#cyark

Today you can go to a mini spring vacation to a particular zone of Mexico City: la Plaza de las Tres Culturas.

This guided tour by CyArk, takes you through the architectural styles and the long and rather violent history: from the Spanish conquest, to the 1968 students movement, to the earthquakes and the restoration of the cultural significance of this place.

So, click the link and stand in the Plaza de las Tres Culturas, surrounded pre-columbian, colonial, and modern architecture. The tour guides speak in Spanish but everything has English and Spanish subtitles, and there's not only historians and guides, but testimonies from survivors of the Tlatelolco Massacre.

There are also several online resources to learn more, at the end of the tour.

Digital Archaeology is fantastic, and its a rising field in archaeology. I was introduced to it in undergrad through a professor of mine. It focuses on the technologies of the field; common things like magnetometry but also new tech like drone piloting, geospatial mapping, remote sensing, 3D modeling and more! A project I worked on in undergrad used remote sensing and satellite imagery to track looting patterns of archaeological sites in Northern Syria and Iraq. There are also some examples of startup companies that are looking to create digital reconstructions of archaeological monuments and artifacts. ICONEM  and CyARK are good examples of this. This type of work is what I’m looking to get into :) I’ll link some stuff here.

“Ancient Corinth is among the first endangered monuments to be preserved online as part of a digital archive of world civilization.”

“Google Arts & Culture and non-profit company CyArk have worked together and created the world’s largest three-dimensional digital archive of significant monuments.”

For all history and art lovers, today has been a dark day. The fire burnt and now, with both towers safe (thankgod) and people singing hymns outside (literal chills), is going cold. But now what?

Tomorrow will be the moment when we all (not only the people of Paris, or France or Europe, but all the world) get a little calm, see the real damage and then be grateful that we live in 2019, because nowadays we can rebuild stuff, restore stuff and make awesome stuff. Here some examples as a little ray of sunshine:

CyArk. If you don’t know them, they have a GREAT project with Google, where they scan in 3D to digitally record, archive and share the world’s cultural heritage, and be sure that it is not lost. Their Google project is centered in places that are in danger of being lost or destroyed: from ancient ruins in the Middle East, to Mexican pyramids in the middle of the jungle, and Myanmar temples that have suffered from earthquakes. Of that very project, the temples of Bagan, they registered the place before the 2016 earthquake, which makes the info for future reconstruction and preservation, available. So yeah, what a time to be alive.

York Minster. The Cathedral and Metropolitical Church of St Peter in York, was built between 1230 and 1472, and it is the second largest Gothic cathedral of Northern Europe. And it burnt. At least 3 times before the 1984 fire that may or may not have been caused by a lighting bolt. The fire was certainly smaller than Notre Dame’s but it was destructive. And then it was finished again in 1988.

Wars and terrorism. Wars have destroyed unmeasurable amounts of works of art all around the world, and have left iconic buildings and monuments in ruins: Saint Paul’s Cathedral in London, St Stephen’s Cathedral in Vienna, the Stari Most in Bosnia and Herzegovina, the Famen Temple in China (destroyed several times), the Palace of Versailles in Paris (it was restored and open again in 4 years time), the Dresden Frauenkirche, Berlin Cathedral, Postdam City Palace, and others in Germany, the Parliament Building in Hungary, the Monastery of Monte Cassino in Italy, the Kinkakuji in Japan.... And you know what? All of these examples were rebuilt.

And you know something? Quoting Dan Snow “what we built, we can rebuilt.”

Images from top:

North rose window, Notre Dame.

Eim ya kyaung Temple 3D scan, CyArk, 2017.

York Minster fire, 1984.

Sexypink - 𝗣𝗥𝗘𝗦𝗘𝗥𝗩𝗜𝗡𝗚 𝗢𝗨𝗥 𝗛𝗘𝗥𝗜𝗧𝗔𝗚𝗘!

Minister Nicholas Morris launched the Tapestry Initiative, a groundbreaking partnership between the National Trust and CyArk to digitally document our cultural landmarks.

Google recria em 3D locais históricos ameaçados pelas mudanças climáticas

O Google já está acostumado a reproduzir sites históricos on-line, mas agora está ampliando os limites técnicos para recriar aqueles locais que correm o risco de desaparecer devido aos estragos causados pelas mudanças climáticas. A empresa está lançando uma coleção chamada Heritage on the Edgena seção de Artes e Cultura do Google que recria mais de 50 exposições que ilustram o efeito de um clima…