Skip to main content

Restoring art and culture of the past -- with photonics

By
Photonics play a major part in restoration of the look of
a set of murals by Mark Rothko at Harvard University.
Ramesh Raskar, a computational photography expert at the MIT Media Lab, and two students used the idea of light projection in helping to develop a method for art conservation, writing software to isolate the images’ colors one pixel at a time and restore the look of a set of Rothko murals.

For the exhibition Mark Rothko’s Harvard Murals, showing through 26 July at the Harvard Art Museums, Raskar and his team worked with art historians, conservation scientists, and conservators to develop digital projection technology that restores the appearance of the murals’ original rich colors.

The artworks had faded while on display in the 1960s and ’70s in a penthouse dining room on the Harvard University campus, for which they were commissioned. Deemed unsuitable for exhibition, the murals entered storage in 1979 and since then had rarely been seen by the public.

The team compared images of the murals in the new gallery to the restored photograph of the original. The software creates a compensation image that is sent to a digital projector and illuminates the murals exactly as they would have looked over 50 years ago ― and the vividness of Rothko’s murals is revived.

The museum turns off the digital projector every day from 4 to 5 p.m. so visitors can see the differences in Rothko’s murals before and after the process.

The SPIE Optical Metrology symposium later this month in Munich includes a plenary talk by Raskar on extreme computational imaging, and also includes a conference on applications of optics and photonics in variety of conservation methods.

The conference, Optics for Arts, Architecture, and Archaeology, chaired by Luca Pezzati of the Istituto Nazionale di Ottica and Piotr Targowski of Nicolaus Copernicus University, will include reports from projects concerned with examining pre-colonial Brazilian ceramics, post-earthquake inspection of masonry underlying murals, underwater survey of marble works submerged for centuries, and other topics.

A few of the many photonics technologies employed are pulsed-phase and infrared thermography, photogrammetry, 2D and 3D modeling, and optical microtopography.

These projects and the Rothko mural restoration are beautiful examples of one of the primary themes of the International Year of Light and Light-based Technologies: to highlight the myriad ways in which light has influenced and continues to influence human culture. Learn more about the United Nations-declared observance at www.spie.org/iyl.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

An International Inspiration: Attending the International Day of Light 2019 Celebration in Trieste

By
John Dudley and Perla Viera in Trieste Perla Marlene Viera González, an SPIE Early Career Professional Member working at the Universidad Autonoma de Nuevo Leon, represented the SPIE Student and ECP Membership at the International Day of Light 2019 celebration in Trieste, 16 May. She shares with this community her experiences at the International Centre for Theoretical Physics (ICTP) and the impact of taking part in this annual day of recognizing light. The International Day of Light brings together culture and science.  — SPIE John Dudley, Steering Committee Chair of IDL This phrase was part of the message given by John Dudley during the introduction to the International Day of Light 2019 at the International Centre for Theoretical Physics (ICTP) in Trieste, Italy. And it reflects the importance of bringing together the science, technology, culture, and art that involves light in this emblematic celebration. This year, the IDL celebration was about “Illuminating Ed...
Post a Comment
Read more

Optics Does That? With Dr. Ashleigh Haruda, Zooarchaeologist.

By
Dr. Ashleigh Haruda is a zooarchaeologist. Dr. Ashleigh Haruda She examines animal bones found at archaeological sites to investigate the relationship between animals and ancient human societies. These bones reveal information about ancient societies including diet, trade, migration, and market forces. For her doctoral research, she studied pastoralists living in the Central Asian steppe in the Late and Final Bronze Age (1500-800 B.C.E.). These were people who did not practice agriculture, but lived off of their animals, including sheep. “Primarily these people are experiencing their world and their landscape through their animals,” said Haruda. “So, if they fail to move their animals in the right way, or they fail to understand how the weather is going to be that year, they could all die because there was no safety net for them.” By measuring the bones of sheep found in the steppe from the Final Bronze Age, she was able to determine that these pastoralists did not migrate exte...
Post a Comment
Read more

#FacesofPhotonics: Optimax Director of Technology and Strategy, Jessica DeGroote Nelson

By
PITCH PERFECT: Optics expert Jessica DeGroote Nelson  SPIE Senior Member Jessica DeGroote Nelson works as the director of technology and strategy at Optimax Systems in Ontario, New York. She also teaches as an adjunct assistant professor at The Institute of Optics at the University of Rochester (UR), and is a Conference Chair for SPIE Optifab 2019.  Nelson also teaches  Optical Materials, Fabrication, and Testing for the Optical Engineer  at SPIE conferences. This course is geared toward optical engineers who are hoping to learn the basics about how optics are made, and ways in which to help reduce the cost of the optics they are designing. It is also offered online. "Optical tolerancing and the cost to fabricate an optic can be a point of tension or confusion between optical designers and optical fabricators," Nelson says. "I teach this course to help give optical designers who are new to the field a few tools in their toolbelt as they navigate toler...
Post a Comment
Read more