Recursive Documentary Design and an Awareness of the Mechanism

This essay documents 3D-printed sculptures displayed at the 2023 Annual Meeting of the Document Academy. To raise awareness about the cultural significance of the mechanisms that produce digital substance, the sculptures lend material heft to some of the abstractions that help to constitute textual representations of a sixteenth-century Korean lyric and modern Korean poems from the early twentieth century in digital environments. The essay also describes previous exhibitions of the sculptures that utilized augmented reality technologies. By documenting the ways augmented reality technologies represented 3D-printed sculpture that documents digital texts that represent printed documents and manuscripts, the essay suggests how recursive documentary practices can be designed to enable cultural memory while acknowledging the inevitable losses associated with cultural reproduction

3D Virtual Reconstruction and Augmented Reality Visualization of Damaged Stone Sculptures

This paper proposes the integration of photogrammetric reconstruction, 3D modelling and augmented reality application in order to achieve the complete visualization of a stone sculpture even if highly damaged or fragmentary. The first part of the research aims to the reconstruction of the original aspect of an incomplete sculpture, by using photogrammetry techniques based on standard resolution photos and free software in order to obtain a first model; then, we integrate this model with other 3D digital data (from other sculptures of the same period) or with 3D modelling based on historical sources and views from historians, aiming to achieve the original aspect of the sculpture. The second part of the research consists of the embedding of the obtained model in a custom application able to render in real-time the 3D reconstruction of the lion. Then, the rendering is overlaid to the video stream of the real scene and, as a result, a complete 3D digital model of the sculpture is achieved and could be visualized through a VR viewer. As a case study, we focus on a Roman stone sculpture of a male lion conserved in the Museo Estense of Modena (Italy), which lacks of its head and its four legs. The original aspect of the lion may be achieved by integrating the damaged sculpture with other photogrammetric reconstructions of lions sculptures of the same period and with 3D model based on historical sources. Finally, the lion is visualized through an augmented reality application which digitally overlays the reconstructed models on the original one

H Space: Interactive Augmented Reality Art

open accessThis artwork exploits recent research into augmented reality systems, such as the HoloLens, for building creative interaction in augmented reality. The work is being conducted in the context of interactive art experiences. The first version of the audience experience of the artwork, “H Space”, was informally tested in the SIGGRAPH 2018 Art Gallery context. Experiences with a later, improved, version was evaluated at Tsinghua University. The latest distributed version will be shown in Sydney. The paper describes the concept, the background in both the art and the technological domain and points to some of the key computer human interaction art research issues that the work highlights

Digital technologies for virtual recomposition : the case study of Serpotta stuccoes

The matter that lies beneath the smooth and shining surface of stuccoes of the Serpotta family, who used to work in Sicily from 1670 to 1730, has been thoroughly studied in previous papers, disclosing the deep, even if empirical, knowledge of materials science that guided the artists in creating their master- works. In this work the attention is focused on the solid perspective and on the scenographic sculpture by Giacomo Serpotta, who is acknowledged as the leading exponent of the School. The study deals with some particular works of the artist, the so-called "teatrini" (Toy Theater), made by him for the San Lorenzo Oratory in Palermo. On the basis of archive documents and previous analogical photogrammetric plotting, integrated with digital solutions and methodologies of computer- based technologies, the study investigates and interprets the geometric-formal genesis of the examined works of art, until the prototyping of the whole scenic apparatus.peer-reviewe

Understanding the Impact of the New Aesthetics and New Media Works on Future Curatorial Resource Responsibilities for Research Collections

The author examines the emerging impact of the works of the “New Aesthetic,” along with other works that have their genesis in the rapid technological changes of the last fifty-plus years. Consideration is given to the history of digital audio/visual works that will eventually be held by repositories of cultural heritage and how this history has, or has not, been documented. These creations have developed out of an environment of networked, shared, re-usable and re-purposed data. The article briefly examines how these works are utilized while looking at the future impact of the growing creation and use of complex, compound multimedia digital re- search and cultural collections as evidenced by augmented and virtual reality environments such as smartphone apps and Second Life.Ye

Promising Beginning? Evaluating Museum Mobile Phone Apps

Since 2009 museums have started introducing mobile apps in their range of interpretative media and visitor services. As mobile technology continues to develop and permeate all aspects of our life, and the capabilities of smart phones increase while they become more accessible and popular, new possibilities arise for cultural institutions to exploit these tools for communicating in new ways and promoting their exhibitions and programmes. The use of mobile apps opens up new channels of communication between the cultural institution and the user, which extent to his or her personal space and go beyond the boundaries of the museum’s walls. The paper presents a survey carried out of mobile apps designed by art or cultural historical museums and analyses the wider issues which are raised by the findings. It discusses, among others, the kind of use these apps were designed to fulfil (e.g. the majority are guided tours to the permanent collections or to temporary exhibitions), the layering of content,and the type of user interaction and involvement they support

Planar Refrains

My practice explores phenomenal poetic truths that exist in fissures between the sensual and physical qualities of material constructs. Magnifying this confounding interspace, my work activates specific instruments within mutable, relational systems of installation, movement, and documentation. The tools I fabricate function within variable orientations and are implemented as both physical barriers and thresholds into alternate, virtual domains. Intersecting fragments of sound and moving image build a nexus of superimposed spatialities, while material constructions are enveloped in ephemeral intensities. Within this compounded environment, both mind and body are charged as active sites through which durational, contemplative experiences can pass. Reverberation, the ghostly refrain of a sound calling back to our ears from a distant plane, can intensify our emotional experience of place. My project Planar Refrains utilizes four electro-mechanical reverb plates, analog audio filters designed to simulate expansive acoustic arenas. Historically these devices have provided emotive voicings to popular studio recordings, dislocating the performer from the commercial studio and into a simulated reverberant territory of mythic proportions. The material resonance of steel is used to filter a recorded signal, shaping the sound of a human performance into something more transformative, a sound embodying otherworldly dynamics. In subverting the designed utility of reverb plates, I am exploring their value as active surfaces extending across different spatial realities. The background of ephemeral sonic residue is collapsed into the foreground, a filter becomes sculpture, and this sculpture becomes an instrument in an evolving soundscape

3D Reconstruction and Presentation of Cultural Heritage: AR and VR Experiences at the Museo d’Arte Orientale di Torino

For years, virtual reconstruction in the figurative arts, and sculpture, in particular, has been developing and consolidating. The workflow from the acquisition to three-dimensional modelling and to the integration of missing parts, has been optimized through processes entirely implemented in the digital dimension. The most recent developments in augmented reality and virtual reality technologies, together with the possibility of using low-cost and widely available devices, have made it possible to establish new links between the real and the virtual. The experiences presented in this paper comes up within the agreement between the Politecnico di Torino and the Museo d’Arte Orientale (MAO). The workflow set up for this research involves: structure from motion (SfM) survey, 3D modelling, and 3D philological reconstruction, then develops a proposal to implement augmented and virtual reality experiences aimed at the communication and fruition of the exhibits. The case study concerns two Japanese statues, and proposes their visualisation with the respective weapons virtually reconstructed, and through VR, involving the reconstruction of the interior space of a temple recognised as philologically compatible with the location of the statues within a statuary complex

From digital interface to material artifact

In previous works I have discussed how the image of the graphical user interface (GUI) has been appropriated as a referent for a creative practice beyond the screen, materialized as two-dimensional print and painted images. In this paper I will explore instances where the GUI has been referenced in the creation of three-dimensional physical artifacts and performative three-dimensional spaces. An examination of selected works will give us the opportunity to look critically at the evolution of the computer desktop metaphor and its appropriation back into object based artifacts and to unpacking some of the theoretical implications implicit in these shifts in representation. The selected works examined in the paper originate from a group of international artists who have been repositioning the use of the computer GUI within the realm of creative practice. These creative recontextualisations allow us to problematise our engagement with digital technology. Allowing us to question our experience of the GUI in terms of a personal, and broader communal context. As well as intimating the pivotal place that computer technologies have taken in our everyday social, cultural and increasingly our creative realms. The transformation from digital computer icon to material artifact engenders the potential of the computer GUI to become a precious, rarefied object, which commands value and prestige