3D Preservation of Chinese Cultural Treasures
Several Chinese research institutes are seeking to preserve a few deteriorating cultural treasures by recreating them online in full 3D, according to this story from China news site CRI English. While the story doesn’t mention what technology’s being used, it sounds slow and expensive, but highly detailed.
This is a great idea. Digital recreations can’t take the place of actually visiting places like Yuxu Palace and Wudang Mountain (”splendid buildings related to the magnificent Taoism culture. But some of the cultural relics have simply been eroded by time; many were destroyed; and some others have been submerged under water.”). But for those who will never be able to travel to the sites, for students, and for sites or artifacts that may be damaged by exposure to visitors, pixelation seems an excellent alternative.
Feeds
[…] 3PointD linked to this article from CRIEnglish.com about several projects under way to digitially recreate a number of China’s endangered or destroyed cultural resources. Among the projects are stuctures at Wudang Mountain, Yuxu Palace, and a number of sites in the Three Gorges area, where the filling of the huge reservoir behind the Three Gorges Dam will submerge thousands of important archaeological and cultural sites. While recreating archaeological features and historic and prehistoric structures digitally is certainly not new, numerous sites in China are in danger or have already been destroyed by looting, development, neglect, and natural disasters, and little is ever known about them, so at least some of these important cultural sites will be preserved virtually. […]