Making the Absent Object Present: Towards a holographic museum of modern art (hMoMA)

Fifty-five thousand museums worldwide are custodians of our cultural legacy and over ninety-five percent of their collections are in storage and rarely, if ever, publicly displayed. This early practice based PhD research explores the viability and acceptability of improving public access to these hidden collections by using recently available digital technology. The aim is to enable museum visitors to walk around three-dimensional digital replicas of stored artefacts and moving subjects, as though these replicas are physically present in the real world exhibition space. Curatorial interpretation is envisaged from knowledge experts similarly replicated to appear alongside both digital and physical exhibits in the gallery. Whilst recognising that digital replicas are not the same as the real thing, if stored collections are rarely seen, this is the next best thing, and as technology improves will move even closer to a physical experience. The technology to create these three dimensional digital replicas is a portable volumetric capture rig, one of which has been assembled by the author. This consists of multiple miniature cameras, recording depth as well as image, mounted on portable stands, which are arranged in a circle around the subject. The cameras are connected to a computer and software, which synchronises the information provided by the cameras and creates and records static and moving point-cloud images rendered into life-like three-dimensional replicas either in real-time or in post processing. A person can view these threedimensional digital replicas using Mixed Reality (MR) smart glasses or headsets. These devices allow the user to walk around three-dimensional digital replicas as though physically present in the real-world environment, hence in MR. This is distinct from Augmented Reality (AR) which overlays two-dimensional images on the real world, and Virtual Reality (VR), which displays images in an occluded virtual world. Benefits include: Giving wider public access to collections without commensurate pressures to increase museum exhibition space; 3D replicas of repatriated exhibits can be displayed in donating institutions; The advantages of 3D scanning are no longer limited to static collections as moving contemporary art such as performance can be included (hence the title of this paper, Towards hMoMA). In this paper the author gives an overview of technology developments contributing to this research as well describing his own art practice, which combines digital replicas in mixed reality, binaural audio and physical art installations.

Content

Author and article information

Contributors

Terence Quinn

Conference

Publication date: July 2019

Publication date (Print): July 2019

Pages: 148-154

Affiliations

[0001]Kingston School of Art and University of the Arts London 20 Matham Road, Surrey KT8 0SU, UK

Article

DOI: 10.14236/ewic/EVA2019.29

SO-VID: 4930b989-4b54-4637-a8e8-b53a753fc603

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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 Unported License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Conference name: Proceedings of EVA London 2019

Conference acronym: EVA 2019

Conference number:

Conference location: London, UK

Conference date: 8 - 11 July 2019

Conference sponsor: Electronic Workshops in Computing (eWiC)

Conference theme: Electronic Visualisation and the Arts

History

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1477-9358 BCS Learning & Development

Self URI (article page): https://www.scienceopen.com/hosted-document?doi=10.14236/ewic/EVA2019.29

Self URI (journal page): https://ewic.bcs.org/

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Comments

Comment on this article

[1] AREA 2019 https://thearea.org/ar-news/the-10-biggest-ar-investments-of-2018/ retrieved 19 March 2019 )

[2] S. Art 2019 Magritte VR Surrealism Today https://surrealismtoday.com/magritte-vr/ retrieved 19 March 2019 )

[3] BBC News 2019 Museum of London move gets £180m funding boost https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-38732919 retrieved 19 March 2019 )

[4] Binaural Enthusiast 2019a https://binauralenthusiast.com/ retrieved 19 March 2019 )

[5] Binaural Enthusiast 2019b https://binauralenthusiast.com/examples/ retrieved 19 March 2019 )

[6] BLVRD 2019 http://blvrd.com/ retrieved 19 March 2019 )

[7] CBS News 2019 What a 5G world could look like: 3D holograms, faster AI – and new security concerns https://www.cbsnews.com/news/what-a-5g-world-could-look-like-3d-holograms-ai-new-security-concerns/ retrieved 19 March 2019 )

[8] DavidBowielsReal 2019 David Bowie Is https://davidbowieisreal.com/ retrieved 19 March 2019 )

[9] E&T 2019 Intel ‘True View’ puts football fans at the heart of the action https://eandt.theiet.org/content/articles/2019/02/intel-true-view-puts-football-fans-at-the-heart-of-the-action/ retrieved 19 March 2019 )

[10] Evercoast 2019 Evercoast Volumetric Capture https://www.evercoast.com/ retrieved 19 March 2019 )

[11] Factory42 2018 https://www.factory42.uk/holdtheworld retrieved 19 March 2019 )

[12] A. Fullerton 2019 Presentation of Science Museum decant from Blythe House. Making the most of stored collections British Museum 3 December 2018

[13] GOV.UK 2019 https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/syatem/uploads/attachmentdata/file/687519/TT_v4.pdf retrieved 19 March 2019 )

[14] C. Groskopf 2016 Museums are keeping a ton of the world’s most famous art locked away in storage https://qz.com/583354/why-is-so-much-of-the-worlds-great-art-in-storage/ retrieved 19 March 2019 )

[15] Intel 2018 Intel RealSense Depth & Tracking Cameras https://realsense.intel.com/intel-realsense-volumetric-capture/ retrieved 19 March 2019 )

[16] Intel Newsroom 2018a Intel Studios: A Home for Volumetric Video Capture and Creation https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nd6vrSL7i1s retrieved 19 March 2019 )

[17] Intel Newsroom 2018b Intel Studios Debut Volumetric Video Demo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9qd276AJg-o retrieved 19 March 2019 )

[18] Jaunt 2018 Jaunt Augmented Reality Research and Development https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LUE5IKxq2ow retrieved 19 March 2019 )

[19] D. Linthicum 2019 5G will bring cloud computing to everyone https://www.infoworld.com/article/3308378/5g-will-bring-cloud-computing-to-everyone.html retrieved 19 March 2019 )

[20] Museums Association 2019 Open Up: Making More of Stored Collections https://www.museumsassociation.org/events/open-up retrieved 19 March 2019 )

[21] T. Pallatino 2019 https://mobile-ar.reality.news/news/intel-opens-ar-portal-smithsonians-burning-man-exhibit-via-snapchat-0186750/ retrieved 19 March 2019 )

[22] T. Quinn 2016 Research Paper: Digital to Physical – Made to Last? Will functioning digital art be part of our future cultural heritage? https://terencemquinn.com/2016/10/05/research-paper-digital-to-physical-made-to-last-will-functioning-digital-art-be-part-of-our-future-cultural-heritage/ retrieved 19 March 2019 )

[23] T. Quinn 2017a Portfolio – October 2017 https://terencemquinn.com/2017/10/ retrieved 19 March 2019 )

[24] T. Quinn 2017b The Refugees’ Crisis https://terencemquinn.com/2017/06/19/bookmark-for-the-refugees-crisis/ retrieved 19 March 2019 )

[25] Reality Technologies 2019 nreal and Qualcomm Partner Up for 5G https://www.realitytechnologies.com/nreal-and-qualcomm-partner-up-for-5g/ retrieved 19 March 2019 )

[26] D. Sanderson 2019 V&A is turned inside out to win space race The Times https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/d38063e8-de23-11e8-8469-be4fc9fcee5f retrieved 19 March 2019 )

[27] B. Serexhe 2013 Digital art conservation Preservation of digital art: Theory and practice Germany Ambra V and ZKM Center for Art and Media

[28] D. Storey 2019 An evolutionary step in imaging https://www.dimensionstudio.co/ retrieved 19 March 2019 )

[29] The Art Newspaper 2018 Looted ‘cannibal’ bowl served up in Royal Academy of Art’s Oceania show https://www.theartnewspaper.com/preview/looted-cannibal-bowl-served-up-in-royal-academy-soceania-show retrieved 19 March 2019 )

[30] Tate 2019 Modigliani VR: The Ochre Atelier https://www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-modern/exhibition/modigliani/modigliani-vr-ochreatelier retrieved 19 March 2019 )

[31] UploadVR 2019 HoloLens 2’s Field of View Revealed https://uploadvr.com/hololens-2-field-of-view/ retrieved 19 March 2019 )

[32] Volograms 2019 Volumetric Video http://volograms.com/ retrieved 19 March 2019 )

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