Running commentary
These notes are my own. I write them as a PhD fellow researching the Memory Twin Framework, tracking published papers, conference proceedings and news in cultural heritage documentation, paradata and 3D digitisation, and setting out my own position on what each means for the framework.
I am Anthony Cassar. The views here are personal interpretations and observations, not those of any institution.
07 · October 2026
On Carabott, S. (2023). Times of Malta, 24 September 2023.
A story about Rahman, a migrant shopkeeper in Malta, becomes something else when one detail changes: his name. Set against the documented treatment of Maltese migrants in Australia, I reflect on selective collective memory and on why a Memory Twin must preserve the uncomfortable layers of heritage, not only the ones we are proud of.
06 · 16 October 2026
On Cassar, A. (2026). LinkedIn, 16 October 2026.
An old Ġgantija touchscreen recording takes me back sixteen years, to two young museum visitors who changed my perspective. I reflect on the journey from multimedia and visitor experience to digital cultural heritage, paradata and the Memory Twin, and on why the people, knowledge and heritage must remain the purpose of the technology.
05 · September 2026
On Cassar, A. (2026). LinkedIn, 25 September 2026.
Reflections on presenting the Ġgantija Memory Twin at MuseumNext 2026, and on the research journey behind it. What if a 3D model could preserve not just a monument, but everything we know about it? Digitisation is not the finish line. It is the foundation. The real work, and the real responsibility, lies in what we build on top of it.
04 · September 2026
On European Commission, DG EAC / DG CONNECT (2026). Have your say portal, initiative 18592, feedback open until 11 September.
Paradata, the missing half of the European cultural data space. My feedback to the European Commission's Call for Evidence on an AI Strategy for the Cultural and Creative Sectors. I support the ambition to make over 30 million digital cultural objects available for AI training, and I want to record a caution about what those objects presently are. A 3D model is a measurement made by a person, with an instrument, under constraints, for a purpose. Without the record of those conditions it can be described but not evaluated, and a model trained on it inherits an assertion it has no means of checking.
03 · August 2026
On Management team and Julia Schellenberg, Europeana Foundation (2026). CNECT/LUX/2021/OP/0070, European Commission.
Europeana's latest periodic report for the common European data space records a genuine milestone: the EDM schema and Metis pipeline now carry metadata and paradata at source, and a provenance workflow stamps records with the activities applied to them. As a national aggregator I welcome this, but I would say plainly that without certified paradata, a 3D acquisition is a picture of a thing rather than evidence about it. Paradata is now permitted by the infrastructure. It is not yet measured by it, and the quality frameworks score a record with full capture documentation exactly as they score one with none. The next step is a quality framework that can tell the difference.
02 · August 2026
On Tootoonchi, R., & Hess, M. (2026). ISPRS Annals of the Photogrammetry, Remote Sensing and Spatial Information Sciences, Volume XI-4-2026, 435–442.
A new ISPRS Annals scoping review by Tootoonchi and Hess maps 204 studies onto a six-stage workflow for Heritage Digital Twins, from baseline documentation through to operational lifecycle. Buried in its methodology is a line I did not expect: Memory Twins were explicitly excluded as out of scope. Absence from a literature review reads as immaturity; deliberate exclusion is a boundary drawn by someone else. The paper is careful, useful, and read closely, a map of exactly where the Digital Twin model terminates and the interpretive layer goes missing.
01 · August 2026
On Dagnaw, G. A., Capuano, R., & Muccini, H. (2026). ACM Computing Surveys, 58(9), Article 238, 35 pages.
A systematic review of 108 studies finds that most heritage digital twins remain at pre-DT or basic DT maturity, with metadata and technical data present in only around a fifth of implementations. The paper identifies the neglect of contextual information, oral histories and intangible heritage as an open challenge for the field. The field's own state-of-the-art review concludes that current implementations privilege geometric and structural data at the expense of cultural significance.