Artist Uses 3D Printing To Preserve Artifacts Destroyed By ISIS 73
tedlistens writes: "From the burning of the Library of Alexandria to the destruction of the Buddhas of Bamiyan in Afghanistan by the Taliban, to the Nazi's battle to burn as much "degenerate art" as they could find, mobs and soldiers have been quick to destroy what took societies centuries to create; what museums and collectors spent decades collecting, preserving, and documenting for the public." However, as noted by Motherboard in an article to which tedlistens links, "The digital era looks different: files can be cheaply hosted in data centers spread across several states or continents to ensure permanence. Morehshin Allahyari, an Iranian born artist, educator, and activist, wants to apply that duplicability to the artifacts that ISIS has destroyed. Now, Allahyari is working on digitally fabricating the sculptures for a series called "Material Speculation" as part of a residency in Autodesk's Pier 9 program. The first in the series is "Material Speculation: ISIS," which, through intense research, is modeling and reproducing statues destroyed by ISIS in 2015. Allahyari isn't just interested in replicating lost objects but making it possible for anyone to do the same: Embedded within each semi-translucent copy is a flash drive with Allahyari's research about the artifacts, and an online version is coming.
Preserving is not the right word (Score:4, Insightful)
Low-resolution copies of the originals does not help preserve the originals.
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When the originals have been destroyed, low resolution copies are wonderful.
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We don't have Plato's original manuscripts. Those copies have sure come in handy. We don't have Caesers' De Bella Gallico, yet those copies are nice. I can list hundreds of examples.
Don't underestimate the importance of copies.
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I just dont quite get why this is newsworthy , or at least the 3d printer and artist part. hes making replicas, which is awesome, but not really newsworthy, people have been doing so for centuries
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All of the museum pieces have been 2D photographed or drawn. The drawings are not what we would call truly realistic. 2D photo and film does not translate to 3D copy easily, although I feel that with the right technology, some items can be made into a 3D representation. As for drawings, check out the early lithographs/woodcuts and even colour plates (zoological for instance) of a few hundred years ago and compare them to RL. There is a marked difference.
3D scanning is a very new technology and some artefact
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Absolutely right especially given that the ones they are copying were copies to begin with!
http://rt.com/news/240801-isis... [rt.com]
Re:Preserving is not the right word (Score:4, Interesting)
Low-resolution copies of the originals does not help preserve the originals.
That's a good point. Perhaps we could drive the point home by bombing Mecca and then providing a low-resolution copy of it to fulfill the same purpose.
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Pretty sure it would get more Muslims pissed off, making them more likely to attack rather than less.
Do you really think that some group outside the US saying, "If you don't stop supporting Israel, we're going to set off dirty bombs in multiple US cities," would make the US kinder and gentler?
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I always thought that, instead of bombing brown people we should take a couple of choppers and a team over and just still that whole Mecca thing and promise to return it when they have cleaned their own house.
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Wow... STEAL not STILL.
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Yes, yes it was. I am guessing you know that my post was in jest and just want to whine. That is okay, I am happy to help you. However, I would suggest that you write 'My Negative Mind' on a rock and drop it into a deep river and then go on retreat. A Dharma is willing to help teach you how to throw away the past and negatives. A rock is only heavy when you carry it, when you set it down it is light to you. Holding on is not beneficial, it is not healthy for you, and is not going to help you with your karma
Sure, makes complete sense (Score:3)
Not the same, but I guess the best we can do (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm afraid that willfull, destructive ignorance and barbarism isn't a problem that technology can solve. A digital copy, however perfect, remains a copy, and by nature, can't be used as proof that there ever *was* an original, which is the entire purpose of ISIS's destruction of these relics.
I don't mean to denigrate these efforts. I mean, I'm really glad to see some part of these works preserved, but... Human lives are transient, and we weep at senseless killing, but one thing humans can do to achieve a bit of immortality is to leave behind a long-lasting legacy of culture and art. ISIS is not only insistent on killing people in the present. Destroying these artifacts is like killing artists' legacies from the past as well.
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I'm afraid that willfull, destructive ignorance and barbarism isn't a problem that technology can solve. A digital copy, however perfect, remains a copy, and by nature, can't be used as proof that there ever *was* an original, which is the entire purpose of ISIS's destruction of these relics.
Even having a physical object is not proof that it is the original. Moreover, I submit that even backups of purported original texts of the Library of Alexandria, for example, would be extremely informative, especially when the only other options is nothing.
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The texts of the Library of Alexandria is a slightly different case, because the real value in those text was the information they contained, not in the beauty and physical structure of the objects themselves like with artwork. The physical scrolls on which they were written probably would have only been of secondary concern.
Don't get me wrong. I'm extremely grateful when *anything* of these relics is preserved, of course. But there's a reason only the original piece of artwork is truly valued, even if a
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But there's a reason only the original piece of artwork is truly valued,
It it because by 'value' you mean the dollar value assigned by speculators/hoarders/collectors who want 'the original'?
Re:Not the same, but I guess the best we can do (Score:4, Insightful)
No, you insensitive clod, I was speaking of artistic, historic, and cultural value. Any artwork of significant artistic, historic, and cultural value will also tend to command a high monetary value, but they're not valued because speculators have assigned some arbitrary dollar value to them.
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I'm afraid that willfull, destructive ignorance and barbarism isn't a problem that technology can solve. A digital copy, however perfect, remains a copy, and by nature, can't be used as proof that there ever *was* an original, which is the entire purpose of ISIS's destruction of these relics.
i disagree, outright. their aim is to destroy availability and access to anything that could cause people to have "thoughts" outside of the proscribed and permitted range as dictated by them. in that regard, it *doesn't matter* that the copies are imperfect replicas of the original.
in fact, now that i think about it: a second objection to what you say is that if anyone else notices a discrepancy, they may take a copy of the files and improve on it. so in that regard, the fact that these insane people hav
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either way, these insane people have *helped* spread the messages that they attempted to suppress. so i think i will mark this story as "stressandeffect".
Only as a short-term media blip. The original artifacts, however, are lost forever. Whatever information we have of them now is as much as we'll ever have (short of extrapolating new hypotheses from existing data), thanks to these barbarians. More importantly, the sense of awe and wonder from seeing in person something created from our distant ancestors is lost forever. We all know what the Mona Lisa looks like. Would you still like to see it in person? I sure would.
Hundreds of years from now, people
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Not "the left", any more than "the right" are all free market fundamentalists who bomb abortion clinics.
Some morons who claim to represent the left say this. They are people the rest of "the left" think of as "fuckwits".
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To clarify and expand:
'the left' and 'the right' are the people the rest of everyone think of as 'fuckwits.'
Don't kid yourself. A lot of people throughout history have thought 'we really have figured it all out. now we just need to ram our rules through and the world will be better.' The flavor varies, but not much else.
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one involves the ending of a (potential) human life, the other...is drawing a cartoon....
Not really the same
Hmm... (Score:2)
That doesn't really preserve the originals, you're just making copies of them. There are hundreds of thousands of Mona Lisa's in the world, but they are all worth nothing compared to the original. I really don't mean to discourage these efforts, it's a good idea, but it's not "preserving artifacts destroyed by ISIS", it's "distributing copies of things destroyed by ISIS". Copies are not going to pacify my loathing for this terrible organization - these people deserved to be burned alive just like the peopl
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Interesting Idea (Score:5, Interesting)
It seems to me that if museums, as a matter of course, scan and extensively photograph all new inventory as well as old inventory -- and put the data on the interwebs -- that will provide some protection from the pigshit known as ISIL as well as other semi-human garbage. It would generate a lot of data, but these days that seems pretty cheap.
Part of the problem is that, although it is possible for museums from stable nations to storehouse collections from museums in unstable regions, the practical end result could be that those regions would be unable to show artefacts for decades or centuries. Further, if an official from semi-civilized country Y says, "give us back our junk", who is authorized to say yes or no, even if the purpose of getting stuff back is to destroy it? As I understand it, even now, items in museums in stable democracies are being returned to the country from which they were were taken, because those countries are asking for them back. Scanning such items before returning them at least provides the possibility to make a backup in case the original is damaged or destroyed.
dammit, it's the best he has. (Score:4, Interesting)
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It's thumbing the nose at ISIS, saying, the spirit of those artifacts live on and you can't destroy that.
Okay, sure, it isn't the same thing, but saying these objects deserve a place in the world by re-creating them is saying something, no matter how small.
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I agree that this is more a symbolic gesture against ISIS rather than a practical means of preservation, and for that, believe me, I'm very grateful. Whatever someone can do to flip ISIS the bird - I'm all for it.
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Yes, but the whole plug to make it /.-worthy is that he's using 3D PRINTING. Which is pretty much like saying he's saving the Louvre by making PNGs of Mona Lisa for home printing. Most any art of significance is extensively photographed, measured and cataloged. Without the artifacts themselves you're relying on a chain of authenticity, meaning that whatever you photoshopped at home won't matter one bit. In short, your 3D printer is no more significant in preserving history than your 2D printer is, which is
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FYI, this is "actually" the second time people have been "DOING something". The Artifacts Destroyed by "ISIS" were recreations. This fact was conveniently left out of the USA propaganda (what some here call mainstream news) in order to increase outrage and get more clickbait.
Do some fact checking, FFS, one day your life might depend on it... Like the next time you go to war over non-existant "WMDs".
Of course, it doesn't matter how much information I give you. Most of you dolts will believe the next batch
Flash Drives and Ephemera (Score:1)
Embedded within each semi-translucent copy is a flash drive with Allahyari's research about the artifacts, and an online version is coming.
And within an archaeologically insignificant moment of time, each flash drive will contain nothing but noise, the trapped charges within each cell having leaked and degraded into noise. Typically, thumb drive manufacturers target an expected retention time of no more than about a decade.
Ministry of Truth, anyone? (Score:3)
From the article:
These people (that is, the extremists) honestly believe they can make this Orwellian fantasy come true in the digital age? Sure, the world will lose a lot of precious artifacts, but information can't be destroyed - and that's withOUT people like Allahyari acting to resurrect those artifacts. The world needs more people like him.
*shakes head*
Hopefully Richard Prince doesn't see this (Score:2)
... or he'll probably get busy with a 3-D printer, write some inane bit of blather on postcards, and start selling these for millions.
Piffle (Score:1)
The artefacts can not be preserved digitally, once they are gone they are gone for good, everything else is a cheap copy.
Which sums up the digital world... "cheap copy".
Does the real-ness really matter? (Score:2)
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Misrepresenting what the Nazis did (Score:3)
to the Nazi's battle to burn as much "degenerate art" as they could find
The "degenerate art" removed from the museums headed in all sorts of directions,
Hitler used to use Baedeker travel guides as a guide to what should be destroyed, although a famous library in the Netherlands was bombed at the start of the war "just because". After the Allies (ok, the British) destroyed a few German cultural spots of neglible military value, the Luftwaffe was sent to destroy highlights selected from Baedeker such as Coventry Cathedral.
There were two Warsaw uprisings, the Jewish one and then later - with the Soviets approaching - the Polish one. As revenge for the second one, buildings were blown up in the order of their ranking in the Warsaw Baedeker - best to worst. The Soviets ceased their advance and waited for the Nazis to suppress the uprising before resuming operations. That is one of the factors behind the Polish attitude to Russia, Katyn being another big one.
With ISIS (I thought it was ISIL) now starting to operate in Saudi Arabia, I wonder if Islamic sites are in danger. One would think not but I had not expected the recent suicide bombings either.
All I Can Think of Is (Score:2)