Terms like high-resolution documentation and giga-byte resolution are now often used without a clear understanding of what this means in practice. In 3D scanning high resolution can mean area scanning at a resolution of 100 measured points per square meter or to describe accurate surface scanning with 100 million measured points per square meter. In colour recording confusion still exists between images that appear high resolution on screen and images that are in fact high resolution when printed at full size.
The association of digital with virtual is still at the root of these misunderstandings. When physical and digital are used in the same sentence the confusion is increased.
Factum Arte has been working with museums and Artists for many years focusing on the way mediation and transformation condition the appearance of the physical object. The idea behind the foundation has grown out of many years of working in high-resolution documentation and the realisation that a lack of communication and understanding is hampering the application of technology in conservation.
The aims of the Foundation for Digital Technology in Conservation are:
- To ensure that research and development into recording and display technologies can be carried out without compromise thereby demonstrating and establishing the importance of high resolution documentation for monitoring, study and dissemination of the world’s cultural heritage.
- To fund the development of recording systems designed especially for use with cultural heritage. Equal attention will be paid to two dimensional recording systems, multi-spectral photography and three dimensional (3D) recording systems.
- To facilitate an understanding of the transformations and mediations involved in all forms of recording and output. This will be done through both academic papers and general interest publications.
- To reduce the costs of both hardware and software and ensure that high resolution recording systems, along with technical support and training, are available in the parts of the world where they are most needed.
- To carry out meaningful comparative studies between different recording systems and to make the results available to the conservation community.
- To clarify the role of physical facsimiles in conservation and to establish a code of good practice.
- To develop archiving and display systems as a user-friendly interface for high resolution data.
- To establish originality as a process and not a state of being and to prepare exhibitions that develop the biography of both objects and sites.
- To help fund projects of cultural importance that cannot finance themselves.