Xingu Heritage
A team from Factum Foundation has just returned from the upper Xingu region of the state of Mato Grosso, Brazil, where they participated in People’s Palace Projects collaboration with the indigenous filmmaker Takuma Kuikuro. The work is intended to contribute both to Takuma’s filmmaking and Ipatse’s planned cultural centre in the nearest town, Canarana.
Click here for more details.
Recording at Ferapontov Monastery
May 11th marked the beginning of a three-month recording session at the Ferapontov Monastery, a UNESCO world heritage site. Teams from Factum and the Peri Foundation are working every evening in the Cathedral of the Nativity of the Virgin to photograph over six-hundred square meters of frescoes painted in 1502 by the renowned icon painter Dionisy.Click here for more news.
True Copies
A new piece on the work we carry-out at Factum Arte & Factum Foundation has been released on PBS Newshour. Click here to watch the video.
Facsimile of Seti I
The production of the facsimile of the tomb of Seti I is underway. The facsimile will be the part of an exhibition at the Antikenmuseum in Basel this fall focusing on the various efforts torestore, preserve and study Seti I.
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A new approach to conservation
Adam Lowe contributed an article titled Digital Recording in a time of Iconoclasm, Mass Tourism, Celebrity Culture and Anti-Ageing to a recent publication by the British Council. The text delineates a financially efficient and socially sustainable approach to cultural preservation, that represents the Foundation´s experience completing projects effectively. Click on the links to read Adam Lowe´s text and the British Council´s publication.
Re-creating Horace Walpole´s Collection
The facsimiles of Allan Ramsay's Portrait of Mrs. Laura Keppel and Charlotte, Lady Huntingtower, and of the 33 drawings by George Vertue have been installed at Strawberry Hill House.Click here to learn more about this project.
Podcast "Traditional and Digital Artisans Meet"
Art Jameel´s new podcast features Adam Lowe discussing the ways in which new technologies are being used in both architectural conservation and contemporary art. Click here to listen to the presentation.
Recording Qat paintings in Asir, Saudi Arabia.
The Foundation, working with Art Jameel, has been on a fact finding mission that has involved the recording of some of the remaining examples of the delicate and discrete qat wall paintings. This image from Rijal Alma was recorded just before rebuilding was about to take place. As the country modernises and builds, the preservation of the remaining evidence of its deep cultural history is of great importance. As always in depth local knowledge is critical to an understanding of the specific challenges facing the protection of cultural heritage in the region. Click here for more details.
3D model of the statue of Idrimi
The statue of Idrimi, a refugee from Aleppo who rose to become the king of Alalakh in southern Turkey 3,500 years ago, was recorded and scanned last February at the British Museum. A 3D model of the statue is now abailable on Sketchfab. Factum Foundation will donate a facscimile of the statue to the charity Making Light. Current Archelogy published a review of the project.
Vandalism of Rock Art in Chad
It was recently was reported that one of the best examples of rock art in the Ennedi region, just outside the Guelta of Archei, has been vandalised again. Factum Foundation visited this site on its project with the Trust for African Rock Art in November 2016 and recorded rock art including the graffiti tags made in Arabic and French in the 1980s. Click here for more details and photos or read the BBC News Report here.
Book scanner records fragile manuscripts in Daghestan
A new book scanner was delivered to the Institute of History, Archaeology and Ethnography (IHAE) in Makhachkala, Daghestan. The scanner will be used to digitise books at the State Archive in Makachkala as well as manuscripts in madrassas and mosques collected by Islamic scholars around the country.
Click here for more news.
HRH The Prince of Wales inaugurates the Borgherini Chapel
Factum Foundation´s Borgherini Chapel is now on display at the exhibition Michelangelo and Sebastiano at the National Gallery, in London (March 15 - June 25). HRH The Prince of Wales attended the opening. Click here for more news.
Learn more about the re-creation process. Read The Guardian review.
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The Foundation is determined to ensure through the use of the most advanced digital technology available to us that future generations inherit our physical heritage through truly accurate recording and open source dissemination of the object’s condition as we received it and where it can be studied in depth and enjoyed by all. Where this requires the creation of facsimiles to preserve the original and make the digitally perfect derivative available to a global public then we will be there.
Your contributions will help us continue our work which also includes the investigation and development of new technologies and training local artisans globally in these technologies.
To learn more about the aims of the Factum Foundation, read about us here and download both the 2013 and 2016 Factum Foundation books explaining some of the valuable work being carried out.
To donate, please click here
PHASE TWO IN EGYPT
The opening of Stoppelaëre House has been reported in many media pieces around the world – it’s a big step in the Theban Necropolis Preservation Initiative (TNPI) – a Foundation collaboration with the Egyptian Ministry of Antiquities and the University of Basel. The opening in February was attended by the Director General of UNESCO, the Egyptian Minister of Antiquities, the press pack and many Egyptologists.
This is the second Phase – but it is more than that – it is a landmark both physically and figuratively. Turning into the Kings Valley Road, past the police guard post, there is Carter’s House among the trees; behind it, buried discretely below the rock and sand is the facsimile of the Tomb of Tutankhamun – installed in the first Phase in 2014 – but look above the trees and the eye is immediately draw up towards the outline of the Stoppelaëre House – an icon of Hassan Fathy’s architectural style and genius on its private outcrop. The soft sand coloured building with its multi domed roof – which allow coloured shafts of light to pierce the newly opened space inside - has been beautifully restored by architect Tarek Waly and the team of local artisans. All finance to realize this work has been funded by Factum Foundation thanks to generous donations and has been generated outside Egypt.
The TNPI is an ambitious mission to safeguard the tombs of the Theban Necropolis through the application of new digital technologies. It involves the high resolution recording and in some cases the creation of exact facsimiles of tombs that are now either closed to the public for conservation or in need of closure to preserve them for future generations. The recoding of the Tomb of Seti I is under way – a vast work in what is a breathtaking painted and carved interior. The Project sees this work being carried out by Egyptians trained in the Centre at Stoppelaëre House and the data processed there – for which the building has been renovated and prepared and initial equipment installed. Eventually this data will be used to create the facsimile of the great tomb – to be installed below the Stoppelaëre House and adjacent to the facsimile of Tutankhamun’s Tomb. A clear, bold and technologically advanced statement of what digital skills and advances now allow us to do in preserving our heritage. Skills we want to pass on.
Tourists already come to the Tutankhamun facsimile – the original is undergoing more works (the first 90 years of its exposed and visited life did terrible damage) - as they will to the facsimile of the Tomb of Seti I . The record of what we inherited is essential to future scholars - that record also allows for remote study and, with local artisans trained by the Foundation, the creation of facsimiles that allow tourism to become the benign force that it can and should be.
James Macmillan-Scott
jms@factumfoundation.org
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