Author Archives: Chance Coughenour
How LiDAR tech helps preserve world heritage
There’s a ninth-century Buddhist temple at the heart of an ancient city in Myanmar that’s constructed from red brick and adorned with exquisite plaster moldings softened by weather and age. When a 6.8-magnitude earthquake hit the area in 2016, its walls collapsed and the plaster crumbled. And this is just one temple amongst more than 3,000 pagodas, temples and monasteries in a vast archeological site that sprawls over 65 square kilometers, so assessing the scale of the damage — and how to repair it — was a huge and complex task.
Luckily, the team at CyArk, a Google Arts and Culture partner, were in a position to help. Six months before the earthquake, they had gathered a series of detailed 3D laser scans – or “digital twins” – of Bagan’s cultural sites for a UNESCO conservation project. By creating another set of “twins” in the earthquake’s aftermath, they could compare before and after in precise detail. For the engineers and conservators tasked with repairing Bagan, the data was invaluable.
According to John Ristevski, CEO and chairman of CyArk, the project was one dramatic example of “putting data to work to solve problems.” As the Bagan Lab Experiment shows, the data also served another purpose: bringing ancient heritage to life for new audiences around the world. Google Arts and Culture sat down with John to learn more about how this kind of 3D laser scanning technology, also known as LiDAR, can help preserve cultural heritage, tell captivating stories and make history more accessible.
John, tell us a bit more about LiDAR devices and how they work.
Ben Kacyra, who founded CyArk in 2003 to preserve and celebrate cultural heritage, developed the first mobile LiDAR devices in the mid-nineties. LiDAR stands for Light Detection and Ranging, and these devices use lasers to create incredibly detailed and accurate 3D representations of places that would be hard to describe using other means. Think of the inside of a submarine or an oil refinery, for instance – it would take forever to measure and map these places using traditional methods. A LiDAR device can gather many millions of data points per second.
So it’s safe to say that LiDAR beats a measuring tape and a pencil – but is it enough?
At Bagan, we also used aerial drone photography and photogrammetry, a technique that allows us to build 3D reconstructions that capture the colors and textures of the pagodas and temples in photo-realistic detail. Alongside these, we collected interviews, audio soundscapes and 360-degree video to evoke the atmosphere and history of Bagan.
Members of CyArk, Myanmar's Department of Archaeology, Carleton University and Yangon Technological University during a 3D documentation workshop at Bagan, 2016.
Google Arts and Culture lends itself to pulling all these different pieces together to present coherent, interactive experiences, pushing the boundaries of how to tell these stories online. Open Heritage or Resilience of the Redwoods are two examples of that.
What threatens world heritage sites today and how can 3D models help?
The number one threat is climate change. Rising sea levels, desertification, rainfall events and so on are affecting sites and monuments that are not designed to withstand them. The Bagan earthquake was a dramatic, one-off event. But climate change is more insidious and it’s often harder to pin down its effects. By helping us understand how heritage sites are changing, 3D data can support efforts to preserve them which we’ve been doing with Heritage on the Edge.
What does the future hold for Bagan, and for LiDAR technology?
In 2019, Bagan was added to the UNESCO World Heritage list. Careful restoration work is ongoing to protect and preserve its statues, soaring temples and hand-painted frescoes, and it continues to be an active site of pilgrimage and worship.
CyArk team members on a fieldwork trip to Rapa Nui, 2020.
Looking ahead, our hope for LiDAR technology is not just to document the world's cultural heritage ourselves, but to share these techniques and methods with others. A good example of this is our work in Rapa Nui, or Easter Island. Its unique moai stone statues are threatened by storms, rising sea levels and coastal erosion. Local people have now acquired their own LiDAR equipment to help preserve the island's cultural heritage for generations to come.
Source: The Official Google Blog
Preserving languages and the stories behind them
To celebrate the first year of UNESCO’s International Decade of Indigenous Languages, seven more indigenous languages are now available on Woolaroo — a Google Arts & Culture experiment that uses machine learning to preserve and help people explore endangered languages.
On average, a different language becomes extinct every 14 days. And of the 7,000 languages currently spoken around the world, more than 3,000 are under threat of disappearing — along with the rich cultures they represent.
Thanks to a collaboration with our global partners, ranging from language communities to national language institutes, you can now discover the languages of Maya, Tepehua, Sanskrit, Vurës, Kumeyaay/Diegueño, Potawatomi and Serravallese, spoken across Mexico, South Asia, the South Pacific, the United States and Italy. Simply choose a language, take a picture of an object, and Woolaroo will return the translation for it thanks to the Google Cloud Vision API.
Discover stories from endangered language speakers
For the first time on Google Arts & Culture, you can findstories written by the speakers of these languages. In these accounts, they share the cultures they’re connected to and how they’re using technology to promote language learning and preservation.
Our Potawatomi tribe partner, Justin Neely, is using Woolaroo to promote and preserve the Potawatomi’s language, Bodéwadmimwen, among students and young people. “Words, phrases and verb conjugations show how the Potawatomi see the world — with an emphasis on connection to the earth, a high regard for mother nature and living beings, and a communal lifestyle,” says Neely. Neely felt that Woolaroo would suit children in particular, allowing them to use technology as a way to explore their heritage.
Explore more languages and communities on Google Arts & Culture, in the iOS or Android app and, and at g.co/woolaroo.
Source: The Official Google Blog
Explore our planet’s most unique places and cultures
Our physical world is changing faster than ever. Climate change and global socio-economic shifts are threatening our magnificent natural landscapes and disrupting small communities. In keeping with this, there is value to be found in confronting and documenting our at-risk environment. For World Photography Day, we invite you to explore A World of Difference, a new online exhibition on Google Arts & Culture offering a perspective of these diverse stories through the lens of Italian photographer Angelo Chiacchio, in collaboration with Art Works for Change. Follow him on his solo journey around the world to capture some of the most fragile landscapes and cultures.
From the resilient women of Namibia’s Himba Tribe to the other-worldly landscape of Venezuela’s Mount Roraima, discover the stories of over 25 locations and communities who call these endangered places home. Explore Tibetan culture in the Himalayas, how life is changing for Tanzanian communities near Mount Kilimanjaro, and how locals are adapting to winds of change in Brazil’s wet desert. Learn what traditions and crafts teach us and how communities are overcoming new challenges to preserve their way of life.
The lessons learned during Angelo’s journey to document the earth’s fragile heritage are those of respect for the natural world and balance in how we live in it. Although the Miccosukee people of Florida’s Everglades mostly live a modern lifestyle, they still find ways to preserve their heritage. The Uro community of Lake Titicaca, who have lived on floating reed-built islands for thousands of years, have found a way to strike a balance with its growing tourism industry and offer an opportunity for their youth to keep their traditions alive by hosting visitors through homestays and sharing their culture first-hand. Across the territories and cultures of this exhibition, Angelo unearths life philosophies that are universal in their application, and utterly breathtaking in this medium.
Source: The Official Google Blog
Mosul’s Art & Soul comes to life
Some of us only know of the Iraqi city of Mosul as a place where many have suffered. But there is much more to the city than its recent history. Once a thriving trade centre, Mosul endured years of conflict but also renewal. Mosul, which is nestled in the “cradle of civilization,” has a heritage that dates back to the 25th century BCE, and includes the breathtaking Great Mosque of Al-Nuri.
To shed light on its art and history while supporting contemporary Mosulian artists, we’re launching The Art & Soul of Mosul on Google Arts & Culture, in partnership with Iraqi community radio station Al-Ghad Radio.
The collection helps people immerse themselves in the world of Mosul’s artists through features like detailed in-painting tours and videos detailing the artist’s experience living through occupation. At the heart of the project is the incredible artwork depicting the stories of the city and the people, including the lives of women and children during and after the war. Some of the artwork was displayed during the 2019 exhibition “Return to Mosul,” hosted at the Mosul Cultural Museum. With this new digital exhibition, the pieces now have a permanent online home.
Marwan Tariq, an artist who participated in the 2019 exhibition, said, "The message of the workshop to the world is that the city of Mosul, the city of art, is still alive despite the destruction and grinding war that destroyed people and the infrastructure…it is full of life and peace." Our new online exhibition also includes personal stories of perseverance from Marwan and many other artists and residents of Mosul, including how one community worked together to rebuild their neighborhood.
As part of our efforts to support digital documentation and preservation of local heritage sites across the Middle East, you can also discover Mosul’s Old City using Street View and view 3D models of heritage sites at risk, such as Mosul’s first mosque and one of its oldest churches.
The Art & Soul of Mosul is Google Arts & Culture’s latest project showcasing contemporary culture and the ancient heritage of the Middle East. To discover more of the region’s art, culture as well as more stories from around the world visit us online or through the Google Arts & Culture mobile app on iOS and Android.
Source: The Official Google Blog
Unravel the symbols of ancient Egypt
Today marks the anniversary of the discovery of the Rosetta Stone, the tool that first unlocked the mystery of ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs. Ancient Egyptians used this writing system more than 4000 years ago to record their stories, but only a select group knew how to read and write them.
But today, thanks to the new Google Arts & Culture tool Fabricius, anyone can interactively discover this fascinating language by means of three dedicated gateways: First, you can “Learn” about the language of ancient Egypt by following a short educational introduction in six easy steps. Secondly, Fabricius invites you to “Play” and translate your own words and messages into hieroglyphics ready to be shared with your friends and family.
And while Fabricius is your doorway to learn about and write in hieroglyphs, it thirdly offers new avenues for academic research, too. So far, experts had to dig manually through books upon books to translate and decipher the ancient language--a process that has remained virtually unchanged for over a century. Fabricius includes the first digital tool - that is also being released as open source to support further developments in the study of ancient languages - that decodes Egyptian hieroglyphs built on machine learning. Specifically, Google Cloud's AutoMLtechnology, AutoML Vision, was used to create a machine learning model that is able to make sense of what a hieroglyph is. In the past you would need a team of Data Scientists, a lot of code, and plenty of time, now AutoML Vision allows developers to easily train a machine to recognize all kinds of objects.
Available in English and Arabic, Fabricius is named after the father of epigraphy, the study of ancient inscriptions. We created it in collaboration with the Australian Center for Egyptology at Macquarie University, Psycle Interactive, Ubisoft and Egyptologists from around the globe.
You can also explore more stories about the wonders of ancient Egypt, including the famous King Tutankhamun, the Pyramids of Giza and the Book of the Dead. And if you’re a teacher using Google Classroom, we’ve created resources on ancient Egypt for you to use, too.
Explore more stories about ancient Egypt by downloading the free Google Arts & Culture app, or visit the Google Arts & Culture website.
Source: The Official Google Blog
Preserving endangered wonders of the world, for generations to come
When Ben Kacyra watched on TV as the Taliban destroyed 1,500 year-old Buddhist statues in Bamiyan, Afghanistan in 2001, he felt compelled to do something. Mr. Kacyra, who happens to be one of the creators of the world's first three-dimensional laser scanning system, realized that his technology could be used to record monuments at risk of damage due to natural disasters, war, or tourism, so that they could be preserved for future generations.
He founded CyArk, a non-profit that has created the world’s largest and most detailed 3D digital archive of endangered wonders of the world—a lasting record of monuments at risk of disappearing. Now, Google Arts & Culture has partnered with CyArk to open up access to their virtual wonders and share their stories with everyone.
With modern technology, we can capture these monuments in fuller detail than ever before, including the color and texture of surfaces and the geometry captured by laser scanners with millimeter precision in 3D. These detailed scans can also be used to identify areas of damage and assist restoration efforts.
The image above shows a structure in Bagan, Myanmar, where a 2016 earthquake damaged many of the city’s famous temples. Before disaster struck however, CyArk’s team had scanned and photographed the site—inside and outside, from the ground and from above. Using the data they collected, we reconstructed Bagan’s key monuments in 3D so you can now travel through this breathtaking place and even step inside the temples using a computer, smartphone or virtual reality viewer like Daydream.
As part of this new online exhibition you can explore stories from over 25 iconic locations across 18 countries around the world, including the Al Azem Palace in war-torn Damascus, Syria and the ancient Mayan metropolis of Chichen Itza in Mexico. For many of the sites, we also developed intricate 3D models that allow you to inspect from every angle, using the new Google Poly 3D viewer on Google Arts & Culture.
Scroll through some of the iconic locations:
Over the past seven years, we’ve partnered with 1,500 museums in over 70 countries to bring their collections online and put more of the world’s culture at your fingertips. This project marks a new chapter for Google Arts & Culture, as it’s the first time we’re putting 3D heritage sites on the platform.
To help the work of restorers, researchers, educators and the entire community working to preserve our cultural heritage, we’re opening up access to the source data collected by CyArk from around the world. Now anyone can apply to download the data, with the help of the Google Cloud Platform.
You don’t need to be an archaeologist to uncover fascinating details in this collection! Discover Google Arts & Culture’s "Open Heritage” project online—or download our free app for iOS or Android.
Source: The Official Google Blog
The British Museum and Google Arts & Culture: Decoding the secrets of the ancient Maya
In the 19th century, the explorer Alfred Maudslay set out to capture and preserve the stories the Maya of Central America, one of the largest and most successful indigenous cultures in the world, with more than 2000 years of rich and vibrant history. For decades, he travelled through the region carrying tons of equipment on mule trains through the jungle and created the first glass plate photographs and plaster casts of some of the most important ancient Maya art from the region.
More than 100 years later, Google Arts & Culture and the British Museum are picking up where Maudslay left off. Now, visitors from around the world can explore the Maya’s rich heritage online and learn about their achievements in art, architecture, astronomy, mathematics and language.
In a new set of exhibits, you can rotate incredibly detailed 3D models of ancient Maya art, take 360 virtual tours of the ancient sites of Tikal and Quirigua, and dive into numerous multimedia exhibits and 12 magical Street View panoramas of ancient sites and museums across Guatemala. Here are just a few things you can discover about one of the largest indigenous American populations, who their ancestors were, and what we can learn from them today:
We’re proud to have partnered together to bring stories of this important civilization online, while digitally preserving them for the future. The British Museum collections can be viewed online with Google Arts & Culture and on our iOS and Android apps.