The VISEUM Virtual Museums International held its inaugural project meeting
on September 2 &3, 1996 in Berlin. The project proposal, developed by
ACT, was submitted to the European Commission in February under their Advanced
Computer and Telecommunications Services (ACTS) program. The project was
accepted by the Commission in June with funding set at approximately $500,000.
The project will run from September 1996 through February of 1998.
This project provides an excellent opportunity for ACT. As part of its role
in the project, ACT will supply its Cinemage´ software under license
to the European partners. Participating sites in Europe are The National
Gallery of London and the Louvre in Paris, world leaders in digitizing images
of their art collections. A second participant in the UK, Birkbeck College
of the University of London, is a leader in digital image representation
and computational manipulation for enhanced presentation. Under the terms
of the project, the European sites will be adapting and enhancing the Cinemage
software. These enhancements will be integrated by ACT into its base software
to constitute the next generation of its Cinemage system.
The other major aspect of the project is the linking of the participating
institutions to create a distributed global Virtual Museum, in which the
rich collections of European materials complement the native heritage collection
in Vancouver containing selections from the Vancouver Art Gallery, Vancouver
Museum, and UBC Museum of Anthropology. Access across the Internet will
be controlled through the ACT NetXchequer´ software. The NetXchequer
provides mechanisms for handling paid subscriptions which will create a
royalty revenue stream for ACT as well as the owners of the digital content.
The Virtual Museum will be expanded through the addition of other international
sites, with strong interest already identified in Rome, Venice and Naples.
Commercial partners in the project include: Newbridge Networks Corporation
of Kanata, Ontario; NSM Jukebox of Bingen, Germany; Teleglobe Canada of
Montreal; and DeTeBerkom of Berlin (a division of Deutsche Telekom). Association
with these project partners provides ACT with excellent software marketing
affiliation opportunities.