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Why CHI Exists
General Considerations | Need | Advantages | First Steps
Advantages
New options for Repatriation disputes | Accurate Reproduction
Enhanced Preservation Activities |
Interactivity Benefits
Cultural heritage work focuses on materials produced by humans. These materials allow scientists, educators, and the interested public to understand ancient peoples and provide valuable insight into the modern cultures of the world. Advances in computer powered imaging and communication now allow for the creation of many forms of digital photographs, virtual reality environments, three-dimensional textured computer models and the means of transmitting these digital resources around the world. These techniques will increase the world community's access to research already conducted, and, in the future, facilitate the creation of a more complete and accurate record of our collective past.
New options for Repatriation disputes
Virtual documentation has the potential to ease tensions regarding who should possess cultural heritage material. In the past, materials from all over the world were removed from their original contexts and aggregated into public and private collections. Now, in many places around the world, the heirs of this material's first owners are requesting its return. In the United States, the legally mandated return of qualifying Native American artifacts under N.A.G.P.R.A., the Native American Grave Protection and Repatriation Act, is a manifestation of this dynamic. Internationally, the Greek request for the return of the Parthenon's sculpture from the British Museum and other collections represents the same dynamic.
If the creation of rich digital documentation was included in the repatriation process, institutions returning cultural material would have the ability to continue displaying these objects digitally at both their home location through interactive displays, and around the world through the internet or the distribution of other digital media.
Once the material is returned to the control and management of the original communities, these communities can use both the physical objects and their digital representations to benefit their people. The availability of high quality virtual objects increases the value of decentralized control by enabling the development of digitally based, community directed, education and cultural enrichment programs. These programs leverage the communities’ physical possession of the objects. Related resources from other communities can also be incorporated in these programs. This concept of 'other communities' may be broadened to include digitally documented cultural materials from public and private collections anywhere in the world. The availability of cultural content can be amplified through the internet. When common database standards and standardized vocabularies for digital archives are adopted by cultural communities and organizations, anyone worldwide can search for and find their desired cultural content.
Accurate Reproduction
The information created through 3D imaging can be used to build highly accurate physical reproductions of many kinds of cultural objects and sites. 3D imaging methods can capture both the 'geometry' (shape) and the 'texture', (color) of 'real world' things. This information can be used by numerous digitally controlled fabrication processes.
Computer controlled tools, in combination with experienced artisans, can form objects from stone, metal, wood, and many other substances cost effectively and with great fidelity to the original. While the inherent authenticity of original cultural material differentiates it from its reproduction, reproductions have many worthwhile uses, including the retrieval and replacement of objects and architectural elements exposed to environmental hazards, providing similar direct sensory experience in physical displays, protection of fragile materials from the rigors of active use in cultural practices, providing an empirical foundation for visualizations of how things may have looked in their prime, and the productions of scale models, either larger or smaller, of artifacts or historical sites.
Enhanced Preservation Activities
Cultural heritage preservation efforts are enhanced through digital documentation. Documentation creates searchable records of what material exists, where it resides, and who is responsible for it. If an object or site is damaged, good documentation provides a guide for restoration. Some imaging techniques such as infrared and ultraviolet photography can disclose features on an object that are invisible to the naked eye.
The Institute for Information Science and Technology in Pisa Italy are pioneering new methods that enhance conservation and restoration efforts through the use of 3D models. The planning discussions for maintenance of cultural treasures are organized around 3D locations on the object. If several experts are debating the means to remove a stain from the shoulder of Michelangelo’s "David", these discussions and related analysis can be organized around and accessed through a visible ’hotspot’ on David’s 3D digital representation. The more conservation ’hotspots’ on the object, the more this methodology can improve conservation quality and lower costs.
Interactivity Benefits
The interactive nature of digital documentation is key to its adoption by cultural heritage professionals and the public. Interactivity gives the user control over what they look at and how they examine the object. For cultural heritage professionals, Interactivity permits work to proceed in an intuitive manner. An Assyriologist who is reading an ancient cuneiform tablet, will pick it up, illuminate it with a directional light, and turn it to decipher the writing. When computer graphics gives this functionality to the Assyriologist, the Assyriologist will use it. For the public, the interactive allure of environmental panoramas, object movies, 3D worlds, and Polynomial Texture Maps (PTMs) spark the interest and involvement that is crucial to learning. This is especially true for our children who are humanity’s future.
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Cuneiform Planisphere
Nineveh, Assyria
British Museum, London, England
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See "The Theban Mapping Project" in the Archaeology section for an example of interactive linked multi-media. |
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The Flood Tablet
Nineveh, Assyria
British Museum, London, England
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