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Smart Replicas:
bringing heritage back to life
an introduction (in English!)
for more information look at www.maaikeroozenburg.nl
treasuries
of objects
Our museological heritage is a collection of
objects that has been collected, categorized, grown and preserved over the
course of centuries; objects which we value for their historical, cultural and
social context; objects that play a key role in the image of our history and
our identity. Our history is examined, reconstructed and visualized through
these objects. But how do we relate to all these stored items? What is the
relevance of these objects for us at this time? And what is their significance
in a rapidly digitizing society?
Museums and cultural heritage sites are the
“institutions” who manage this heritage; storehouses of objects, stories,
images and historical knowledge. The conservative way these objects are made
accessible — you must to go to a museum or exhibition — means you can admire, but
not touch, let alone use them. This strips the objects of their main purpose
and function — their original use — and isolates them from our daily lives.
‘Enriching’
objects
The knowledge and information that museums and
cultural heritage sites hold, collect and develop concerning the items they own
and manage is barely accessible. It is fixed within the confines of the museum
and is often reduced to a short text on a museum plaque or an item in a
catalogue; the objects and information that the museum has is thus hardly
accessible to the public.
In the project Smart replicas, we investigate how 3D prototyping — technologies
such as 3D scanning, printing and reproductions which make digital objects
“real” and vice-versa — and Augmented Reality (AR) can contribute to the
accessibility of these museum objects while also increasing our knowledge of
the objects. How can you “reverse engineer” a museum piece? Will this allow us
to take museum pieces out of the museum and put it to use again? Can you turn
heritage into new design? How can you link these objects to the historical
information that is stored in the museum? How would people interact with these
“enriched” objects? These questions are being examined within the project Smart Replicas.
Smart
Replicas
'Smart replica' is a term we have given to
replicas of historical objects made useable again by means of 3D scanning and
printing techniques. 'smart' refers to 'intelligent'; these are not just
copies, but replicas enriched with innovative technologies such as AR to carry
of information, so that outside the museum they can serve their original intent
and provide information at the same time. That way, heritage can provide new
designs; objects shaped and refined through the centuries can be used in the
present. Smart Replicas is a project by Studio Maaike Roozenburg in cooperation
with 4 partners: Delft University
of Technology, Faculty of Industrial Design and Faculty of Civil Engineering,
Delft Heritage, Department of Archaeology, Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, the
AR Lab at the Royal Academy of Art in The Hague and students from Graphic
Design of Royal Academy. A team of
very different parties with their own background and expertise contribute to
this project: academics, students, curators and technical experts. Smart
Replicas is a project in which the worlds of museological heritage, design, art
history, 3D prototyping and AR comes together.
“Reverse
engineering” historic items
Seven tea cups from the Boijmans Van Beuningen
collection form the “base material” to explore how reverse engineering and 3D
prototyping can be used to produce useful replicas of museum pieces. Previous
tests have shown that a (medical) CT scanner can scan very vulnerable and
“untouchable” historical objects. This does not damage the objects and meets
the museum's guidelines for handling these objects. The resulting data can be
converted to a digital reconstruction of the object that can be printed in a 3D
printer. The aim is to combine 3D prototyping techniques with the historic
porcelain techniques applied on the original cups. This includes experimenting
with milling porcelain casting moulds straight from 3D models as well as
printing porcelain directly. It is important that the replica is a complete
designer product that invites everyday use and can lead a new life outside the
museum walls.
“Smart”
objects
AR brings the physical and digital worlds of an
object together. This transforms it into an information medium. Or rather, AR
can show the information, history, context and stories associated with the
object. Each porcelain cup is a historical source, with a wealth of historical
information: stories about traveling, locations, production processes, use and
rituals. AR allows us to make this information visible and actually link it to
the object; connecting knowledge to the object itself, outside the context of a
museum. This allows the knowledge, carried by the replica, to leave the museum
and enter the wide world.
A group of students from the Graphic Design
department at the Royal Academy of Art is working on structuring and shaping
digitized historical information concerning the cups. They can develop their
own line or narrative and design it in a matching medium. Routes can be
accessed with Google maps, moving images through animation and text with visual
or audio stimuli. These designs will be linked to the replicas using AR. The
research also includes the markers that create that link. Here we examine how
to combine the historical techniques and decorations of the original museum
pieces with technology aided by markers and object recognition
What
is the real significance of our heritage?
With the project “Smart replicas”, we examine
how 3D prototyping can be used to put heritage back to use and how AR can turn
objects into information carriers outside the museum. The underlying questions we
want to ask are: What is the meaning of all these stored historical objects?
How do we relate to them? Are they relevant to us now? What happens when you
copy them? What does this change in our perception and appreciation of the real
object? What is the relevance of these objects in our increasingly digital
society? Augmented Reality and 3D prototyping offer opportunities to pose these
questions (indirectly), and to identify and investigate them.
The result is a trial installation in Museum
Boijmans Van Beuningen, where the smart replica prototypes can be 'touched', used
and tested by the public which will be open in june 2013.
