On 9 May 2016, a formal signing ceremony was held to conclude an agreement between the State Hermitage and Peter the Great St Petersburg Polytechnic University.
Mikhail Borisovich Piotrovsky, General Director of the State Hermitage, and Andrei Ivanovich Rudskoi, Rector of the Peter the Great St Petersburg Polytechnic University, signed an agreement under which until the end of 2021 extensive joint work will be carried out in the following fields:
• the development and improvement of environmental support systems for cultural objects and buildings with large visitor numbers
• the development and improvement of structural and technical counter-terrorist systems for cultural institutions
• the development and modelling of logistical visitor routes for cultural objects with varying traffic intensity
• conducting research in the sphere of prototyping cultural objects in order to create 3D models of them
• developing proposals to improve health and safety systems for the staff of cultural institutions
• improvement of CCTV mathematics and software for the identification of and rapid reaction to threats as they arise
Planned joint research will be devoted to the hidden marking of cultural objects and also the development of methods for the reconstruction of lost elements of cultural artefacts using 3D modelling. Organized exhibition events on the theme of mutual influences between culture and technology will mark the search for new synergetic effects from collaboration between leading cultural institutions and technical institutes of higher education of federal importance.
Also planned is practical participation by students of the Institute for Military Engineering and Safety Research (IVTOB, a subdivision of the St Petersburg Polytechnic University) in measures to ensure the security of the functioning of cultural objects – the technical servicing, repair, installation, removal and modernization of the State Hermitage. IVTOB students will undergo practical training at cultural objects.
“We have been collaborating for a long time and have finally decided to put our relationship down on paper, so as to expand aspects of collaboration in future,” Mikhail Piotrovsky said at the ceremony.
Andrei Rudskoi noted that “the university has at its disposal a whole range of advanced scientific knowledge in the field of engineering, technology and security that applies directly to the preservation of works of art.”
Vladimir Mikhailovich Ivanov, head of the Department of Engineering Graphics and Design at St Petersburg Polytechnic University, gave a presentation on possible areas of collaboration: projects in the 3D reconstruction of cultural artefacts, the creation of interactive pictures, multimedia accompaniment for exhibitions using enhanced reality technologies, the creation of tactile reproductions of paintings and copies of architectural structures.
