Representing Reformation: 3D Scanning and Documentation Conference: Day 1
This two day conference convened by Phillip Lindley (University of Leicester) was primarily focussed on the use of 3D scanning in diverse projects undertaken in the fields of History, Art History and Archaeology.
As a first year Ph.D candidate in University College Cork’s DAH programme my interest was immediately peaked when the conference announcement arrived in my Inbox from the H-ArtHist subscription service. My Ph.D application proposes an interrogation of the Bantry Papers archive housed in UCC’s Boole Library, with outcomes strongly based on engaging with digital technology, for example a re-creation of the second Earl of Bantry’s art collection, now dispersed, to be housed in a virtual and interactive environment.
I made contact with Conny Bailey who was wonderfully helpful, and feeling reassured that attendance at this conference was a must I submitted an application for a fully funded student place. It was my intention to attend the conference regardless of the outcome, but I was absolutely delighted to be awarded a place, and wish to thank Phillip Lindley for a great opportunity and JISC for funding it. Peter Findlay represented JISC at the conference.
The first day of the conference is now over and I have to say I am overwhelmed (in a good way) with the projects and papers that formed our first day’s fare. Inter- and trans- disciplinarities seem to be in the air everywhere, as readers of my first post regarding The Experience of Illness symposium will be aware, and this day’s papers certainly highlighted cross discipline practice.
From Phillip Lindley’s welcoming address to the final speaker, of the day, Jack Hinton, everyone demonstrated how the use of digital technology had broadened their interaction with their chosen material and enabled comparative studies that would have been impossible without the use of advanced scanning and software applications and knowledge.
Phillip led the way suggesting that we avoid the negativism of C. P. Snow (a name with which I had only just become familiar!) and take our lead instead from William Cheselden and his Osteographia (1733), as a “fruitful model of collaboration” and “interesting model of the use of mechanical means by artists to represent complex three dimensional objects”. The picture does indeed replace a thousand words and sometimes is the only means of describing intricacies that language fails to capture. Phillip’s paper ‘Representing Re-Formation: the search for objectivity’ went on to show that, in turn, what the picture fails to deliver can be provided by 3D scanning. 3D scanning allows the researcher to postulate different reconstructions and can be used to test the accuracy of 2D reconstructions. The greater subjectivity of traditional manual draughtsmanship was demonstrated by the PhD student, Nishad Karim’s (Representing Re-Formation) computer aided modelling based on a drawn image. Two points that particularly interested me was that the plan of dissemination to a wider audience was to be based on “conveying uncertainty and complexity rather than [to] convey a simple narrative” and the opportunity for researchers to “attempt to ‘reconstruct’ what was never carried out” in this case due to the Reformation. Thirdly, the construction of a highly accurate 3D scanned record will provide invaluable data to future researchers.
Audience Question: Value
Phillip responded to this by highlighting the use of 3D reconstructions to show elements that don’t fit due to complexity and fallibility of human draughtsmanship, along-with the ‘permanent’ storage of data for the use of future scholars and the enablement of many different reconstructions. To that I suggest that the possibility of greater access by the general public to objects residing in sites that may be geographically distant from them is another addition of value.
A break for lunch and then the first of the afternoon’s speakers, Anna Thirion (University Montepelier 3) presented ‘Proposal for a digital reconstruction of the Romanesque ‘tribune’ of Saint-Michel-de-Cuxa (France): methodological considerations’. Anna’s paper was a tour de force of what a single scholar can manage and achieve. Her thesis is about the anastylosis of the aforementioned tribune. One of Anna’s outcomes is the presentation of findings from the investigator to the public and the importance of conveying the hypothetical nature of any model achieved and to make transparent the processes of reconstruction.
Laura Bartolome Roviras (Universitat Politecnica de Catalunya) spoke on her joint project with Manuel Castineiras on the Romanesque Portals of Santa Maria de Ripoll, Santiago de Compostela and Sant Pere de Rodes: from modelling to reconstruction’. She explained how the use of digital technology made possible access to scattered documentary sources, and to carved elements that have been removed and are now in various collections throughout Europe and America. The researcher’s goals are to provide excellent opportunities for research through high resolution tools and create a true repository of reconstructed information such as chronology, iconography and relationships, while providing web pages with enhanced information through text, additional images and early photography that will give extra information on iconographical series.
Audience Question: What evidence is being used for the reconstructions?
Textual evidence is one form of evidence, but any reconstruction remains highly hypothetical.
Coming up to tea time Annemarie La Pensee (National Museums Liverpool) outlined some of the projects undertaken by the Conservation Technologies team in ‘The non-contact 3D laser scanning of cultural artefacts and its applications at Conservation Technologies, National Museums Liverpool’. The main question posed was a simple why. Some key concepts were: change; conservation; preservation of vulnerable objects; exploration of tool marking; subjectivity, to understand it, minimize it and document it. A concern for the team is accuracy which is aided in turn by understanding the role of operator influence in scanning objects. A neat phrase that Annemarie used to describe their work with artists was of providing “a new chisel in the sculptor’s tool set”.
Audience Question: Concerns about authenticity when reconstructing or making replicas.
Annemarie described the protocols in place to ensure that any possibility of mistaking a replica for an original was most unlikely. These include thorough documentation of the work, use of materials contemporary with the creation of the replica and changes in scale. She also discussed ethics, copyright and issues around data storage.
In one of those moments of serendipity, perhaps in this instance slightly engineered, the next speaker, Marcos A Rodrigues (Sheffiedl Hallam University) spoke more fully on the challenges of “uncooperative materials”, touched on in Annemarie’s paper, in ‘3D Scanning of Highly Reflective Surfaces: Issues on Scanning the Museums Sheffield Metalwork Collection’. Marcos spoke from a computer science perspective rather than that of the arts and humanities. He too picked up on issues of copyright and described how this could be navigated through the use of different resolution models. He also explained the difficulties of transferring the work to the web and the need for compression of up to 99.7% of the data collected during the scanning process. Marcos also spoke about the need for compatible standards and the difficulties in prediction of platforms. The importance of keeping the full resolution model was also stressed, as this should be made available by request to users who require greater visuality.
Audience Question: Regarding the materiality and utility of many of the objects chosen for scanning: how was this expressed?
Marcos responded that items with removable lids, for example, have been scanned closed and open, with and without the lid in place. However, it was not possible to allow the webpage user to interact with the object in such a way that they could open and close a lidded item.
In George W Fraser’s ‘Scanning in Space and Time’ we were treated to a truly interdisciplinary paper from a physicist whose day job is developing equipment and instrumentation for ‘probes’ (if that’s the right word) to Mars and Mercury. He demonstrated the diversity of his interests and how arts and humanities scholars can use tools developed for imaging in space to explore the materiality of objects in virtual environments. He also touched on the dangers of outgassing from replicas to original items in collections and the difficulties of incompatibility when transferring data from high cost to low cost systems. Similarly to Marcos’s paper George also talked about the decimation of data (upto 99.9%), but in relation to the aforesaid differences in compatibility, which meant that that data was permanently lost. This provoked some concerns from the audience.
Audience Questions: Did you compare raw data from the two different scanner levels? How can you compare if you decimate data collection results?
George responded that the two sets of data were not compared and my understanding was that the project did not lose an opportunity to add value by this decimation. I am sure that this lively discussion was continued over dinner.
On the graveyard shift, as it were, was Jack Hinton (Assistant Curator of European Decorative Arts and Sculpture, Philadelphia Museum of Art) with ‘Measuring Genius: 3D scanning and Jean-Antoine Houdon’s Portraits of Benjamin Franklin’. Jack brought us back to the world of art history describing the comparative investigation of Houdon’s busts of Franklin. Jack highlighted the importance of collaborative effort in studies of this nature, including the use of extra-institutional services to provide expertise and equipment that would otherwise render such an endeavour too costly. The work undertaken offered new suggestions about Houdon’s studio practice and how the original bust related to later versions; however some questions remain unanswered.
Audience Question: What is the legacy of the project?
The project was devised as a means of understanding the relationship of the four portrait busts to each other and as a model of Houdon’s studio practice. Issues of legacy had not been raised. Delegates suggested that the data captured during the scanning process could be used to create an interactive virtual exhibit.
Themes that recurred over the day were:
Transparency
Collaboration
Interdisciplinarity
Hypothesis/hypothetical
Ruin and fragment
Mediation [to the non-specialist public]
Ethics
Copyright
Data Storage
