Opening: In the Blink of an Eye, Transience and Eternity in the Spanish Golden Age

As part of The Auckland Project, Factum Foundation and Skene Catling de la Peña designed the top floor of the Spanish Gallery, in Bishop Auckland. The result is a space filled with great objects, all with their own specific history, biography and meaning in their original location, but with the potential to unlock a profound understanding of Spanish art when put together in dialogue with each other. Discover the exhibition

Facsimile of Titian's La Sapienza

For the exhibition 'Tizians Frauenbild' (5 October 2021 - 16 January 2022) at the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Wien, Factum Foundation carried out the recording of Titian’s La Sapienza (c. 1560) at the Biblioteca Marciana, Venice. The painting was recorded in June using composite photography, with the aim of producing a facsimile that was installed on the vaulted ceiling while the original will be in Wien for the exhibition.

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Digitising the Island of San Giorgio Maggiore

As part of the celebrations around the 70th anniversary of the Giorgio Cini Foundation, Factum Foundation's Adam Lowe and Frédéric Kaplan from EPFL discussed the outcome of the recording of the island of San Giorgio Maggiore, an ARCHiVe project. The online presentation 'Recording the island of San Giorgio Maggiore', was streamed live on Youtube on September 27 as the opening event of AOA - ARCHiVe Online Academy.
Click here to watch on Youtube

AALTOSIILO: Updates from the North

Factum Foundation is delighted to present AALTOSIILO.com, a website dedicated to the project that will act as the most updated source of information on the revitalisation of Alvar and Aino Aalto's iconic building in Oulu.

Adam Lowe and Charlotte Skene Catling spoke of the AALTOSIILO project at the 15th International Alvar Aalto Symposium on the Future of Industry (August 12-13 2021), hosted by the Alvar Aalto Foundation. Click here to watch.

Recording the painted caves of Laas Geel

In collaboration with the Hargeysa Cultural Centre and the Redsea Cultural Foundation, a team from Factum Foundation travelled to Somaliland to carry out a skills and technology transfer while recording buildings, manuscripts and several sites containing Neolithic paintings. The team carried out the high-resolution 3D documentation of the painted chambers at Laas Geel: a complex of 22 rock shelters containing some of the earliest known rock art in the region.
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Recording Grinling Gibbons' Crucifixion

Marking the tercentenary occasion of the 17th-century master woodcarver and sculptor Grinling Gibbons' death, Factum Foundation was asked by the National Trust to record in high resolution of Gibbons' Crucifixion held in the collection of Dunham Massey, Cheshire. In late May 2021, Factum Foundation scanned the limewood piece using two complementary non-contact recording methods; Factum's Lucida 3D scanner and photogrammetry, tackling the complexity of Gibbons' wood carvings.

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ARCHiVe & Divirod: Research into new monitoring systems

Factum Foundation is happy to name Divirod as a new collaborator in the ARCHiVe project. In late August, the start-up from Boulder, Colorado, installed a passive radar sensor that uses satellites and locally recorded data to generate accurate hydrological models. ARCHiVe Online Academy: More information on how to access the free classes here.

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A New Publication: The Aesthetics of Marble

Adam Lowe and Charlotte Skene Catlings' essay: ‘Articulate Stones in the Digital Age. Wrinkles, Scars, Blotches, Bruises, Fractures, Mutilations, Amputations, Dislocations and Restorations’ has been featured in The Aesthetics of Marble: From Late Antiquity to the Present by Dario Gamboni, Gerhard Wolf, and Jessica Richardson

If you want to know more about this publication or if you need a copy, please email: info@factumfoundation.org

Recording at the Museum Catharijne Convent

In collaboration with the Museum Catharijne Convent, Utrecht University, Leiden University and Technische Universiteit Delft, the Factum Foundation carried a non-contact, high-resolution 3D and colour recording of the Crucifixion (ca. 1425) by the Master of the Lindau Lamentation, on the 8th and 9th July 2021. The digital data obtained from the scans will be processed to generate a multi-layered view of the painting as a starting point for an experimental process of digital restoration.
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Factum Foundation and RCU: final phase

Factum Foundation is delighted to announce that the project to record the Nabataean, Dadanite and Lihyanite heritage in the AlUla oasis in high-resolution 3D and colour is in its final phase after two years of intensive work. Over the past month of recording, the focus moved away from the tomb façades and inscriptions and towards the environments in which they sit.

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Factum and Colnaghi: recording a 16th century tapestry

Factum Foundation and Colnaghi are developing an increasingly close relationship. This month we have completed the full colour and 3D recording of both sides of an important tapestry by Pieter Coecke van Aelst (1502-1550) woven in about 1530 for Henry VIII. The resulting digital passport of the object will be essential to monitor the condition of the tapestry and will be used for conservation and research purposes.
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AI, Tech Diplomacy and Conflict Resolution

Adam Lowe, Founder of Factum Foundation took part in an international symposium on the role of advanced technologies in conflict and peacebuilding contexts, held in Toledo on 18th and 19th June 2021: the symposium was the first of many efforts to redefine the role of cultural heritage as a tool to facilitate mediation and conflict resolution mechanisms.

Read the Toledo Declaration
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Interview: On Preserving the Bakor Monoliths

Kate Fitz Gibbon from Cultural Property News interviewed Factum Foundation's Ferdinand Saumarez Smith on the challenge to document, record and preserve the Bakor Monoliths, and on the many projects regarding rock art carried out by the Foundation over the years.
"The real substance of this is the restitution issue and the importance of rethinking both ownership and preservation."

Read the interview

Tutankhamun 2022

Next year is the hundredth anniversary of the discovery of the tomb of Tutankhamun by Howard Carter and his team. Factum's 3D and colour data, recorded in 2009, is in demand and we are following instructions from the Egyptian Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities about how to make the data accessible.

More on our work on Tutankhamun