SGER:The Futures of Our Past: Three-Dimensional Representations of Culturally Significant Objects & their Humanistic Implications

技术创新使我们有可能用数字档案馆来补充我们传统的(实体)博物馆和图书馆。新兴的数字技术正在迅速使获取文物的新形式成为可能，包括建立在身临其境的视觉技术基础上的虚拟博物馆。在这样的环境中，观众可能不会那么被动；他们会随心所欲地配置构件，而不会受到专家对什么是好的、有用的或重要的看法的限制。这引起了对历史和解释准确性的关注，这既涉及材料的复制，也涉及将材料相互联系起来以产生有意义的解释。作为探索这些问题的第一步，PI将在这个项目中调查创建物理文物的准确3D表示的技术困难。她将特别关注三个尚未解决的基本问题：任意复杂形状的自动3D数据获取；这些复杂形状的表示允许搜索算法轻松访问合适的对象或其一部分；以及根据用户的问题正确显示/可视化这些对象。为了支持这项研究，国际锡克教徒协会将把重点放在锡克艺术和文物作品上，之所以选择这个领域，是因为它支持一个大型合作项目，即建立一个关于锡克教徒艺术和文化文物500年的虚拟博物馆，该项目涉及加州大学伯克利分校的社会利益信息技术研究中心(CITRIS)、加州大学欧文分校的加州大学人文研究所(UCHRI)以及帕洛阿尔托的锡克基金会，该基金会将提供资金和实物援助，帮助鉴定和收藏西方几乎所有主要的锡克艺术和文化藏品。更广泛的影响：该项目在许多方面构成了信息技术与人文研究之间关系的前沿。如果成功，这部作品将成为收集、整理、展示和分发材料的基础，目的是促进艺术、历史、文化和社会研究，以及关于特定文化的教育。我们将能够评估相似物体(它们的几何形状、材料和功能)的比较研究，以及它们随时间的演变。反过来，这将使更好地解释产生这些文物的社会的进化。

Technological innovations have made it possible to complement our traditional (physical) museums and libraries with digital archives. Emerging digital technologies are quickly making possible new forms of access to artifacts, including virtual museums built on immersive visual technology. In such environments, it is likely viewers will be less passive; they will configure artifacts as they wish, and not be limited by the experts' views of what is good, useful, or significant. This raises concerns about historical and interpretative accuracy, both concerning replication of materials and with respect to setting them in relation to each other to produce meaningful interpretations. As a first step to exploring such issues, the PI will in this project investigate the technological difficulties in creating accurate 3D representations of physical artifacts. She will focus in particular on three fundamental unsolved problems: automatic 3D data acquisition of arbitrary complex shapes; representation of these complex shapes allowing search algorithms to easily access the right object or a part thereof; and the proper display/visualization of such objects as they serve the user needs depending on the user's questions. To anchor this research, the PI will focus on works of Sikh art and cultural artifacts, an area chosen because it supports a large collaborative project to establish a Virtual Museum of 500 years of Sikh art and cultural artifacts, involving the Center for Information Technology Research in the Interest of Society (CITRIS) at UC Berkeley, the University of California Humanities Research Institute (UCHRI) at UC Irvine, and the Sikh Foundation of Palo Alto, which will provide financial and in-kind assistance in identifying and enabling access to virtually all major Sikh art and cultural collections in the West. Broader Impacts: This project constitutes in many ways the cutting edge of the relation between IT and humanities research. If successful, the work will form the basis for collecting, collating, displaying, and distributing materials for the purposes of advancing art, historical, cultural, and social research, and education on particular cultures. We will be able to assess comparative studies of similar objects (their geometries, materials and functionalities), and their evolution over time. In turn, this will enable better explanations of the evolution of the societies that produced these artifacts.