Artist Uses 3D Printing To Preserve Artifacts Destroyed By ISIS

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.

Comments

Preserving is not the right word

[ArcadeMan]

Low-resolution copies of the originals does not help preserve the originals.

Re:Preserving is not the right word

[Shoten]

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.

Not the same, but I guess the best we can do

[Dutch Gun]

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.

Re:Not the same, but I guess the best we can do

[Dutch Gun]

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.

Interesting Idea

[J Story]

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.

[turkeydance]

yeah, it's not perfect, but he's actually DOING something.