Artwork Unique RecognitiOn and tRacking through chemicAl encoded data, miniaturized devices and blockchain alliance

2026-07-22

Artifacts are constantly threatened by anthropogenic actions. Looting, smuggling, and illicit trade of cultural goods pose major risks to our cultural goods and our cultural identity. One of the major consequences of these illegal activities is the dissociation, meaning the loss of information associated with an object, such as provenance, identification, or location information, without which the object loses significance or is lost. Thus, art property marking and tracking are crucial to ensure the object identification, collection management and protection, while maintaining their state of conservation. Several actions have been adopted during the years to strengthen the protection of cultural property and cultural heritage, but they often lack effectiveness. The AURORA project wants to fill this gap by demonstrating how chemical marking, miniaturized device, art deep-scan technique, cloud and blockchain based platforms can be combined to create a cost-effective, non-destructive, and non-invasive countermeasure against illegal activities while preserving artifacts. The technologies researched and implemented in AURORA will converge in a digital tool allowing relevant stakeholders, art dealers, curators, auction houses, logistic services, and enforcement agents, to easily verify artwork authenticity and provenance, enabling art piece movement tracking. In close collaboration with relevant cultural institutions partners, AURORA will showcase real setting applications to validate the non-invasiveness, low cost, long-term stability, confidentiality, and data security features of the proposed solutions. In parallel, AURORA will foster technological democratization among cultural institutions, by creating a knowledge bridge between technical competencies and cultural heritage professionals. Specific awareness-raising activities will demonstrate how the AURORA solutions can be a means to preserve cultural identities mixtures through cultural heritage preservation.

Italy

2026-02-15