Twenty-fírst-century technology has come in handy in an effort to save prehistoric artifacts at the Arizona State Museum.
More than 100 pieces from the Arizona State Museum's 20,000 plus vessel collection of Southwestern Indian pottery, the nation's largest, have been photographed in 3-D using virtual-reality technology. Fifteen of the vessels can be viewed online at the museum's Web site, and the remaining vessels will be added by the end of the year, said museum Webmaster Laura Lapere.
The virtual-reality software allows Web surfers to rotate the pieces and view them from multiple angles by moving the cursor.
The 107 vessels photograplied came from "Saving Southwest Traditions: the Pottery Project," an exhibit that aimed to bring attention to the dangers the collection faced due to substandard storage facilities that have caused some pieces to crumble to piles of dust.
The museum hopes putting the 3-D vessels online will keep the issue in the public eye and draw donations for their plans to build a suitable storage area that will allow for public viewing while preserving the collection, Lapere said.
After the "visual vau1t’ is completed, the virtual pots will be a valuable resource for those interested in in depth viewing of the collection, Lapere said.
"In some ways this is going to be a more hands-on experience than the visual vault," Lapere said.
Museum officials said the new technology will make the collection more accessible to international scholars and limit wear and tear the fragile pottery gets from handling.
"These are old objects, and the more you handle them the more they are prone to potential damage" said Suzanne Griset, head of the collections division. "This allows people to rotate the vessels without putting a hand on them."
Pots were placed on a computer-controlled turntable and digitally photographed 12 times from three elevations using the equipment and expertise of the UA's Center fot Computing and Information Technology. The thirty-six frames form the 3-D animation that appears online.
Miriam Nickerson, director of museum advancement, said she feels the online exhibit's accessibility allows it to be used by anyone from schoolchildren to archaeologists.
"We want it to be available to everybody as widely as we can and to have anything online makes it that much more accessible to the public,' Nickerson said.
The online display is a temporary fix to issues posed by the crowded and inferior storage facility that now houses the collection, Nickerson said. "1f we put it online it allows scholars and the public to have access to the collection when they otherwise couldn't."
Processing the animation is a tedious task that requires all background, including the turntable dropcloth and framework, to be digitally stripped away. lt will take 400 to 500 hours to complete the online exhibit, all of which will be done with no funding.
The work was done by staffers and students at UA's Multimedia Learning Laboratory in an effort to demonstrate how technology can enhance campuswide efforts. Lapere, the museum's Webmaster, said the 3-D modules would have cost thousands of dollars to create otherwise.
More than $2 million has been raised for the $2.5 million new housing facility and the museum is pushing to raise the remaining funds by December.
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