
Artists Covertly Scan Bust of Nefertiti and Release the Data for Free Online - jetskindo
http://hyperallergic.com/274635/artists-covertly-scan-bust-of-nefertiti-and-release-the-data-for-free-online/
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toomuchtodo
Excitingly enough, UNESCO and IDA are helping fund cameras for 3D scanning of
cultural heritage sites in Syria to preserve them in the event ISIS/ISIL
destroys them:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Destruction_of_cultural_herita...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Destruction_of_cultural_heritage_by_ISIL#Response)

"After the Palmyra temple's destruction in August 2015, the Institute for
Digital Archaeology (IDA) announced plans to establish a digital record of
historical sites and artifacts threatened by ISIL advance.[56][57][58][59] To
accomplish this goal, the IDA, in collaboration with UNESCO, will deploy 5,000
3D cameras to partners in the Middle East.[60] The cameras will be used to
capture 3D scans of local ruins and relics.[61][62][63]"

Million Image Database:
[http://digitalarchaeology.org.uk/projects/](http://digitalarchaeology.org.uk/projects/)

Mapillary is also performing photogrammetry on a massive scale with
crowdsourced photos (Mapillary allows for the use of their photo database for
contribution to OSM as well:
[https://www.mapillary.com/osm.html](https://www.mapillary.com/osm.html)).

[http://blog.mapillary.com/update/2015/11/10/pointclouds.html](http://blog.mapillary.com/update/2015/11/10/pointclouds.html)

The future is very bright for recreating 3D objects as well as map data
programatically.

EDIT: Apologies this comment isn't formatted better, was super excited to get
all of this information into a comment quickly. It intersects right between my
archival and photogrammetry interests.

~~~
roywiggins
As optimistic as I am about photogrammetry and other 3D-scanning technology,
I'm leery of calling it "preservation" or letting you "recreate" artifacts.

It captures shape and texture, but that's all. It's hollow. You can't take a
core sample of a 3D scan, you can't X-Ray a 3D scan, you can't smell it or
touch it; you can't tell if there's anything inside and you can't carbon-date
it. It can't capture how pliable or brittle the object is or how dense it is.
A high-res scan of the Mona Lisa can't actually be used to recreate the Mona
Lisa. Short of nanoscale replicators, there's information missing.

~~~
dogma1138
And? if you are looking at a good reproduction of the Mona Lisa do you feel
anything less?

There are tons of items that cannot be displayed to the public in fear of
damaging them this can help to create a more accurate replica that can be
easily displayed at a fraction of the cost.

Just so you know museums have been displaying replicas for decades (if not
longer) as many items were too fragile to display, many "original" items that
you might see in a museum are in fact replicas carefully crafted, some museums
go as far as commission high end manual reproduction paintings if the original
is too fragile to display.

And while reproduction paintings are rare natural history museums are filled
with replica's those dinosaur fossils are not the actually fossils found in
the ground, those are cast and hand finished to look good for the display and
the casts often do not even come from a single fossil as a full fossil is
almost a unicorn.

~~~
mchahn
> that cannot be displayed to the public in fear of damaging them

I saw the Mona Lisa at the Louvre on vacation. It was being displayed on a
wall like any other painting but it had a big sign, saying no flash
photography. There was a large crowd in front and there was a constant
flashing from cameras. I wanted to yell at everyone but it wouldn't have done
any good.

~~~
viraptor
Was that the original? I remember seeing Lady with an Ermine in Poland -
really thick glass in front, dark room, people reminding you about the flash
before going in. And I imagine that's not even remotely as important painting.

~~~
mchahn
> Was that the original?

Yes. It was 30 years ago so they have probably improved the protection since
then.

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aresant
I anticipate all sorts of crazy digital-rights management battles ahead for 3D
objects like this - including art - but even more on likenesses / people /
etc.

Roughly a year ago I bought a structure scanner (1) for my iPad, scanned in
friends, imported to unity and let them walk around themselves in the Oculus
DK2.

That was a very cool experience but an unexpected result was how many people
asked me to delete the scan afterwords.

The comment was it was too creepy to have your 3d likeness floating around out
there, these comments from friends that spend their days posting 2d to FB /
instagram.

A bust is about the ideal thing to scan with current consumer tech, since it's
completely static, but add in algorithmic stabilization / stitching and 3d
scanning a human (or recreating from photographs) with or without their
permission is right around the corner.

(1) [http://structure.io/](http://structure.io/)

~~~
Animats
_" I anticipate all sorts of crazy digital-rights management battles ahead for
3D objects like this - including art."_

A 3D scan of an existing object does not create a new copyrighted work under
US law. See _Meshwerks vs. Toyota_. This follows _Bridgeman vs. Corel_ (2D
photos don't create a new copyrighted work), which follows the famous Supreme
Court decision _Feist vs. Rural Telephone_ (which allowed loading phone
directories into databases.).

~~~
knughit
The question is also whether you are allowed to publish a digital copy of a
copyrighted sculpture

Also, how does Bridgeman square with the reality that photographs are
certainly copyrighted (Getty, etc)?

~~~
detaro
Bridgeman is only about "exact photographic copies", like a 1:1 photograph of
a painting. Trying to be as exact as possible doesn't count as creative work
and therefore isn't copyrightable, even if it requires time and skill.

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zupreme
This is the future. Copyrights and patents were really only effective when the
means of production were out of the reach of the average person.

3D printing, digital audio, and other current technologies are almost
certainly going to make copyrights only effective at stopping mass
monetezation of copied content - not at stopping the copying and sharing of
content for personal use.

3D printers in particular, I believe, will trigger the decimation of the scale
model and toy markets as we know them. The only vestiges which are likely to
survive will be those requiring a high number of moving parts, motorizations,
and more.

~~~
overgard
I doubt the last claim; even if the materials were cheap enough you're dealing
with a lot of assembly. If capitalism has taught us anything it's that people
will pay for convenience. Plus packaging and branding are huge in those
markets. Shopping for and opening the toy is like half the excitement!

~~~
zupreme
I agree. Toys which require a great deal of assembly effort will probably
remain viable in the marketplace - for now.

But now that the 3d-printing door has been opened I do think there are already
lots of smart people working on companion technologies to bridge the
articulation and assembly gaps.

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jlev
Cosmo Wenman also does this for museums, with their permission, and releases
the data under open licenses

[https://cosmowenman.wordpress.com/category/3d-scanning/](https://cosmowenman.wordpress.com/category/3d-scanning/)
[http://www.thingiverse.com/CosmoWenman/designs/](http://www.thingiverse.com/CosmoWenman/designs/)

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iNerdier
This is one of the more interesting things to come out of the overlap of
technology and artworks to my mind. If we continue to have arrangements like
that of the Elgin Marbles in London some kind of compromise where a good
quality facsimile like this can be created for relatively cheap and displayed
to the public then at least we get to have a freer access to our shared
heritage.

It's a crying shame they had to resort to doing it undercover though. What
exactly has the museum really got to lose?

~~~
roywiggins
Probably portable 3D scanners makes it easier, but facsimile art isn't new at
all. The V&A museum in London has a huge set of Victorian-era plaster casts of
EVERYTHING: [http://www.vam.ac.uk/page/c/cast-
courts/](http://www.vam.ac.uk/page/c/cast-courts/)

There's a whole industry of manuscript fascimiles:
[http://www.facsimilefinder.com/](http://www.facsimilefinder.com/)

~~~
Turing_Machine
Yes, people have been making facsimiles for a long time. The Spurlock Museum
in Urbana, IL has a set of copies of the Elgin Marbles, for instance.

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TazeTSchnitzel
Huh, OS X's Preview.app can load .stl files. I was able to torrent the bust,
double-click it, and view it straight away. That was a surprise.

~~~
4ad
Nice! Now when will I be able to do the same with .mkv files?!?

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tiglionabbit
They snuck in kinects under their ties. That's great.

~~~
unchocked
Was wondering how they did it, clearly a better resolution than
photogrammetry. Source?

~~~
vitd
The video in the article shows them doing it:

[https://vimeo.com/148156899](https://vimeo.com/148156899)

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msutherl
Related, and perhaps a more poetic treatment of the issue:

[http://hyperallergic.com/106071/3d-print-your-own-
museum/](http://hyperallergic.com/106071/3d-print-your-own-museum/)

[http://oliverlaric.com/](http://oliverlaric.com/)

[https://vimeo.com/51614085](https://vimeo.com/51614085)

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bd
Here is quick and dirty WebGL view of that Nefertiti model:

[http://alteredqualia.com/xg/examples/nefertiti.html](http://alteredqualia.com/xg/examples/nefertiti.html)

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ianamartin
This pleases me to no end. Sort of reminds me that an imperfect representation
of Bach's Brandenbourg II is floating around on Voyager, encoded on a golden
disc.

As a professional violinist for almost 30 years, and an expert in early music,
it makes me a little sad that it's _that_ recording that got sent out.

On the other hand, it thrills me that 4.5 or so billions of years from now,
long after we are extinct, and when the sun goes dark, Bach will still be out
there in the cosmos.

Not a perfect Bach. Not the best representation. Not at all what he would have
imagined. But _a_ representation.

Completely off-topic and re: Fermi's paradox.

I think that the voyager mission was a unique thing. It was only possible for
a brief window of time in which we had the technology to do it, and the social
willingness to do it. It was a short period of time.

Think about the social and political implications a mission like Voyager would
have today. If you tried to do that today, people and countries and orgs from
all over the world would argue for inclusion. I think there's a Simpsons
episode about this.

My point about Fermi is that I'm suggesting that there was only about a 10
year window in which Voyager was both technically possible and socially
acceptable. In the time scale of intelligent life, that's a very narrow
window.

I sometimes wonder if there isn't a lot of intelligent life out there whose
civilizations simply missed that window. In other words, a lot of life that
would very much like to say hello, but can't agree on how to do it.

Sorry for the tangent.

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Keyframe
I expected this to be a thing 15+ years ago, starting with this at Stanford:
[http://graphics.stanford.edu/projects/mich/](http://graphics.stanford.edu/projects/mich/)

~~~
ginko
You can't download their David dataset though. Which is a crying shame since
artworks like this should belong to all mankind.

~~~
Keyframe
Oh, but you can: [http://graphics.stanford.edu/dmich-
archive/](http://graphics.stanford.edu/dmich-archive/)

~~~
ginko
Huh, interesting. I'm pretty sure those weren't available last time I checked.

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marcosscriven
It does seem a shame to me that such things are often prohibited from being
photographed, at least without a flash.

I do recall a few years ago the British Museum in London hosted a few dozen
Terracotta Warriors. I snapped a photo only to be told not to. When I asked
why, they said it was copyrighted!

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Ono-Sendai
Pretty impressive quality of model considering the means of acquisition.

here's a render I made of it:
[http://www.indigorenderer.com/forum/download/file.php?id=205...](http://www.indigorenderer.com/forum/download/file.php?id=20559&mode=view)

Edit: profile render:
[http://www.indigorenderer.com/forum/download/file.php?id=205...](http://www.indigorenderer.com/forum/download/file.php?id=20560&mode=view)

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ekianjo
Isnt art from antiquity devoid of all copyright anyway? Why arent such scans
completely lawful in the first place especially when they belong to the
public?

~~~
sp332
Copyright, yes. But the museum is allowed to hide the object and their scans
if they want to. If there is legal action against the scholars, it would be
for damages (probably lost revenue) and not for copyright infringement.

~~~
ekianjo
Does the Museum actually own the work of art? I think they probably own the
physical object but isnt its artistic expression considered as intellectual
property and therefore wouldnt it fall in the public domain?

As for the lost revenue claim, then what about the pictures of paintings you
find everywhere? Wouldnt they cause lost revenue as well if we follow that
logic?

~~~
sp332
It's not copyrighted, so the intellectual property is in the public domain.
But this doesn't mean they are prohibited from hiding the object, or making
people contractually agree not to take photos.

In the USA, there are certain fair use rights that let you copy a work without
a license. It's a big gray area, usually it's OK if it's for purposes of
commentary or education, and not for commercial use. Other jurisdictions are
probably more strict.

------
Camillo
> “The head of Nefertiti represents all the other millions of stolen and
> looted artifacts all over the world currently happening, for example, in
> Syria, Iraq, and in Egypt,” Al-Badri said. “Archaeological artifacts as a
> cultural memory originate for the most part from the Global South; however,
> a vast number of important objects can be found in Western museums and
> private collections. We should face the fact that the colonial structures
> continue to exist today and still produce their inherent symbolic
> struggles.”

I am always amazed by people's ability to choose the worst possible examples
or context for whatever point they're trying to make. Syria and Iraq are
currently undergoing unprecedented destruction of archeological heritage,
perpetrated entirely by people from the "Global South", fighting for (their
part of) the "Global South"'s resurgence against the evil West. I always
wanted to visit Syria; now I can only wish that more of its monuments and
artifacts had been taken abroad, so that they could be saved.

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probably_wrong
> Al-Badri and Nelles take issue, for instance, with the Neues Museum’s method
> of displaying the bust, which apparently does not provide viewers with any
> context of how it arrived at the museum

This saddens me, as the Neues Museum has seen the other side of this coin:
After the war, lots of items were looted by the Russians, most notably jewelry
from Troy. But I guess this must be common practice for several museums.

Random fact: While the museum doesn't allow you to take pictures (not even
from another room), they do have a 3d reconstruction you can touch, destined
to blind visitors.

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jakobegger
This is awesome. I'm affiliated with a project that documents stone monuments
[1](photos only)... Any suggestions for a cheap, portable 3D scanner?

I saw the structure.io scanner mentioned here, anybody have any other
suggestions?

[1] ubi-erat-lupa.org

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hendekagon
AFAIA such scanners can only capture the surface of a thing, and cannot gain
information about overhangs and occluded surfaces.

For some purposes one needs volume information

What options are there for consumer-level volume scanning using ultrasound ?

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jacquesm
Redundancy is a good thing.

~~~
mitchtbaum
Woah... Yeah, artifacts like these are critically vulnerable.. Please keep
this up.

