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NEWS > Conference Review984
EITEC 2008
the 3rd International Meeting of Technologies Applied to Museology, Conservation and Restoration
Reviewed by Teodora Poiata
This 3rd edition of the conference was a joint organisation of four Portuguese partners: Sistemas do Futuro - Multimédia, Gestão e Arte, Lda.; Conservar-Inovar, Conservação e Restauro de Bens Patrimoniais, Lda.; Instituto de Soldadura e Qualidade (ISQ) and Curso de Especialização em Museologia do Departamento de Ciências e Técnicas do Património da Faculdade de Letras (DCTP-FLUP, University of Porto). Due to the interest of the overall presentations and their rich diversity, it was considered more relevant to describe each presentation instead of making a critical review of the overall. The first speaker was Luis Bravo from the Regional Centre of Porto of the Portuguese Catholic University. In his presentation "Composed digital images in the study of works of art" he summarised four main techniques that use the juxtaposition of digital images to overcome known limitations of photography. The first technique is the use of high dynamic range (HDR) images applied to the digitalisation of wood sculpture x-rays in order to obtain better results in contrast and resolution. The second was the use of a strong flash light with specific filters and the merge of four photos to obtain a grazing light image in plain daylight. Next, he presented how by mosaic combination of several photos a super-resolution image can be obtained and some other ways to overcome the light difference among the several photos. Finally, he explained how the combination of photos at different depth of field, a technique called extended depth of field, is able to create close-up photos without depth of field distortion. These techniques are very interesting from the technical point of view, and may also be used for documentation purposes although how real these images are is still open to discussion. Researchers Alberto Proença and João Barbosa from the University of Minho gave a talk focused on objects’ digital representation techniques with PTM (polynomial texture maps): "Affordable Imaging technologies for Textured Representation of 3D artefacts". In the same way a grazing light photograph allows conservators to analyse a painting’s surface, this technique combines in one single image light from several points of origin in order to obtain the best view and readability of a surface. The researchers referred that the project was developed within an international team and uses open software allowing an easy access to the technique. The presentation was truly educative as several examples were given, for example, its application proved to be successful in numismatics to identify some roman coins and to help to document the pre-historic stone engravings from Côa Valley (Portugal). As these images are obtained directly without artifices, this technique could be highly interesting for documentation purposes. Pedro Manuel Ramos da Silva, an art historian and researcher, introduced an often forgotten topic that is media art, with a presentation entitled "Media Art. Introduction to conservation and collection of electronic and digital art". The researcher started by making an historical overview of this type of art from the beginning of the 20th century to our days, including installations and video art and continued with a brief introduction to the problems that conservation of those media raise, namely the digitalisation and the archival of digital copies. The awareness of conservation of these new art forms must increase and this problematic should certainly be discussed more in depth. The presentation "Invisible technology and Museology excellence" was given by Isidro Moreno, a professor at the Faculty of Information Sciences of the Complutense University of Madrid. The researcher reflected on the use of technology in different museums, from Washington to Tokyo, and on the physical and conceptual barriers within museums. Javier Espadas Bardón is the responsible for the two websites of Fundación Colección Thyssen–Bornemisza. In the presentation "Museums Internet Visibility Research" he shared the history of the Thyssen–Bornemisza websites and performed an in-depth comparison between theirs and other websites of the most known museums worldwide. Independently of the collection’s importance and location, the foundation shows a growing interest to use the World Wide Web to disseminate its activities and to turn visitors and internauts aware of its presence. Continuing a session almost fully dedicated to museums and the internet, Pilar Gonzalo spoke about "Online Community-Building 2.0 for Museums: Challenges and Opportunities in a Global and Diverse World". She is a consultant specialised in digital services for culture and the Executive Director of the Lamusediffuse Project. The main question she raised was "Do Museums trust their users?". Although it is clear that museums don’t, from "no flash" to "do not touch" signs, the underlining message of this presentation was the real need of museums to work with the community. She also presented a case where only a little effort and access to the internet were needed to surpass institutional work. In particular she noticed that museums in Libya, which is still under dictatorship, were not listed in AFRICOM nor easily found on the internet. Through several contacts and emails she was finally able to list several interesting museums that otherwise no one would even know about except if they would really visit those places. David Policarpo, representing the private company Digitrace Portugal, presented a talk focused on the use of radio-frequency identification (RFID) to mark and to trace stolen works of art. During his presentation he overviewed other marking methods as well and noted that the digitrace system was first applied by Vincent Peyronnet to works of art. The fact that many stolen works of art are retrieved by authorities but their provenance remains unknown or their owners do not provide sufficient ownership proofs was also noted. José Manuel Gaspar Nero, from Instituto Superior Técnico, approached the rehabilitation of urban built heritage. His presentation summarized his personal reflection on the actual problematic of urban rehabilitation in Portugal. He mentioned not only the recent rehabilitation of historic buildings, such as Lisbon’s Castle among other monuments, but also the present and future rehabilitation of today’s constructions. Indeed, the change of paradigms and the actual trends lead to a lack of sustainability. This is a required discussion in today’s chaotic city. João Carlos Santos, architect at IGESPAR, the Portuguese public institute responsible for architectonic heritage, summarized the 20 years rehabilitation process of the 11th century monastery of São Martinho de Tibães, in northern Portugal. Sold to the private sector after the nationalisation of the Church property in the late 19th century, the monastery was bought by the Portuguese State in 1986. After a century of low maintenance and even a fire incident, the monastery is being requalified at the moment so it can be occupied again by a monastic order who will provide services to the community to help its maintenance. Closing the last session of the first day, Jose Antonio Teran Bonilla, architect from the Faculty of Architecture of the National Autonomous University of Mexico, spoke about a local rehabilitation project of the 17th and 18th century neighbourhood of San José, the historical centre of Ciudad de Puebla. The first speaker of the second day was António Portugal from the Faculty of Sciences and Technology, University of Coimbra. His presentation was dedicated to the study of fungi on historical documents from the archive of University of Coimbra. The project focused on the identification of fungi through DNA study and the implementation of treatment methods based on gamma radiation. Luísa Botelho, from the Technological and Nuclear Institute (ITN) and ITN’s spin-off CHIP, presented hygienisation procedures by the use of gamma rays in ITN’s facilities. Gamma radiation interferes with the genetic material of cells and it is being used to kill insects and microorganisms in several applications. Some examples were given concerning the use of this method in conservation for wood sculptures hygienisation. The subject of long term effects was raised but further research is still required. One of the most interesting presentations was given by Hans-Christoph von Imhoff, a paintings conservator-restorer and coordinator at ICOM-CC, who presented "Conservator-restorers of material cultural heritage - Aspects and development of their profession since WW II". Mr. von Imhoff summarised the history of the conservator profession, with a special focus in the creation of major European institutions and the international ethics charts. Speaking about education in our profession, he mentioned that while some European country's universities tend to merge successfully the theoretical with practical knowledge, others still tend to overestimate the value of the theory. He observed a lack of balance between "brain and hands" in plenty of universities that offer conservation degrees. Thus, there are many conservation graduates that know how to prepare "very good thesis" but in fact they have lack of experience and limited manual skills. This serious problem requires universities’ concerted efforts in order to offer a solution without delay. A project involving the conservation treatments of historic lead seals appended to parchments from the Archive of the University of Coimbra was presented by Catarina Isabel Santos, a chemist from the Department of Chemistry from the University of Coimbra. Their collection includes several seals from diverse centuries presenting different alteration states that are not directly related to their natural ageing. As the main problem of the seals is related to the transformation of lead into lead salts, the project aims to characterise the source material through non-destructive analysis by XRF. The project included the reconversion of the lead salts into lead through local electrolytic reduction while the natural fibbers were protected with cyclododecane. The archival conditions were also changed in order to better preserve the lead seals. Although this project uses already established techniques, it is a new treatment in Portugal. The next intervention was performed by Rui Bordalo from Instituto de Soldadura e Qualidade (Portugal) who introduced to the public the effects that ultraviolet laser radiation induces in pigments, with a focus on the analytical characterisation of the alterations. Irradiated and non-irradiated pigment samples were analysed by several techniques, among which infrared and Raman spectroscopy, SEM-EDX and colorimetry. Although the effect of laser radiation in pigments is a broad area and several studies have already approached this subject, this study is far more comprehensive than others. The samples were produced in order to reflect those of a real painting, including pigments mixtures and artificial aging equivalent to several decades of exposure in museums conditions. The chemical and physical changes induced by the 248 nm laser to pigments and linseed oil were discussed. Carlos Suárez from the private company ECOMOR presented the advantages that cryogenic cleaning has on stone and metals. The cryogenic cleaning is based on the ejection of solid CO2 with compressed air. It was a rather interesting presentation as it included several video demonstrations of its cleaning power and other advantages were discussed. However, data of possible disadvantages in the removal of selected layers in cultural heritage artefacts and its impact on long term was not available. Piero Baglioni, from the Department of Chemistry and CSGI of the University of Florence is a key player in the conservation field. His outstanding presentation was entitled "From micelles to microemulsions, gels and responsive nanomagnetic gels: when hard and soft matter merge together". Dr. Baglioni’s procedure of cleaning works of art using nanomagnetic sponges was last year’s news after its testing in the laboratory proved successful. The technique was described as being based on nanoparticles made of cobalt and iron oxide which are mixed into a polymer gel, creating a magnetic sponge. Its application was demonstrated by a fascinating video showing a very simple process of coating a surface with a few drops of gel and its further removal by a magnet, after it had dissolved the dirt from the surface. The author also presented a summary of his 2 decades experience and research dealing with nanomaterials and their application to cultural heritage. Images from the conservation treatments applied by him and his team on mural paintings ensembles in Italy and Mexico have showed that this technology is indeed a real advance in the field of conservation, due to the outstanding recovery of the paintings from their advance state of decay. The conference's last speaker was Cristina Nabais from the Centre for Functional Ecology from the University of Coimbra. This biologist presented some results from a project that aimed to study the wood species from sculptures belonging to the collections of the National Museum of Ancient Art (Lisbon) and from the Grão Vasco Museum (Viseu). The project aimed to identify and later to correlate wood species according to their provenance and attribution with the history of the forest and the historic wood commerce. In spite of the obvious relevance of this study for the two reference collections that it was performed for, I believe such a project should be continued and extended to include more elements in order to widen its representativity. The event was well planned, the EITEC organisers giving attention to each detail and taking advantage of the historic city of Porto that is worth to be visited. The warm atmosphere and the comfortable scientific and social environment made this conference a very pleasant experience. We look forward to attending the next EITEC edition. ▲TOP
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