SILKNOW is a research project that improves the understanding, conservation and dissemination of European silk heritage from the 15th to the 19th century. It applies next-generation computing research to the needs of diverse users (museums, education, tourism, creative industries, media…), and preserves the tangible and intangible heritage associated with silk.

Based on records from existing catalogues, it aims to produce digital modelling of weaving techniques (a “Virtual Loom”), through automatic visual recognition, advanced spatio-temporal visualization, multilingual and semantically enriched access to digital data. Its research activities and output have a direct impact in computer science and big data management, focusing on searching digital content throughout heterogeneous, multilingual and multimodal databases.

Silknow has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 769504.