Cultural heritage: Changing values and changing technologiesLast week we posted part one of our inte

Cultural heritage: Changing values and changing technologiesLast week we posted part one of our interview with Adam Lowe, founder and director of the Factum Foundation, which produces facsimiles for cultural heritage preservation. Learn more about the Factum Foundation and its promotion of cultural heritage in part one.Do you have some examples for the fact that the audience was impacted by the fact that the piece of art was a copy and not an original?At the moment we’re working with the Antiquity Museum in Basel, on a big exhibition called “Scanning Seti, the regeneration of a pharaonic tomb” that [opened] in October. The exhibition looks at the 2500 years of life of the tomb of Seti.The tomb was discovered exactly 200 years ago on the 16 October 1817 by Italian Egyptologist Giovanni Battista Belzoni. When he discovered the tomb, it was in nearly perfect condition and it has lasted for over 300 years. Fortunately, in Egypt the conditions are very favourable, they’re dry and stable, that is beneficial for the longevity of tombs… but also because Egyptian craftsmen painted them to last for eternity! They were extremely skilful craftsmen who understood materials and what they were doing. In the years immediately after the discovery, Belzoni made copies of the walls of the tomb to show what they looked like: he took moulds of the surface of the walls to make the replica that was shown in London in 1820. The problem is that those moulds took the paint off of the wall, so that replica changed fundamentally the nature of the tomb. Belzoni and many others also cut sections out of the tomb that are now shown in different museums around the world.What we’re doing at the Factum Foundation is to bring back together all of the data that we can. So, we’ve scanned all the fragments that were removed from the walls by going to several museums around the world, to add them all to the facsimile, so that this will be more complete than the original existing tomb. I think the aim of what we do is to make people aware of how actually it means to preserve an object and why digital documentation is so critical.We also want to make people understand that values change over time, we’re critical of what Belzoni did and we’re living with the effects of mass tourism, we’re living in times of conflicts and iconoclasm: there are many reasons why objects get damaged. At the time, the tomb of Seti was also damaged by floods, and eventually filled with water up to a particular level… the exhibition in Basel will be a chance to make people think about all these changes and to think about what’s needed to protect and preserve things going forward.A Foundation staff member records 16th century frescos painted by Dionisy in the Ferapontov Monastery, a UNESCO World Heritage site. Credit: The Factum Foundation Do you think that these new technologies can also foster the protection of the authentic pieces of art?If you think back to the advent of photography, it changed the way we document sites: before we drew them. Photography was critical in obtaining accurate data. Then x-ray came in and other techniques too that allowed us to see under the surface of objects. I think technology has the ability to change and transform the way we see something, let’s think also about medical imagery! The same thing is happening in cultural heritage field. First you need to document at the highest level possible. We’re using Lucida scanner, composite photography, and a high-resolution laser scanner. We’re using a range of different methods to record the tomb, it’s a very challenging task and it’s done by bringing together the skills of many experts. I’m also working with the Victoria and Albert Museum on a project that is trying to establish standards for recording and standards for replication. In the Valley of the Kings the facsimile of Tutankhamun was placed in 2014 and is currently educating tourists about the damage they do when they enter the tomb, as the fact that the tomb lasted when the environment was stable but didn’t last when the environment changed all the time, with variations of humidity, temperature and airborne pollutants. Of course, mechanical damage also caused problems for the long-term preservation. Technology has a fundamental role in improving how we understand and how we communicate, how we disseminate and how we protect cultural heritage.Foundation staff preparing for the “Scanning Seti” exhibition at the Antikenmuseum Basel.  Credit: The Factum Foundation So, technology that produces copies has an important role in making sites and heritage accessible to people?For me there is a difference between visualization and replication. Screen communication is already changing the way we understand many objects: from our data you can study sites in every detail and in a very objective way over the internet. Through the screen, data can be disseminated in many ways, depending on the power of software we have. One thing we did at Factum Foundation is to prepare the data we record, so you can see all the data we have and also the surface data in the same archive. This is already a way that changes how you perceive an object. Just think about Nicholas Reeves, the Egyptologist that believes to have found the doorway in the burial chamber of Tutankhamun, only from studying our data in America, at the University of Arizona! This has been possible by separating the relief from the colour and it was only possible because it was high resolution data, that can be studied at distance, on a screen.Don’t miss the third and final part of our interview with Lowe! It will available next week. 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: Photographers record tombstones in the Northern Caucasus. All photos courtesy of the Factum Foundation. -- source link
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