[CPProt.net] Digital reconstruction could resurrect original vision of many ancient artists, craftsmen

Wed Apr 13 05:34:35 CEST 2005

Digital reconstruction could resurrect original vision of many ancient
artists, craftsmen 
By Jennifer Carnig 
News Office 

Photos: http://chronicle.uchicago.edu/050331/shrines.shtml

The Xiangtangshan Caves, a collection of a dozen sixth-century Buddhist cave
temples south of Beijing, were once full of immaculate altars. The photo
above shows what remains after looters left many of the statues and carved
figures on the walls without faces or heads. 
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
----

In a courtyard outside the cave sits a headless bodhisattva. 

It is a familiar story: Whether the location is a pyramid in Egypt, a museum
in Iraq or a Native American burial ground in Montana, looters, art lovers
or any combination of the two have stripped the sites bare of their
artifacts, leaving little for scholars to study and a gap in what can be
learned about a particular group of people in a particular period of time.
Fragments of history are carted away, often taken thousands of miles from
their place of origin, never to be returned. 

In the hopes of addressing this problem, a new University project, which the
Center for the Art of East Asia is launching, may provide a model for how to
best deal with the looting and dispersal of art and artifacts. The model is
the Xiangtangshan Caves Project: Reconstruction and Recontextualization. The
project will bring together scholars from the United States and China with
the latest technological developments in three-dimensional imaging to create
a multi-dimensional, digital reconstruction of Buddhist cave temples that
have been ravaged by looters. 

"This project has global ramifications," said project leader Wu Hung, the
Harrie H. Vanderstappen Distinguished Service Professor in Art History and
the Director of the Center for the Art of East Asia. "As academics, it's our
responsibility to find an answer to this vexing problem and provide a
positive model of how to deal with this issue. I think we may just have
found the solution we've been looking for." 

If it goes as expected, the project-which the center is creating in
collaboration with the Smart Museum of Art and Lec Maj, a Computer Research
Assistant for Humanities and Networking Services and Information
Technologies-could become a template for how archaeologists, art historians
and museum directors can deal with issues of stolen cultural artifacts, be
it in China, Zimbabwe or Illinois. 

The Xiangtangshan Caves, a collection of a dozen sixth-century Buddhist cave
temples south of Beijing, were once full of immaculate altars-limestone
sculptures of the Buddha with attendant figures were carved from the solid
rock, brightly painted flying divinities and floral scrolls were carved in
relief on the rock walls and, below, crouching monsters were depicted
lurking in the shadows. 

But today the caves are in a state of extreme disrepair. Early in the 20th
century the quality of the caves' sculptures attracted the attention of art
dealers and collectors, so many of the images and sculptural fragments were
forcibly removed, sold on the art market and scattered around the world.
Many of the missing sculptures have been outside of China for nearly a
century, so the caves have never been photographed intact. 

Enter Wu and an international team of 10 members, including scholars from
the fields of archaeology, art and architectural history, museum curators,
and a technical advisor. The team is planning to use the latest in laser
scanning technology to create virtual, 3-D renderings of the caves to
simulate the original appearance of the rock-cut shrines. 

Project coordinator Katherine Tsiang Mino, Associate Director of the Center
for the Art of East Asia, spent years as an Art History student at Chicago,
tracking down the caves' missing sculptures for her dissertation. She has
located many of the caves' original pieces, and those sculptures now will be
scanned and turned into 3-D images. Next, digital pictures will be taken of
the caves themselves. The team will then put together a giant, real-life
puzzle using highly specialized computer programs and their research on the
cave temples to fit all of the sculptural fragments back into their original
positions. 

The final product will be a 3-D digital rendering of the Xiangtangshan
temples that can be projected into simulated caves to show how they once
looked. Visitors and scholars could then have the remarkable opportunity to
study the caves as they were in the sixth century. The digital
reconstruction also could be used to bring the caves to audiences all over
the world. Those who cannot travel to China might still have the experience
of exploring one of the caves in an exhibition gallery, classroom or history
museum. 

"This is a historic project," said Mino. "We're going to be able to
construct a more complete picture of the culture, the social environment and
the political landscape of the time." 

In addition to its broader implications, the project will also provide a
better understanding of the cave temples of Xiangtangshan ("Mountain of
Resounding Halls") and of the art and visual culture of the Northern Qi
period (555-577). The art of this brief dynastic period is characterized by
startling innovation and high quality artistic production, of which these
caves are arguably the major existing monuments, Mino explained. 

The Northern Qi dynasty was ruled by non-Han Chinese Xianbei people who took
over northern China in the fourth century. During their rule, foreign
contacts increased-Buddhist monks came from India and Central Asia, and
merchants arrived from points along the Silk Road with goods to trade. 

"It's a fascinating and important period that needs to be reassessed," Wu
said, explaining that foreign influence on China has been understudied. The
intercultural qualities of the art in the Xiangtangshan caves can provide
valuable information about the cultural, religious, social and political
life of the time, he added. 

Mino also pointed out that the scanning process is especially important in
this case because coal mining is prevalent in the southern Hebei province
where the caves are located. The acid rain and dust from the mines and
cement factories are causing the art in the caves to deteriorate at a rapid
rate. In the 10 years that Mino has been going there to conduct research,
she has noticed firsthand the remarkable rate of decline. "This is a way,
which is in our control, to preserve the caves," she said. 

The Xiangtangshan Caves Project will begin this summer with digital scanning
and continue into 2006. An exhibition is planned for 2008 at the Smart
Museum of Art in which the exhibition hall will be transformed into one of
the caves with the help of the 3-D digital images. 

The multi-dimensional show will present both the virtual reconstruction of
the caves and actual examples of art that has been removed from the caves.
An international conference to be held at the University also is being
planned for 2008, which will present research from a range of fields on the
Northern Qi period and share ideas and methodologies for further study. The
conference papers will then be collected for a scholarly volume for
publication. 

http://chronicle.uchicago.edu/050331/shrines.shtml