.info.

Bosnia and Herzegovina always has been a place where the East meets the West. Over 1000 years, different cultures, religions and civilizations have left their remains in this small country in Western Balkans. Despite all wars and tragic destructions, today in the heart of Sarajevo one can find mosques, Catholic and Orthodox churches and Jewish synagogues next to each other and people of different nations and religions living together in mutual respect and friendship. Multiethnic spirit of Bosnia and Herzegovina lives through its cultural heritage. Therefore our task is to ensure its presentation and preservation using Information and Communications Technologies (ICT). So far researchers have achieved significant results by creating several virtual museums. In this paper we will present the Museum of Bosnian Traditional Objects, Digital Catalogue of Stecaks and the Virtual Museum of Sarajevo Assassination, giving an overview of the process of creating virtual environments from multiple data sources based on various 3D digitization technologies: some based on traditional 3D modeling, other based on laser scanning or photogrametric techniques.