Digital restoration: Engaging experts and the publicIn the third and final part of our interview wit

Digital restoration: Engaging experts and the publicIn the third and final part of our interview with Adam Lowe, learn about what the Factum Foundation can study through scanning cultural heritage and sharing it with the public. If you missed our earlier posts, you can still read part one and part two. How you can foster the communication of how crucial it is to make reproductions in a world that depreciates fakes?The issues of conservation and the issue of restoration are very important to helping preserve things. One of the things that is emerging is the whole field of digital restoration. On the files we can actually inspect, look at, share and discuss with many experts, and try out different ways to conserve in a virtual space without even touching the original. The study separate from the physical content is extremely important. We’ve done a project in the Sala Bologna in the Vatican, making a digital restoration of one of the maps that covers the walls and working with experts from Bologna University: you can do many things without ever touching the object. You can also use high resolution digital data to monitor the conditions of the object. For example, we recorded Tutankhamun’s tomb in 2009 and we’re actually able to check how much the tomb has changed in the time between then and now and we can supply that information to the conservators. So, sharing information and pulling together expertise is the way technology will really help progress restoration. We must also remember that every generation of restorers is always critical of the previous generation of restorers, so future generations will be critical of the work that has been done now. The more evidence there is to demonstrate how something looked like before our restoration, the better. We’re now working with the National Gallery in London and with other museums to digitally record paintings before and during restoration, to record them in high resolution, in colour, and in 3D. It’s shocking how only in the last few years people started recording surface information, for me it is in those very surface layers that forensic evidence lies.A depth plan map created using data collected through non-contact technologies. Credit: The Factum Foundation Is the experience of a surface layer enough or we should show and share more of this scientific work with the public? High resolution recording is able to result also in augmented and virtual reality that the public may like very much. We’ve worked a lot reimagining the Ultima Cena of Leonardo or the Nozze di Cana of Veronese, imaging multiple time lapse on the facsimile. All this can appeal very much to audiences and makes the time people think about an object and experience it longer. What I hope is that copies and facsimiles could provoke a new interest, in the object itself but also in the technologies used to record it and to display it. We’re at the beginning of an explosion of the reinterpreting of high resolution data. Technology is not something in opposition with art or culture, this idea is a myth partly triggered by the way we’re educated, by the way arts and humanities have always been divided from science, that made in some way technology to be seen in opposition with manual skills. I think actually that the reverse is true and we can see it with emerging technologies. Thanks to them indeed, we see materials differently and how things are transformed and mediated. I think all this is leading to a whole explosion of new creative skills both physical and virtual: for me, the interest lies more in the physical domain, while for many others the interest is in the virtual one. In any case, it is in that crossover between the two domains that something exciting is happening.Recording cultural heritage in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. Credit: The Factum Foundation Do you agree that a public aware of your work and technology is a public more empowered and engaged? Yes! The more the public understands how difficult it is to protect and preserve something, the more they will understand that they’re playing a role in modifying the context in which we are seeing things. Just think about the place where the painting le Nozze di Cana of Veronese is hanging: it is in the same exhibition room as the Mona Lisa in the Louvre in Paris. Every day thousands of people are taking pictures of the Mona Lisa and you can’t even enjoy that painting. For the Fondazione Giorgio Cini, we made a copy of that masterpiece [le Nozze di Cana] to be hung in its original place, in the church of San Giorgio Maggiore in Venice. In its original environment the painting gives a more authentic experience: hanging in the environment it was painted for, at the right height, without a frame, illuminated by the correct light, in the building that Palladio designed. In that context, nearly everyone will agree that the experience to see the painting there is more authentic and more thought provoking.Thank you Adam Lowe for taking the time to speak with us and for sharing your thoughts on the Factum Foundation, cultural heritage, and conservation in the digital age. To learn more about the Factum Foundation, visit their website, follow them on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram, or watch videos of their team and technology at work on Vimeo. Main photo: Staff members construct a facsimile of an Assyrian Lamassu from Ashurnasirpal II’s palace throne room. All photos courtesy of the Factum Foundation. -- source link

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