Over the past year, I\u2019ve been following the use of digital tools to reconstruct destroyed or politically charged monuments. Blog posts concerning my own experiments and those of my collaborators can be found on my personal blog<\/a> or the Scholars’ Lab blog<\/a>. While the crowd sourced site\u00a0Rekrei<\/a>\u00a0and artist\u00a0Morehshin Allahyari<\/a>\u00a0have focused on how these technologies can\u00a0reconstruct and preserve these monuments and their data, the Nefertiti Hack<\/a> and traveling Palmyra Arch<\/a> (now in New York City) indicate how ideologically charged these \u2018copies\u2019 can be. The potential to use new technology to share and preserve monuments is well attested, but there has been growing concern for its uncritical application. While discussing the ethics of digital preservation efforts in Syria, Sarah Bond\u00a0noted that the decontextulization of such monuments may in fact engage in a type of digital<\/a> colonialism<\/a>, especially when the reconstruction\u00a0process is not transparent and the data itself is not shared. Yet, another symptom of\u00a0colonialism is cultural collecting; exotic artifacts and plaster casts have made up the collections of powerful western individuals and institutions for centuries.\u00a0Today, however, we can capture, reconstruct, and share these monuments with increasing ease and speed as more individuals and\u00a0institutions\u00a0make their models available\u00a0for download and 3D printing. On one hand, the\u00a0accessibility of these collections is fantastic and provides new ways for scholars,\u00a0students, and\u00a0enthusiasts\u00a0to experience and handle\u00a0replicas of distant artworks. On the other hand,\u00a0the isolation\u00a0of these prints from the original\u00a0and its context, as well as the\u00a0limitation of printing size and materials, can encourage new\u00a0<\/span><\/span>cabinet of curiosity mentalities (more than once I’ve heard people refer to these prints as ‘toys’). Regardless where the artworks\u00a0come from\u2014on my desk alone I have an odd miniature collection consisting of a red St. Basil’s Cathedral, an iron Viking-Age axe, and a gray bust of Caesar\u2014the accessibility of these works is changing how we encounter, engage with, and collect works of cultural heritage.<\/span><\/p>\n While I continue to experiment with materials and scale to enhance the value of these 3D prints as educational tools,\u00a0I increasingly value opportunities to collaborate with instructors to develop authentic learning experiences and relevant\u00a0assignments that prompt critical thinking about the production and consumption of this surplus of 3D cultural data. Last year, for example, I worked with a Slavic course\u00a0to design a 3D printing assignment that questioned the relationship between\u00a0icon and object\u00a0(the instructors wrote three blog posts outlining<\/a>, evaluating<\/a>, and reflecting<\/a> on their experiences). During the assignment, the cultural weight of one particular object\u2014a bust of Stalin\u2014caused controversy within the department. The\u00a0bust was small, poorly printed, and made of plastic\u2014so decontextualized from its original function and meaning that the students thought nothing of it. Nevertheless, the presentation of the model within the students’ exhibition\u00a0prompted backlash due to\u00a0Stalin\u2019s atrocities. While we removed the bust at that time, the experience provided a relevant teaching moment for the students to consider not only the reproduction and interpretation of such monuments, but also how the meaning of these copies can change based on\u00a0the background, experiences, and interaction of their\u00a0audience.<\/p>\n Building on that experience, I collaborated with Nicholas Genau this past summer to design a course on cultural heritage and technology for the Curry School of Education\u2019s Summer Enrichment Program. Our course, entitled \u201c3D<\/span> Monumental!: Preserving the Past With Technology,\u201d was designed for high school students and was taught three times during three separate two-week sessions. The goal of the course was to introduce the students to the necessary skills to produce their own models and think critically about the context, function, and biases\u00a0of their models.\u00a0In addition to learning photogrammetry, basic 3D modeling, and 3D printing, the students engaged throughout the course with three \u201cbig ideas\u201d that would help them engage critically with their own models and apply their experiences to other\u00a0digital preservation and reconstruction efforts:\u00a0(1) how technology helps to map, reconstruct, and share cultural heritage, (2) how technology continues to affect issues of accessibility, ownership, and experience, and (3) how technology makes\u00a0preservation of cultural heritage a global\/political issue. We originally intended to concentrate on the destruction of monuments in the Middle East by contributing to Rekrei, but we discovered that this project was not intuitive enough and did not have enough resources for us to meet our objectives on such a tight time-frame.\u00a0As a result, the students worked within the\u00a0context of our own immediate landscape,\u00a0using monuments and objects located on campus for their models and applying\u00a0key concerns and themes to Syrian\u00a0examples. Using the students’ immediate surroundings provided an added benefit: students were able to compare more critically the real-world spatial experience with their object\u00a0and\u00a0their interaction with the 3D\u00a0model and print of that object.<\/p>\n The students quickly grasped the basic theory and practice of photography and photogrammetry. We started by taking photos of objects on SEP\u2019s campus, such as trees, cars, and wheelbarrows\u2014whatever was in the immediate vicinity. The students’ excitement when the point clouds appeared\u00a0in PhotoScan <\/a>was palpable; they immediately appreciated their role in making the model, the ability to study and manipulate something familiar to them within a new context. The students also grasped the workflow easily: taking photos (using a painter’s pole for larger objects), uploading and masking photos, generating point clouds and texture, and uploading finished models onto the course Sketchfab site<\/a>, where they could share their work with their families and friends back home.<\/p>\n The highlight of the course was a visit to the University of Virginia, where the students generated models of campus monuments and visited the Scholars\u2019 Lab<\/a> to edit and 3D print the results. Students used Meshmixer to reorient their models (or models of other artifacts they found online), fix any holes in the mesh, and generate supports. We introduced the 3D printers and talked about 3D printing King Uthal from the Mosul Museum<\/a>, the Temple of Baal<\/a>, and the Palmyra Arch of Triumph<\/a>, all examples they studied in the classroom. Although the students\u00a0couldn’t stay for the entire time their models printed, we brought in the finished prints\u00a0on the final day of class to compare and discuss.<\/p>\n On a pedagogical level, the students engaged in critical making, experimented with new technology, shared their efforts with a broader community, and applied their new skills and knowledge to evaluate cultural heritage developments in the world. While\u00a0the technology and project enhanced our course content and objectives, we were thrilled that they also contributed to the students’ positive experiences. Still, it was impossible to evaluate how critically the students approached 3D models and printing after the course. While our aim was to teach the students to consider the potentials and limitations\u00a0of their models as they made them, their\u00a0delight at the\u00a0transformation\u00a0from model to print reminded us how effectively\u00a03D printing engages viewers, especially when watching one’s own creation come to life. We’d like to think, however, that introducing\u00a0the issues\u00a0and encouraging personal experimentation will empower these future students and scholars to continue questioning how\u00a0technology affects the world around them.\u00a0Moving forward, Nicholas looks forward to developing similar courses for university students, thinking critically himself about how he can better evaluate the projects and improve the students’ own engagement with the course material.<\/p>\n Whether we can compare the act of choosing, constructing, and printing a 3D model of Thomas Jefferson to the similar process of printing a miniature bust of Stalin or the Palmyra Arch is debatable (and involves a deeper political argument). Nonetheless, the new speed, ease, and accessibility of 3D printed reproductions has serious implications for\u00a0scholars and instructors. As 3D printing becomes cheaper, faster, and more ubiquitous, the conversation will need to shift from\u00a0if or how we can 3D print cultural objects to why would\u00a0we want to.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" By Jennifer Grayburn<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10177,"featured_media":2341,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[80],"tags":[143,174],"class_list":["post-2296","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-staff","tag-3d-printing","tag-photogrammetry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.temple.edu\/tudsc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2296","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.temple.edu\/tudsc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.temple.edu\/tudsc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.temple.edu\/tudsc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10177"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.temple.edu\/tudsc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2296"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sites.temple.edu\/tudsc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2296\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.temple.edu\/tudsc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2341"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.temple.edu\/tudsc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2296"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.temple.edu\/tudsc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2296"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.temple.edu\/tudsc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2296"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"2016-10-14-14-05-45\"](\"https:\/\/sites.temple.edu\/tudsc\/files\/2016\/10\/2016-10-14-14.05.45-768x1024.jpg\")
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