2004 Asia Broadband Symposium on Digital City Collaboration

Introduction to the Institute for Digitization of the Palace Museum Heritage

Masaya Chiba

Head of the Institute for Digitization of the Palace Museum Heritage

Manager of Project Promotion Department, E-business Division, Toppan Printing Co., Ltd.

The Institute for Digitization of the Palace Museum Heritage was opened in October 2003 and acts as a research facility in association with the Palace Museum in Beijing. Toppan Printing Co., Ltd., a Japanese corporation, contributed 500 million yen to establish the facility. The institute’s goal is to store and preserve the Palace Museum’s cultural assets (architecture and artifacts) as digital data and present them to the public using the very latest in Information Technology — in a word, promote the “digital museum concept”.

Immediate areas being addressed include: (1) promotion of 3-D digitization of cultural assets, (2) creating and openly displaying virtual reality contents using data, (3) researching leading-edge display applications, (4) developing cultural exchange in a broad sense. In addition to improving the infrastructure of the new institute we are also considering the development of collaborating with research facilities, universities, and other organizations outside of the Palace Museum.

Masaya Chiba currently resides as Head of the Institute for Digitization of the Palace Museum Heritage. He is also a lecturer of interactive design at the Department of Visual Communication Design, Musashino Art University and a member of Toppan Printing’s E-business Division. He is a co-author of Multimedia Keyword Analysis (Nikkei Business Publications), Media Environments (Musashino Art University Publications), and Introduction to the Institute for Digitization of the Palace Museum Heritage.

1978-1983 Editing producer of Encyclopedia of Medical Science (Kodansha).

1983-1987 Promoted the Digital Imagery Development Project.

1987-2001 Director of planning and production, Denshi Media Services Co., Ltd.

2001- Participating in the joint project between the Palace Museum and Toppan Printing Co., Ltd.