(IN)TANGIBLE HERITAGE(S)

Abstract

Photogrammetry is a popular method of reconstructing artefacts and spaces, offering numerous creative and technical challenges. Achieving the most faithful and authentic representation of an artefact or site is often the driving motivation behind the 3d digitization process. Moving beyond data capture processes necessary for archival preservation and documentation, digitization also involves processes and pipelines that open a space for creative investigation. Digitization offers many more opportunities for learning – especially when 3d capture, modelling, and additive manufacturing processes are approached as creative and interpretive methods of discovery. The use of photogrammetry as an archival tool can belie some of its most beneficial applications. Deconstructing artefacts through creative digital processes can provide invaluable insight into their material and historic context. The digital artefact can provide a canvas for understanding and reflection, a base for interactive and animated experiences, and enables exhibition designers creative control over the communication of artefact to audience. The rapid technological advancements that make these opportunities possible also provide challenges that affect designers and archivists alike. This paper uses practical research methods from design to contribute to understandings of heritage studies, producing both digital and physical outputs from popular digitisation processes. A collaborative project with Canterbury Museum in New Zealand and a local exhibition design firm resulted in the development of photogrammetric models of Māori Taonga for presentation in an interactive virtual display alongside the artefacts, with editing of digitised textiles to match their physical forms. Internal collaborations with the Victoria University’s classical studies program opened their collection to digitisation and reinterpretation through animation, object experiments and student activities that enabled the reflective translation and interpretation of classical myths to a modern context. These collaborative practices form a base from which to comment on the opportunities and challenges presented by 3d technologies in the heritage industry.