![]() Partially this has to do with the nature of archaeology. Essentially, I find that almost as fast as I move archaeological findings from sites hundreds if not thousands of years or even hundreds of thousands of years old from a material into a virtual existence that I am moving them back into material forms via the power of 3D printing. 2013a,b, 2014a,b,c,d), so I will only add a few words on this issue here. ![]() I and my students have explored the need for the tangible elsewhere (McCuistion 2013 Means et al. Mark Summers at Jamestown with printed replica of butchered dog mandible. Simply put, we should not underestimate the power of touch (Pye 2007). While seeing a projected two-story tall rotating image of a 3D scanned and butchered dog mandible from the “Starving Times” at Jamestown is pretty impressive, this is still not quite as satisfying as holding an accurately printed and painted scale model in your hands. However, it quickly became readily apparent to myself and the undergraduate VCU students making our virtual project a reality, that digital models of artifacts are not as wholly satisfying as touching something tangible. The basic goal of our nascent laboratory was to make digital diagnostic artifact type collections to help archaeologists more readily identify their findings, with a secondary goal of virtually preserving items that are fragile or otherwise subject to the ravages of time. I should add that, when I began the Virtual Curation Laboratory three years ago (and counting), I thought I would solely be moving material items into virtual worlds (Means et al. I know that the free exchange of ideas tomorrow will expand my perspectives, and give me solutions to problems that I might not even know that I have. I thought I’d share here briefly my perspective on the virtual/material duality, without getting too much ahead of myself. More on my fellow panelists can be found here. Our moderator will be Andrew Illnicki, Director of Academic Technology in the VCU School of the Arts. I was invited by VCU Humanities Research Librarian John Glover to discuss the intersection between the virtual and material worlds, via 3D printing and digital models I will be joined as a panelist by Courtney Freeman, who is leading the Virginia Museum of Fine Art’s (VMFA) 3D printing project for the VMFA’s exhibit Forbidden City: Imperial Treasures from the Palace Museum, Beijing, and Diane Harnish of Primal Pictures, a leading 3D anatomy company. Tomorrow on Wednesday, December 3, 2014, I will participate as a panelist in the Virginia Commonwealth University’s (VCU) Digital Pragmata panel “Virtual/Material” in the Cabell Library Room 250 at noon.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |