The contribution of the immaterial realm to the study of the material culture

The digital revolution endowed us with new tools to study the material culture. We are learning to use them, but with uneven results: the issue is not technical and not even simply methodological, it is philosophical. Unless we clearly define the perimeters we cannot clearly define the parameters. The research into the relationship between material objects and immaterial information must be made of theory and practice, of trials and errors. The aim is to identify a shared field of action, which is new and unexplored: what works on one realm, may not work in the other. This paper will present the research carried out in this direction in the last few years at Politecnico di Milano, in collaboration with Museo Egizio, Torino.