Imag(n)ing Shuilu’an 
Harlan Wallach, Northwestern University, USA
This paper describes the Imag(n)ing Shuilu’an project, its goals and its results. The goals of this project were multifold, and were designed to produce both a lasting archive of the Shuilu’an temple, train the Xi’an Center for Conservation in imaging techniques, and explore the methods of 3-D capture and application. This project also worked to develop a prototype of a unified annotation and presentation toolset to explore networked based presentation models of the combined deliverable components, and to explore and evaluate the scholarly use and value of the 2-D and 3-D datasets.
The datasets developed encompassed very high-resolution documentary photographic textures of each of the interior surfaces, panoramic VR nodes, a 3D scan of one of the interior walls, to-scale floor plans and vertical sections and technical and descriptive metadata about all of the objects, from the large composite textures to each of the individual acquisition photographic captures. A Web based annotation application was develop that allowed the Xian team to provide metadata and region-based metadata on the photographic textures. A dimensional metadata tagging system was created in able to develop a unified browse and search interface that sought to preserve the spatial relationships inherent in the actual structure, informing the digitized components in a fashion that would otherwise not be experienced in a network mediated presentation model.
The acquisition phase began in October 2005 and ended in May 2007 with a culminating conference in Xian, China. It was a collaborative project between Northwestern University and the Xian center for Conservation and Restoration, and was funded by the Andrew W. Mellon foundation.
Session: Conservation [Documentation]
Keywords: Digitization, Cultural heritage, high resolution photography, 3D scanning
Join
our mailing list
Search
A&MI