The paper presents the University of Art and Design Cluj-Napoca Romania, emphasizing the challenges posed by the introduction of contemporary technology in art within a traditional art institute and also some aspects that surfaced after a survey of the educational background of the candidates and students, which revealed some worrying tendencies related to the level of understanding of our contemporary high technology and its pervasive influence, not only in our country, but also worldwide.

The paper presents an ongoing process to digitally reconstruct the Imperial Gates of the old Romanian orthodox churches scattered on a large geographical area in Transylvania. Due to the locations of the churches and to the indestructible character of the iconostasis, the 3D scanning had to be contact-free. The actual chosen method is a low cost method, based upon free software that allows scanning of three-dimensional objects and does not rely on specific hardware. The intended final result is to provide a collection of 3D models of the Imperial Gates that could be further integrated in other projects of the Art and Design University and of the Faculty of Orthodox Theology, "Babeş Bolyai" University, from Cluj-Napoca, Romania. Imperial Gates. 3D scanning. Cultural heritage. Orthodox wooden churches.

The paper discusses materialization of verses into abstract printed artwork. It is an experimental project involving artists and people from IT, where poetry is reinterpreted through the relationship between man and machine. At one end, the artist inputs one verse using his voice and collects a physical form of it at the other end. Between the input and output, the machine analyses the information and creates material evidence of the voice (a 3D printed layer). The final step is made by the artist who assembles all layers into a sculpture. Digital culture. Machine learning. 3D printing.

This paper addresses the problem of separating the illumination from the reflectance in images and compensating for non-uniform lighting. Recorded images of mural paintings suffer from significant losses in visual quality, compared to the direct eye observation when there are spatial or spectral variations in illumination. The visibility of detail in shadows is poor for recorded images and therefore an automatic computation is needed to improve them for better optical investigation. Images of medieval mural paintings, taken under very poor illumination conditions, are processed by the biologically inspired Retinex algorithm and by the equalize algorithm and the results are compared.