Digital Challenges for Cultural Heritage Enhancement. Model Intelligences Between Complexity and Identity

The contribution introduces some of the research presented by young researchers at the third edition of the Digital & Documentation Study Day entitled "Reading and Communicating Cultural Heritage". This introduction was therefore an opportunity for some specific reflections on the relationships between culture, cultural heritage and the discipline of Drawing. Culture and cultural heritage are common goods and values, nonrenewable resources that must be preserved according to their authenticity and shared for the possibilities of promoting a European identity and mutual respect. Therefore, 'digitization for documentation' constitutes itself as a great opportunity, but there is no doubt that it also presents several challenges. For first of all, it needs new participatory models to promote the 'shared resource' aspect and the involvement of communities, on the one hand, and high levels of expertise of operators and quality control systems, on the other. But more generally, 'digitization for documentation' is constituted as a challenge because of the intrinsic characters of cultural heritage itself, that is, its complexity/ heterogeneity, on the one hand, and uniqueness/identity, on the other. Intrinsic characters that reverberate in the definition of 'models,' be they those of documentation or even those of communication. In this context, the discipline of Drawing and the latest technological innovations are not only a tool but an established and powerful scientific method through which to analyze and compare multidisciplinary and chronologically distant data – such as those of design and construction. A method for generating ‘intelligence,' that is, a heritage of knowledge and best practices to preserve, share and enhance our past and from which to build our future.