http://phys.org/news/2014-05-futuristic-artworks.html
Anyone
interested in art conservation knows very well how the devil is in the details.
Restoring or preserving paintings, ceramics or sculptures has become an art in
itself, one that requires knowledge, patience and advanced technologies. The
INSIDDE project focuses on the latter with a scanning technology that is on
track to taking art analysis and observation to the next level.
Since our ancestors drew their first cave paintings, art has always been part of how humans define
themselves and perceive the world around them. Each work of art is a treasure
for anyone willing to read between the lines, as it tells much about the
artist, his personality and the world he lived in. But when it comes to
analysing and understanding art, experts thus far have only been able to
scratch the surface.
As
they struggle against the ravages of time, curators and restorers need advanced
technologies to avoid damaging the artwork. Solvents and their potential side
effects are progressively being replaced by the likes of lasers and
limestone-producing bacteria. But the EU-funded project INSIDDE ('INtegration
of technological Solutions for Imaging, Detection, and Digitisation of hidden Elements
in artworks') is willing to take a step further in this direction. The project
is developing a new technology relying on graphene-based terahertz scanner
devices, which is expected to reveal the hidden secrets in paintings and
ceramics. All details invisible to the naked eye - such as underdrawings,
underpaintings, pigments (or contents in sealed vessels) - will now be
observable and may notably allow for determining the authorship or the period
in which the work of art was painted or made. Far from limiting its access to
experts, the project aims at making the technology available to the broader
public through smartphone and tablet applications to be exploited by local and
regional museums.
INSIDDE
was kicked off in January 2013. Javier Gutiérrez Meana, project coordinator and
R&D Program Manager at Treelogic in Spain, explains how the project has
already performed various experiments whose results show promise for a large
range of potential applications.
What are the main
objectives of the project?
We
are developing a terahertz (THz) scanner - a non-invasive technology lying in
between microwave and infrared bands in the electromagnetic spectrum - which
will be used for image acquisition and complemented with a commercial scanner
for a high-resolution characterisation of the work of art's upper layers. The
raw data obtained will then be processed with different techniques to extract
and interpret those unknown features.
Apart
from curators and restorers, this technology will also benefit the broader
public: on the one hand, the digital models (2D and 3D) will be uploaded to the
European network Europeana (europeana.eu/) -
meaning that everyone will have free access to these models through the
internet. On the other hand, an application for smartphones and tablets will be
designed and implemented. It will be available at the participating museums and
will display, when pointed at the artwork and thanks to the augmented reality,
the different layers of the painting, a scheme of overlapping brushstrokes,
metadata and other interesting representations.
What is new or
innovative about the project's approach to art understanding and analysis?
Although
there are currently multiple techniques to carry out this type of study and
some of them are also non-invasive, terahertz technologies can complete the
information obtained by means of X-rays or infrared reflectography because, in
general terms, their penetration depth is lower than the former but higher than
the latter. Therefore, we can say the project concentrates on the intermediate
layers between the gesso and the varnish in paintings as well as on the clay
and the characterisation of contents in ceramics.
We
expect - and the preliminary results are very promising - to be able to
distinguish among materials with different widths and thus to be capable of
analysing each layer independently. This will give an idea of the original
sketches, how they were modified by the artist or the order in which the paint
or brushstrokes were applied. It could also magnify the visualisation of
pentimenti or uncover underlying works.
Regarding
the characterisation of materials, nowadays it is still quite difficult to
determine which pigments were employed by the artist without taking samples
under strict supervision. The behaviour in the terahertz bands may enable this
by comparing some predefined patterns with the measured response. Likewise, the
contents in sealed ancient vessels may be discovered.
What drew you to
research in this area?
When
the call (ICT for access to cultural resources) opened, three partners of the
consortium (Treelogic, Universidad de Oviedo and ITMA Materials Technology)
were already working together on the development of graphene-based devices for
the terahertz band, but focused on other fields. One day, during a follow-up
meeting, Dr David Gómez talked about this action because his department had
previous experience in the field of cultural heritage and had collaborated with
renowned Spanish museums. We all agreed that this was a great opportunity to
test the technology in other scenarios and, at the same time, we were sure our
team was ready to offer an almost completely new perspective - far from the
massive digitisation proposed by other projects.
Then
we drafted the main idea. Obviously we considered different approaches until
one of them was consolidated, and the other partners - Technical University of
Delft (Netherlands), 3D Dynamics (Belgium), Istituto Nazionale di Ottica
(Italy), Regionalen Istoricheski Muzei Stara Zagora (Bulgaria) - joined the
consortium motivated by its attractiveness and innovation. The last to enter
was Centro Regional de Bellas Artes de Asturias (Spain) last June when the project
was already running.
What were the main
difficulties you faced and how did you solve them?
With
most leading museums already preparing their own projects in collaboration with
other centres, universities and companies, INSIDDE decided to aim for a
cost-effective solution for regional or local entities. It may seem an easy
task to find such end users but, although we got in touch with many people from
multiple European countries who all liked the challenge we were proposing, they
could not get involved in such a venture due to the long bureaucratic and
administrative processes required to obtain the corresponding permissions from
the public institutions. Fortunately, the Enterprise Europe Network - through
its regional contact points Ficyt in Spain and the Chamber of
Commerce and Industry Stara Zagora - helped us.
From
a technical point of view, the major complications we faced were related to the
generation (and integration) of graphene - the so called 'wonder material' -
with the specific characteristics to be used in this application, as well as
how to design a focusing system in which each millimetre in the path from the
transmitter to the target and back to the receiver really counts because the
propagation losses in the air at these frequencies are very high. The designs
as well as the recipe to generate graphene were modified many times until a
very good efficiency was achieved, and we also managed to optimise the
available resources - lenses, sources, connections and space.
Generally,
in this type of project, the essence of research is present every day: no one
can be 100% sure that your idea will work. You can sometimes think of other
options, partners or investment, but then again success cannot be guaranteed.
What are the next steps
for the project?
While
over the past year most of the efforts were dedicated to building the scanner,
in 2014 the consortium will focus on performing several experiments with
samples of clay, pigments and other materials, fake paintings reproducing the
original artworks, etc. This will allow us to calibrate, fine tune and assess
the performance of the transmitter, receiver and focusing system. We expect to
be able to release some results during the final quarter, even though they will
be based on preliminary studies and not on famous pieces of art.
In parallel, we will also
start working on the application for smartphones and tablets. We are planning
to design the interface and functionalities using X-ray images from a Goya
masterpiece that is permanently exhibited at Museo de Bellas Artes de Asturias -
you can see them on our website. In a second phase, we will replace these
radiographies with the acquired THz images. The application may then be
exploited by other museums to attract new visitors and INSIDDE will make the
results public in an nnovative manner.
How do you expect this technology to benefit EU
citizens?
The immediate benefit can be
found in cultural heritage. We think INSIDDE can contribute to generating
enthusiasm when visiting a museum, since we are intertwining artworks and new
technologies and most people really like this combination. Although we will
concentrate on two approaches - the integration into Europeana and the
augmented-reality based applications - within the framework of the project,
others like animations or interactive games are also feasible.
One of the keys of INSIDDE,
in terms of being useful for the European citizens, is the fact that even
though the technology is being developed to fulfil some concrete objectives, it
may be adapted to other scenarios: security purposes (body scanners),
non-destructive tests (food), health (burns, skin cancer). Our intention is to
take advantage of these capabilities in order to maximise the impact on society
and the economy.
When do you expect the INSIDDE technology to be
commercialised?
We believe our prototype will
be validated with real artworks in 2015. However, since INSIDDE is basically an
R&D project, some adaptations will be required before it can be
commercialised. For example, the experiments are being carried out using a
general purpose 3D positioning system that cannot be easily transported to
other facilities. This is one of the reasons why, from now on, we will
intensify our efforts to contact potential end-users and evaluate the
conditions under which the THz scanner would be of interest for them. If these
are aligned with ours, the consortium will continue working together once the
project finishes. We have not decided yet whether the best approach would be to
offer a service, selling the equipment or both, so we are completely open to
almost any proposition.
We strongly believe that
other outputs - not only devices but also techniques or processes - may be
exploited. At this point we have earmarked up to ten and our strategy consists
of analysing how these can be transferred to other sectors. We will look for
solutions that are not available yet before releasing guidelines detailing
whether further exploration makes sense or not.
Explore further: Science shows there is more to a Rembrandt than meets the eye
