[MISP] Cultural Media, Lasers & More

[Eric Renz-Whitmore]

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Hi all... 

Hope the fall is treating you well!

For the Maya Skies fulldome project, the production team here at ARTS Lab had the privilege of working with INSIGHT Digital in capturing Mayan temples in the process described below. That project, INSIGHT's work and a few other things have re-emphasized the idea that this is an area where New Mexico really excels: using some of our high tech & media skills to preserve and translate culture using various media.

I know there are several programs that specialize in what's called 'cultural media' and I'm curious, do you consider yourself and your organization to be doing that kind of work?

Best wishes, 

Eric

From the New York Times:
Scots Aim Lasers at Landmarks

...cultural expertise transcends national borders. The Scottish team of four or five will spend a few days setting up and moving around their various scanners to capture all of Mount Rushmore’s nooks and crannies, collecting billions of bits of digital information, which will then be brought back here, to be crunched and sorted out by computer.

What results should be the most complete and precise three-dimensional models ever of the site, millions of times more detailed and accurate than the best photographs or films, precise down to the tiniest fraction of a millimeter.

In an era of computer animation, with gamers navigating virtual universes at the click of a mouse, making laser scans of old monuments may not sound special, but the Scottish team has achieved some unprecedented levels of sophistication with their models. Through scanning, the experts can conjure up what objects looked like ages ago, in effect turning the clock back on ancient sites. They can simulate the effects of climate change, urban encroachment or other natural or man-made disasters on those same sites, peering into the future.

Given a proposal for a new building in a city like Edinburgh, they can also create virtual realities, almost microscopically accurate, so viewers might see what the building looks like from all angles in the place where it’s intended to go, including the shadows it might cast at different times of day.

The technology isn’t brand new or unique to Scotland, but the Glasgow team is on its cultural front line. Douglas Pritchard, a Canadian-born architect by training, is the wizard behind the Digital Design Studio at the art school. He heads the Scottish laser expedition with David Mitchell, director of Historic Scotland’s Technical Conservation Group. Describing how fast laser modeling has progressed and how far it might soon go, Mr. Pritchard said, “We’re no longer a million miles from the ‘Star Trek’ holodeck.”

More at Scots Aim Lasers at Landmarks

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Posted By e to e mergent at 11/05/2009 08:50:00 AM

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Eric Renz-Whitmore, Program Coordinator
ARTS Lab
GC:     505-993-6884
office:  505-277-2253
cell:     505-227-1086
http://artslab.unm.edu

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