Thank you all for coming. This has been ARCHiOx, the Analysis and Recording of Cultural Heritage in Oxford, has been made possible by the
Helen Hamlyn Trust and really by Helen Hamlyn's extraordinary support of what Factum Arte and Factum Foundation does in Madrid.
So for those of you who don't know, I am Adam Lowe, I set up the Factum Arte about 21 years ago.
in Madrid and we were really building bridges between new technologies and traditional skills for contemporary artists.
But in 2009, we set up Factum Foundation, mainly to work in the Tomb of Tutankhamun.
So it seems a very nice symmetry to see the exhibition outside. Because now we're working all over the world so Ferdi Saumarez.
Smith, who's here, is just back from Benin and Lagos, where we've been training a team to record Benin bronzes,
a local Nigerian team to do high-resolution three dimensional recording.
ARCHiOx started when I was talking to Lady Hamlyn in Venice, where we run our ARCHiVe.
So there's a kind of branding exercise of rather laboured, whatever they call, naming.
So ARCHiVe is the Analysis and Recording of Cultural Heritage in Venice and of course ARCHiOx is its Oxford partner. In Venice.
the idea was that if we brought the technologies that were being developed in Madrid and we
teamed up with âˆšÃ¢cole Polytechnique FâˆšÂ©dâˆšÂ©rale de Lausanne, who were doing a lot of machine learning,
a lot of data analysis, and we set up the structure within the Fondazione Giorgio Cini,
which is one of the most significant art historical centres in Italy, then explosive things can happen.
And the truth is over the last four years they have happened.
So there's an enormous diversity of projects that have resulted from that collaboration.
About three years ago, we started talking about what could be achieved if we started doing three dimensional recording of
the surface of books and manuscripts and Lady Hamlyn's been a long time supporter of the Bodleian.
And so the conversations began and John I, don't want to take words out of your mouth or put them into it, but the results I think beyond exciting.
So there's a cascade of things and some of those things will be shown today, will be discussed about by the different speakers today.
And I think there's been for many, many years a sort of lip service paid to the material culture of the book,
the sort of book as a physical object and to me books,
manuscripts, things are completely magical, the way they contain information and the way they release their information.
So normally the digitisation of books is the extraction of the text they contain to be put in a digital form which can be accessed anywhere.
So this is of course, their primary function, the things which are in them.
But actually what you're going to see today is there are many elements about the
material nature of that object that if you can record the three dimensionality,
the surface. So if you think back in paintings when suddenly x rays happened, there were major discoveries all over,
then infrared, major discoveries, then ultraviolet and other things.
So people start understanding the object more.
But it's amazing that this is the first time that the surface of books and manuscripts and maps and objects has been recorded in a major library.
And that's something we're all incredibly proud of.
So what's coming out of it, I think,
is going to be as significant and important as the research ushered in by x rays and infrared and multispectral photography.
And that's just by looking at the surface, looking at what is contained on it.
And today I don't want to pre-empt any of the talks,
but there are some things that the media is getting very excited about at the moment, and there are some big discoveries.
But after eight months of working on what's been one of the most enjoyable
collaborations Factum Foundation has been involved in and one in which I think the team has really gelled.
There's a few people who need to be thanked I think above and beyond and obviously, Jorge Cano, who's going to be talking at the moment,
has spent the last five years, I mean, Factum's, a mad place.
It's something a bit like a playground full of dysfunctional children in which all sorts of things can happen.
So it's it's sort of the opposite of a professional structure, but it's totally focussed on the love of making things.
And Jorge has been researching, as I say, for five years into photometric stereo, so he's going to talk about what he's doing.
But bit by bit we've managed to produce a system that is able to capture the surface of the amazing things in the Bodleian at about 25 microns.
So suddenly you see things you never saw before. And where I hope this initiative will go
Is that there will be a second year in which we can build on all the things that have started and we
can finalise all the research and development because everything's been experimental,
but we can finalise the research and development into something really very solid,
very stable, and something that could benefit museums and libraries around the world.
So I think what we've achieved is exciting.
But what's still to be achieved is even more full of potential.
And if I think it's the projects that I would love to do, it's not just with books.
So once you can do the recorded books and manuscripts and of course the Bodleian is this amazing resource
which needs to be tapped in many different ways by many different people.
But I really want to look at the collections at Oxford to set up a project to record with a Nigerian team, all the Benin bronzes that are here.
We want to look at recording the facade of Iffley Church, which is one of the great Norman facades, which is in a critical state.
So now it's got a sort of pebble dash on it that is holding it all together.
But the question about how we preserve things, what we're trying to preserve,
how we use the technology to shape the things we value and to ensure they're there for future generations.
And yesterday with Simon Schaffer, who's here and Stephen Johnston,
we were looking at a collection of scrapbooks effectively in the Museum of the History of Science that came from Hartwell House,
and they've never been recorded.
And I think in those scrapbooks, there's a vast amount of information that's going to colour the way we see, for example,
from John Martin's paintings, early celestial observation, early collecting and antiquities and the kind of networks of people who come together.
So what I hope is going to come out of of ARCHiVe is that there's a way of bringing people in to the sheer excitement of what's contained in the Bodleian.
I mean, for me personally, I was a student here at the Ruskin, and the Bodleian was always strangely impenetrable.
So, you know, without having that direct access or studying something specific, the card index is how you found things sort of kept me away.
But if you think now, when you're searching on your computers down the right hand bar,
Google has machine learning algorithms that are pointing you in directions that you didn't know.
The potential for an iconographic way of searching libraries is absolutely enormous, and I hope that's what we're going to see in the talks.
So I more or less everyone is there to introduce themselves. John, I think you're going to begin with the panel here.
But I really hope this morning that the excitement we all feel filters through and can infect you a little.
Thank you. Thank you, Adam.
I'm John Barrett.
I'm the Senior Photographer at the Bodleian Libraries, and I've been using ARCHiOx technology over the last ten months to record our originals in 3D.
So it might not seem obvious how library material and 3D recording go together.
After all, library metal material is flat.
But for the recordings made for ARCHiOx, it's just the first few millimetres of the surface of an original which is recorded.
In other words, just the texture. These 3D recordings serve to purposes.
Firstly, Discovery - taking an item which is difficult or perhaps impossible to record using conventional photography
and creating an image which shows its three dimensional surface, with its colour and tone completely removed.
This is an image of a copper printing plate, possibly from the early 18th century.
Over 300 years, it's become heavily corroded and the design has become difficult to see.
But if we remove the tone and colour and instead look at a render of the 3D surface of the plate, the engraving is revealed.
What's even more exciting is to turn this printing plate over and record the back. Copper plates with valuable and often reused.
And we know very little about the front of this particular plate, let alone the reverse.
From the colour image, we can see some horizontal lines, but not a lot more.
But from the 3D recording, we can begin to see markings which are difficult or perhaps impossible to see from the conventional recording.
Musical notes and words. And if we add some of the original colour back in.
And enhance and mirror the printing plate to make it easier to read.
We are now able to see enough details. That we can annotate over the markings.
Which we can then tidy up.
And finally, with the image removed, we can now see the full design, a piece of music which is likely to have been inspired by Psalm 9.
A brand new discovery made through 3D recording.
But the data which is being captured isn't just being used to make 3D renders, 2D images which show the surface of an original.
The recordings are truly three dimensional. This brings us to the second purpose for making 3D recordings, the possibility to create 3D facsimiles.
This is another copper printing plate, featuring antiquarian Anthony Wood.
Again, it's difficult to see. And here's the render of the surface of the same plate.
Again, the design has been revealed brilliantly.
But by loading a single greyscale image file into software which allows us to view the file in 3D,
it's possible to see the recording in a different way. Now we can move over the surface of the recording.
We can zoom in and explore every engraved line.
And with this recording, it's possible to create a facsimile.
This is a 3D printer in The Factum Arte studios in Madrid, laying down incredibly fine layers of resin.
And slowly building a replica printing plate. And by making a facsimile printing plate, it's possible to use it to produce facsimile prints.
Here is the inked facsimile plate. And here's Adam pulling it through Factum's
Replica replica Goya printing press. And this is the resulting print made from a copy of a printing plate which was engraved 313 years ago.
What makes ARCHiOx so exciting is the hardware and workflow being used to make these 3D recordings is unique.
Although the newest of the recording systems designed and built by the Factum Foundation,
has been developed over several years, the Bodleian Library are the first institution to use it.
But the Factum Foundation have spent over a decade recording with another recording system called the Lucida,
which has also been used for making ARCHiOx recordings. And which Carlos
will now describe. Thank you, John.
Good morning, everybody. Before Jorge will explain in detail the other of the main technologies happening here in ARCHiOx, I'd like to offer
a very quick review of what has been Factum Foundation's continuous research into recording the painted surface.
And this is what has become the Lucida project mainly, so I'm Carlos Bayod, I'm in charge of 3D scanning in Factum. So for 21 years
we've been adapting existing recording technology for helping preservation of cultural heritage and works of art in general.
Back in 2001, we were using laser scanning technology with specific adaptations to demonstrate
it was possible and relevant to capture the reliefs of the Tomb of Seti I.
The idea was to obtain information about the relief, so colour and relief were captured with different methods, with different systems.
What we were really trying to prove was that through high resolution recording it was possible to understand the condition of the relief.
So over the years we have been using laser scanning technology, adapting it to different objects.
For example, when recording pages of manuscript of the Beato de LiâˆšÂ©bana in the Spanish National Library in Madrid,
trying to capture the undulations of pages, but also incisions, etc.,
then trying to apply 3D scanning laser technology onto the surface of sculptures to capture not just the shape but also the skin.
I mean, the information present on the actual surface texture.
And, trying to apply this type of technology to volumetric objects like sculptures is really limited.
So this kind of scanning technology works better into what we could consider two and a half dimension objects.
So things that are really flat in shape, but in which the actual relief information is relevant.
Of course, we've been applying this technology for recording the walls of the funeral chamber of Tutankhamun.
But then when we tried to apply this method, existing recording methods for the surface of paintings, this is where it started to be problematic.
The surface of paintings is one of the most complex things, precisely because of the glossy surface present because of the varnish,
for example, or because of the contrast between clear and dark areas.
This is usually making it very hard or almost impossible for standard 3D scanners to capture useful information out of paintings.
This is why in 2010, working with artist Manuel Franquelo, we decided to create our own 3D scanner from scratch,
specifically aimed at capturing the surface of paintings and other low relief objects.
The Lucida 3D scanner is working by projecting a laser line on the surface of the painting.
And then there are two video cameras that are capturing the distortions of the line as the scanner moves across the surface.
This is providing a depth map. Recording depth information, it's creating topographic data out of paintings that are supposed to be flat objects.
But thanks to this type of technology, it is possible to actually see them as the actual three dimensional objects they are.
The first time that this camera was used in a public museum, was in the Museo del Prado,
for recording this panel painting by Rubens that contains all the difficult things that are usually,
you know, almost impossible for 3D scanners to capture, glossy, surface contrasting areas, etc.
But we wanted to obtain this type of information.
We wanted the scanner to ignore the colour for once and just look at the topographical landscape that a painting is actually formed by.
We are talking about high resolution, 100 microns of resolution for this type of 3D information.
So it is possible to understand the brushstrokes, I mean, the artist's technique, but also the way paintings have been ageing,
have been evolving over time through cracks and other features on the surface. The development
continued, Jorge Cano of was actually part of the software, mainly the software running the Lucida.
And then with this final prototype,
we have been using it for recording hundreds of paintings in the main museums, from the main collections around the world.
This is one of the systems that are part of the ARCHiOx project.
and in combination with the Selene scanner, it's making it possible to capture the objects here in the Bodleian.
And then with this final prototype,
we've been returning to Seti Tomb where we've been able to capture the entire area of reliefs inside this monumental site and then
providing information of the relief and colour separately that we could use to understand the actual condition and to eventually
create a reproduction that will help effectively the preservation of the monument.
Just to conclude,
I will mention that the Lucida scanner was used a few years ago here at the Bodleian Libraries for recording the surface of the Gough Map.
The colour was provided actually by John Barrett. Then the topographic information was recorded thanks to the Lucida scanner.
So it is thanks to this first exercise that it was possible to see this map under a new light.
Understand that it's not just flat information, but something that, thanks to the three dimensional recording,
it is possible to understand even better, its material nature and its historical trajectory.
The Gough Map will be discussed later by Damien and other speakers,
but just as a quick thing, thanks to the 3D scanning project that was carried out a few years ago,
it was possible to identify and to visualise even better the presence of a series of pouncing marks that would shed,
as I say, new light into its history.
Not far from here in the Ashmolean Museum, we had the opportunity of recording small drawings by Raphael and then again pouncing marks,
which are actually revealing a history of copying the history of translating, transferring information from one original to the next.
It was possible to see it much better, thanks to this act of removing the colour,
virtually speaking, and then looking at the pure relief of the texture.
And finally talking about Rafael as well. But at the much larger scale, at a much more monumental size,
we had the opportunity of applying the Lucida scanner for recording the seven
cartoons by Rafael that are in the Victoria and Albert Museum in London.
This was the first time that this series of artworks were recorded in 3D, of course,
but also as part of a systematic recording with colour and infrared photography, so that details like this can be perceived with colour,
with a combination of colour and relief,
and only with relief revealing these pouncing marks and many other features that are kind of very hard to see in front of the original.
I will now give my screen to Jorge. So thank you very much.
Good morning, everyone. It's a pleasure to be here today in this work.
My name is Jorge Cano and I am Head of Technology at Factum Foundation.
And first of all, I would like to thank all the people who made this project possible,
especially to John Barrett, who has been the perfect companion in this path.
Through his great work and enthusiasm. He has made the methodology.
we brought his own, and has made the best out of it.
Okay. As my colleague Carlos has explained,
the fact of accurately studying the relief of objects that at first sight may seem
flat can lead us to discover things that we had previously overlooked. In this slide
You can see a few technological milestones at Factum. We can see that the processes and technology we are currently using at
ARCHiOx are the results of more than 20 years of work at Factum.
So if we go back to 2021, the question is, did we have the necessary recording system to undertake a project like ARCHiOx?
Not really. Therefore, during the past year we focussed on testing and finding the perfect system for the project.
But the next question arises, is that possible?
Sadly, the perfect 3D recording system does not exist. Each of them has its limitations.
For example, in this slide we can see the first three systems we tested the Lucida scanner,
close-range photogrammetry and a very expensive, confocal profilometer.
Neither of the first two gave us the expected results in terms of spatial resolution.
And the third one provided great resolution, but was too slow and didn't provide colour information.
So at this point, we began to consider other alternatives that we had experimented with in recent years.
RTI and photometric stereo. Before going on.
One should ask oneself, is the difference between 120 microns resolution so important that
we have to complicate our lives by switching to another technology or develop a new system?
The short answer is yes, and the long one can be found in the following slides.
Here we can see the render of the Lucida scanner at 254dpi.
The object is a copper plate and the image on the screen represents a small section, more or less four by four centimetres.
On the next one we have a render of a photometric stereo scan, it was done in 2021.
while preparing the system to be installed at the Bodleian.
It's a 750dpi capture and it shows perfectly how increasing the spacial resolution helps to see details that otherwise would be hidden.
This is a side by side comparison. Lucida left, Selene, or first prototype of the Selene on the right.
Coming back to RTI photometric stereo,
we can say that both techniques are great if the aim is to virtually and interactively reveal the characteristic of an image surface.
But for us, the goal is not to end up producing a virtual object on a screen.
The goal is to recreate the real characteristics of the object most of the time, building up a real solid replica of it. By making some assumptions,
like considering that the shape of the source object is almost flat.
We can use the information given by both techniques to calculate the real geometry of an object.
At the end, we decided to use photometric stereo.
And we made this decision because after several tests we obtained better 3D reconstructions using fewer lights compared with RTI.
Therefore in the end, why did we choose photometric stereo?
There are three reasons. One, we need very high spatial resolution in the order of 25 microns per pixel.
Two, colour scanning is fundamental, so we need to scan both relief and colour, ideally at the same time.
And third and last, if we were to be successful, it was necessary to record large
amounts of data. So the system had to be very fast in capturing and post-processing.
So photometric stereo was clearly the technique that could fit our needs.
And the Selene scanner is the physical outcome with which we have implemented this technology.
We will see it in detail a bit later. But before, I would like to give you some technical requirements to better understand
The photometric stereo principle and the workflow. First, there is one important choice we had to make.
Are we going to store the 3D data into 3D meshes or inside images?
We prefer raster maps. Second, how are we going to store information inside images?
I'm going to explain that with two examples depth maps are normal maps.
And third, what is frequency separation and why is so important in this project?
One of the first and most important decisions to be made when designing a 3D capture system is how the data will be stored.
If we are talking about 3D data, we are very used to seeing images like the one on the left, a wireframe view of the model.
However, we have decided to store the data in the way you can see on the right using what is called raster maps.
And this is a fancy name for a single image. In this case, a greyscale one.
And why have we chosen that? There are several reasons, but the most important one is that we can achieve faster simulations.
For example, calculating, a shaded version of a 3D model is very fast.
Also imagine that we have a model with several million 3D points and we want to store it, keeping the same number of points.
The file saved as an image can be 10 to 20 times smaller than the one stored as a 3D mesh.
Finally, the fact of working in a raster format allows us a lot of versatility in terms of the tools to use.
If you come from the world of photography, you can use imaging software like GIMP or Photoshop. Or in the case of coming from another fields,
such as archaeology or cartography, we can use geographic information systems such as GRASS or ARCGis.
We have seen the advantages of working with images to store data.
We can go into more detail. I think everyone knows how about how an image is formed.
We store numbers inside an array of pixels, in this case it's in 8-Bit resolution, in greyscale so we can store values from 0 to 255.
Basically, we usually store the brightness of the image.
But what if instead of brightness, we want to represent another property of the object?
So, for example, if the depth of an object is known for each pixel, we might say that zero represents the deepest.
and 255 represents the closest. And in this case, black means a deeper area, equal to zero millimetres and white.
The peak of the surface equal to nine millimetres.
The last one was a depth map. And now we can see that raster maps are not only for height information, it could be used for any variable.
Another interesting raster map is the gradient map. To simplify, let's focus on a simple shape, like a sphere.
What does a gradient map look like in that case?
In that case, the horizontal gradient map indicates for each pixel,
whether the surface is pointing to the right or to the left, that is, if it points to the right, we draw a white pixel.
If it points to the left, we draw black. Having seen the above, it is now easier to understand what the normal map is.
Normal maps use a colour image to store the gradients of the surface,
the red channel has the horizontal gradient data and the green channel has the vertical gradient.
In other words, the normal map stores the orientation of the surface inside an RGB image.
Among other things. It allows us to re-light an object virtually.
Later, I think we can see great examples. And the third and final important technical concept is frequency separation.
We all know that we can add waves. We can start with a sine wave like the one shown on the screen.
Continue with another higher frequency wave. And add the two frequencies together getting what we see on the screen.
But the most interesting thing about this is that it also works the other way around.
Moreover, instead of abstract waves, we can work on the shape of objects as if they were waves, or, in other words, work in the frequency domain.
Starting with a surface like the one we see on the screen. We can decompose the shape into two.
general topography, or low frequency, and fine relief, or high frequency.
The advantages of working this way are that we can clean noise, merge data from different systems and focus on important details.
Just as an example, I would like to show you the Gough Map and how we used frequency separation to merge the data coming from two techniques.
On one hand Lucida. On the other hand, Selene. Lucida provides precise low frequency relief data, and Selene the high frequency ones.
The final model has more than 800 million pixels.
I'm going to move to explain a little bit more about photometric stereo. It is based on Shape From Shading, an article written by Horn in the seventies.
Basically in that article the question was can we recover the shape of an object based on its appearance, how it looks?
The answer is yes. And the basis is Lambert's Law.
But what is photometric stereo? It is a technique to create a model of a scene.
What is a model? This is a topic that I find extremely interesting and could be talked about for hours.
Cartographers know a lot about this. The history of maps is very rich in this sense.
They know how difficult it is to represent reality and the need for condensation underneath for clarity.
In this sense, I believe that the key lies in the necessary balance between the infinitely complex reality and the conscious and
prior decision that must be taken to decide on which properties you want to focus the model you are building.
In our case, we want to create a model of an object through several pictures.
Moving the light. We end up with a group of pictures.
And through a reconstruction, we produce a model.
The goal is to end up with a model of the object as close as possible to the real one.
In the photometric stereo case, the model extracts two properties of the object or scene. The shape and the albedo. The albedo
is the theÂ¬â€ lambertianÂ¬â€ reflectance or the colour without shadows or highlights.
It's an active elimination method. On controlling the lighting of the scene.
We can recover properties of the scene with more accuracy than using the general ambient lighting of the scene itself.
In summary, these are the main aspects of this technique.
And now we can see how it works from scanning the different illuminations on the left.
We reconstruct a normal map, an albedo, and through integration
We end up with the depth map. We are talking about different illuminations.
But how many? I would like to show you our first prototype developed in Factum, in 2017 with only four lights.
And if you realise we achieved 254dpi and captured both colour and shape.
But there were problems with low frequency relief.
Then, we move to
the results from the first prototype.
And then we moved to the second prototype. The problems with low frequency relief was partially resolved, adding a photogrammetry workflow,
But there were problems like the difficulty in use and the transportation of the system.
This scanning and processing time was larger than Lucida and huge space on disck were needed to store the data.
So at the end we decided to go with the Selene system, which is a high resolution 3D recording system using the photometric stereo principle.
Here, I would like to show you a video of the machine working.
This is the unit installed here at the Bodleian.
And do we need a special sensor? No.
It uses a regular camera... and some glue!
Here I would like to show you a few implementations
For example, the most simple one could be something like, holding a smartphone and having a moving LED light.
More closer, versions like black boxes from commercial brands.
But here we are coming to talk about our implementation.
We tried to be cost effective, easy to use,
and try to get the fast capure. Use no batteries, use different lenses, and try to avoid limits on size.
And what's the Selene? Basically, it's a Canon R5 camera with a custom lighting system with four lights.
Built in-house, in Factum. Some electronics.
An X and Y CNC system, and the computer.
Inside the computer, there is a software developed by us.
We are finishing it and that's it. I think, as is obvious, Jorge is a genius and he's been an amazing and very patient teacher.
And my thanks to Jorge and Carlos for all of that help
Over the last ten months, it's been amazing! And the Selene is an amazing machine and the workflow designs by Jorge
And the Factum Foundation has been used to make hundreds of incredible recordings of the Bodleian over the last ten months.
This is another example of an early 18th century copper printing plate from the Bodleian's
Rawlinson Collection. This is a conventional 2D colour recording of a heavily corroded and oxidised mezzotint plate.
The burrs, which make up the design, are incredibly short, less than 25 microns or a quarter of the width of a human hair.
And here is the render of the three dimensional surface recorded with the Selene.
By combining these two images, we can create a composite image which contains some of the original's colour and the
design which has been revealed through creating a render the 3D surface.
And this is the original 18th century print, mirrored and then perfectly aligned with the recordings of the printing plate.
Here is the full print. The mezzotint plate recorded conventionally.
And finally, the composite image makes for ARCHiOx.
This engraved brass plate may simply have been made as a decorative object rather than a printing plate as the engraved lines are incredibly shallow and faint.
Despite this, the plate has clearly been used to make prints,
and it's perhaps because of this that the central design has become very difficult to see.
This is the 3D recording showing the surface of the plate, which is revealed the design very effectively.
And for small originals. These 3D recordings are relatively easy and quick to make.
The image of the render in this example is not been enhanced in Photoshop.
This is simply a recording of the original's surface. But it's not just printing plates that have been recorded for ARCHiOx.
Recordings of the prints themselves also reveal details which are almost impossible to see.
This Japanese ukiyo-e print was made using woodblocks to apply colour.
Here you can see the impression as the paper is pushed down onto the woodblock from above.
And if we zoom in. It's also possible to see these textural elements which are skilfully applied as part of the printing process.
Perhaps these can only be fully appreciated through this kind of recording, as they're extremely difficult to see when studying the original.
And would be impossible to record with conventional photography.
This beautiful painted page belongs to a 17th century album made in the Mughal Empire.
The recording made with the Selene not only shows the individual layers of paint which had been applied to the paper,
but also hundreds of pricked holes which can't be seen from the colour image.
The Sinhalese text from this palm leaf manuscript has been incised into the surface using an iron, stylus or reed pen before being inked.
This is the colour recording. A render of the 3D recording.
And the composite. And if we zoom in. We can see not only the incised text, but also the careful pricking around the edge of this deer,
which suggests that this design may have been used and transferred to make copies.
And this process of copying, using pinholes or pouncing marks can also be seen on the largest original, which has so far been captured for the project.
Dating to the 14th century. The Gough map is one of the earliest maps to show Great Britain in a geographically recognisable form.
This is the render of the 3D surface of the map captured at over 700,000 pixels per square inch.
And in order to capture the map at that resolution,
it was necessary to record the map as 85 image tiles, which were then stitched together in software.
This is the highest resolution recording of the map to date, allowing researchers to zoom in to specific areas of interest.
When we look at the render of the surface, we can see groupings of tiny pinholes.
These holes are evidence that the position of geographical
features were transferred to the Gough Map from an older map, or precursor map.
Studying the holes allows researchers to understand what this precursor map may have looked like
and may help to date the map more accurately. Without the recordings made firstly with the Lucida in
2015 and this year with the higher resolution
Selene. This research would be extremely difficult or even impossible.
But the Bodleian is perhaps best known for its rich collection of medieval manuscripts.
This manuscript, written in Old High German dates the first half of the 9th century.
The catalogue record for this volume describes an annotation on the lower margin of this recto.
A hunting scene barely visible, but clear enough to make a digital annotation.
But the 3D recording made with the Selene reveals far more of the original annotation.
Not just the hunting scene. But also for camouflaged
letters R, O, D, A. A new discovery recorded for the first time.
And if we put all of the annotations together from the colour image.
The illustration from the 3D render. And the newly discovered text.
We now have a complete recording of the annotation. Perhaps 1200 years after it was made.
In this image the Bodleian's Librarian Richard Ovenden, is holding a small Rembrandt portrait, brought to the Library by Agnew's Gallery in London.
This is the colour, or albedo recording made with the Selene.
And this is the render of the 3D surface, which reveals the brushstrokes, the application of thick paint under the eyes.
The substrate, in this case, a wooden panel. And also three brush hairs, two of which had never been noticed before.
This demonstrates how 3D recordings have the potential to support research and perhaps provide provenance for an original.
This is one of the Bodleian's treasures, a beautifully bound Bible owned by Elizabeth I, presented to her in 1584.
Rather than making a render of the 3D surface.
If we load the depth map and the colour images into software, it's possible to fly over the surface and relight the recording from any direction.
The incredibly high resolution recording has captured every element from the embroidered design.
Even the tiny seed pearls below the central Tudor rose.
But the final sets of recordings I'd like to share are from a much older original.
This is a two and a half thousand year old clay seal or letter-bulla.
The impression was made with a cylindrical seal and it's tiny, just four centimetres wide.
It's in fact, one of eight seals, which accompanied letters written by Arâ‰ˆÂ°Æ’Ã…ma,
a Persian prince and regional governor to the steward of his estates in Egypt.
Seven of the seals were made using the same cylindrical seal. These tiny unfired clay seals are incredibly fragile.
Recording them as best this technology will allow is not only important to ensure their preservation,
but the recordings also allow researchers to study them in a way that has never been possible before.
Here the Selene has been used to make a render of the surface of the eighth seal, which can be virtually relit from any height or angle.
Or in this case, using colour to represent height.
The Lucida has been used to record the general shape of the seals and then the two data sets combined for the purposes of making 3D facsimiles.
But even the high resolution recordings made with the Selene may not be sufficient to record such tiny originals effectively.
By using an even higher resolution camera and following the photometric stereo workflow developed for ARCHiOx,
it has been possible to record the seals at over six and a half million pixels per square inch.
By using other principles such as focus stacking the depth of field has been extended, so the recording of the seal is pin sharp from top to bottom.
And the result is this new 3D recording where you can clearly see every tiny detail, histroric
repair, even the fingerprints of the maker.
And this is one of the 14 letters sent from Prince Arâ‰ˆÂ°Æ’Ã…ma.
The Aramaic text is remarkably well preserved. In this case, almost all of the text has been transcribed.
The translation suggests that Arâ‰ˆÂ°Æ’Ã…ma valued not only horses, two of which featured on his seal,
But also three dimensional artworks. In his letter, he commissions statues of horses and horsemen to be made by his favourite stonecutter.
Thought to be Hinzani. So it seems fitting that we should carry out that request, albeit two and a half millennia later.
Perhaps not by making statues of horses and horsemen.
But by recreating his seal as a scaled up 3D facsimile.
And even reimagining what the cylindrical seal, which has been lost to time, may have looked like.
Through these examples,
I hope that we have demonstrated the enormous potential which recording using ARCHiOx technology has. The ability to make discoveries to record,
what has never been possible before, to make measurements and to recreate originals as 3D facsimiles.
Shortly you'll hear from experts who will explain how ARCHiOx recordings have been used in their own research. With further development.
perhaps the workflows used by ARCHiOx could be democratised, to the benefit of institutions everywhere.
Thank you.
So hello, everyone. I'm Andy Irving from Bodleian Digital Library Systems and Services.
And we've been very lucky to work with John and Carlos and Jorge on this project.
So we run and maintain Digital Bodleian, which first launched in 2015 with version 2.0 being launched in late 2020.
So actually almost two years ago to the day.
And it's our primary showcase for our digitised collections here at the Bodleian Libraries as well as partner college libraries,
the vast majority of which are captured by John and his colleagues in the Imaging Studio.
And the majority of which are what you would consider conventional photography.
We have a large range of objects present, digitised at the moment, and we strive to present them all in a reasonably similar way.
Built on standards like IIIF, which we use for interoperability reasons.
And we also have our kind of custom view built into the site,
which is like a happy medium between a very complex way of looking at things and the more user friendly one.
But we've always offered the option to let users open our content in other tools, which might be more appropriate.
If you're interested in an advanced study of an object, then perhaps our viewer is not the most appropriate one. And because we use IIIF
we're able to give people the opportunity to open in their own viewers.
And so, you know, ones that we don't know about. But we've always offered at least two.
And here's that same object open in the open source Mirador viewer,
which has good support for things like annotations, where we've carefully described this object.
Or perhaps if you want to view an object side by side with another version of it held up in a partner's library, that kind of thing.
So this gives researchers the ability to use tools they're familiar with and use features that we wouldn't
necessarily enable by default because they can be quite complex and offputting for casual users.
So as we've shown, the kind of beauty of this approach is that we're just using images and it would have been
very easy for us to kind of take the composite images that John's produced and call it a day,
because they do look quite spectacular.
But we felt that we needed to explore as part of this project how best we could make this data available.
Who the audience for this might be.
How can we convey this extra information and how can we do it in a way that's usable not just for us here at the Bodleian Libraries,
but outside as well?
So within the IIIF community, there is an established pattern for how to show kind of alternative views of an image or a canvas in IIIF speak.
And it's usually illustrated with an example of multispectral imaging.
And this technique is in some ways very similar to multispectral imaging in that we have different views of the same objects in different cases,
and we thought this would be a good starting point for us as it's really the same class of problem.
And we implemented this very quickly ourselves.
It's supported in the Mirador viewer, which you've just seen, and we could very quickly now label our images and provide different views.
But again, we felt that this might not be sufficient for fully exploring. Here
For example, you know, the albedo image looks, we think, slightly better than the composite image as a kind of default view.
So we can just kind of make a blanket kind of case.
And as I hope this video demonstrates,
the native Mirador three kind of layers view showing these different images as different choices lets
you switch between them so you can still see the different views of the images that we've captured.
You can blend them together in certain ways, which may and may not be captured very well in the in the video.
And it looks okay. For kind of materials like this with a very shiny surface or where we've got relatively high relief
The effect is not terrible, but it's also not as great as using the software that John has just demonstrated.
And so while better than nothing, it's not necessarily the the end point of our of our journey.
And of course you can use other plugins to adjust things like contrast and so on.
And where we have like a shallower depth or relief or a different material type the kind of effect is much less impressive.
So we thought about how we might extend IIIF in a very small way with an extension.
And one of the benefits of using these kind of choice patterns is that most viewers
will often just display the first image if they don't understand the details,
which is great for us, kind of as a fallback.
But obviously, these aren't just images, they contain data.
And so we thought we could perhaps add some extra metadata to describe what type of lighting map we're actually using here,
whether it's the albedo or depth map and so on and so forth.
So we created a tiny extension, which we now include our own vocabulary in these contexts.
And again, another important thing here is that if clients don't understand it, they simply ignore it.
So by not breaking anything, but by enhancing, we're able to hopefully demonstrate that for an individual image section here,
we can say that this particular one is an albedo and so on and so forth.
Now I will hand over to Richard now to try to hopefully explain how we took this further.
Morning, everyone.
My name's Richard Allen, and I work with Andy BDLSS working on Digital Bodleian but
I've been working on this for the last few months, this project.
And I'm going to briefly go over the story of how we took some of the data that we produced from the Imaging
Studio by John and how we think we can best visualise that and deliver it through our existing systems.
So we've established earlier that ARCHiOx produces a number of derivatives from the Selene and Lucida scanners
But what can we do with them in addition to servicing them as layers via the
Mirador viewer, as Andy explained. One option would be to take the depth map which can
be used in combination with a program called a shader to deform a mesh and produce
a terrain model of the object to create a truly 3D render of the object.
However, to get really good results
We would want to have a vertex point for each pixel potentially,
and because we have gigapixel images we'd soon run into the limits of what was capable of rendering in real time in a web browser.
And so we also have to think about the way our viewers are used with our regular material, and it's usually a top down view.
And so this would be a waste and we'd be investing a lot of computational power into rendering something in 3D which wouldn't look 3D
if we were looking from a top down perspective,
and so we decided not to go with the the depth map approach and instead we have some other derivatives that we can use.
We have a normal map which, as we have learnt, is a way of encoding the way a 3D object surface is lit in two dimensions using RGB values.
Here on the right here you can see an animation which uses a normal map.
On the left of this image you'll see true 3D. On the right you'll see a flat surface with a normal map applied,
and this is sometimes referred to as 2.5D, because when you look at the render from the top down view,
the right hand side looks similar to the full 3D view on the left,
and this technique is very cheap to compute in comparison to using full 3D.
And so this suits our top down view a lot better.
And so we decided to go with this technique and create a way for the user to interact with the normal map.
Now to start with, we had a standalone example using
A normal rendering tool, which is written by Jorge.
And this took a normal map and allowed you to move a torch around relighting the object.
But this was limited to running it through a standalone application called Processing, and you had to
download and install this on a local desktop and we needed something that worked in a web browser.
So. How can you render a normal map in a web browser?
Well, we initially looked at what other institutions were using for their 3D renederers and viewers.
And here you'll see the Smithsonian's Voyager 3D viewing application rendering Neil Armstrong's spacesuits in a web browser.
The Voyager application itself makes use of a JavaScript library calls three.js. And what is three.js?
three.js is a JavaScript library designed to make using WebGL easier,
and WebGL is an API that allows people to render high performance 2D and 3D graphics in their web browsers. And in order to make good use of it
Developers need to know how to write their own shaders, and this is a complete discipline within itself.
So three.js abstracts the process of working with WebGL and it provides
ready to use shaders and materials so that developers only need to know JavaScript in order to begin producing their own 3D scenes within minutes.
So we decided to go with this. And using the power of three.js
We had something written and working in a similar way to Jorge's application in a web browser within about an hour.
However, the example I'm just shown you is a pure JavaScript application.
And in order to get something working with our Mirador viewer we'd need to be able to use something called React.
React is another JavaScript library.
And I would argue it's also a particular method of writing applications that is quite different to regular JavaScript.
But we managed to get something working. But it took longer than an hour this time.
After a few afternoons, actually, of going through tutorials,
we were able to recreate what we had created using three.js and using the relighting tool in an application that worked in a web browser again,
but using the framework that Mirador is based upon.
Now, the question is, how do we get this working in Mirador, which is the next logical step?
And there were multiple challenges here, such as how do you get non-native code working in Mirador?
How would we display the information in a way that doesn't break anything, and how would we relate to the other images we were surfacing?
Well, helpfully the Mirador community already has a diversity of open source plugins available and each did little bits of what we wanted to do.
And there is also plenty of documentation to get developers started with their own plugin projects.
So we decided that we would take this route with the relighting example,
and we spent a little while researching how Mirador worked and how to plugins interacted with the data that Mirador was handling.
In order to get our plugin to work, we would need to take our normal map and the albedo map, past them into three.js, into a three.js
material, and render our image in real time with a light like in the example we got working as a standalone application in React.
And as Andy covered, later
we needed to make some changes to our IIIF manifest to make these images and to get these images into Mirador in the first place.
And so here is an early example of a static manifest we used for development and which we hosted via GitHub gists.
But the question now, though, was how would we display our 3D render?
We needed to make something and that followed the zooming and panning in Mirador whilst it rendered in order to create a seamless experience.
But thankfully, we discovered through our research that a bulk of the work done by Mirador in terms of
handling gigaapixel tiled images is actually done by a sub-application called OpenSeadragon,
which is well documented and has an extremely supportive developer community for answering questions.
And so we were able to learn how to take control of the images in our native plugin.
And here is the documentation on using HTML overlays, which can allow custom overlays over the images in the viewer.
And so we use this to position our three.js renderer directly over the images being presented in Mirador.
And the result was this. Ta da!
Here you'll see the application working as a plugin and Marinol making use of the OpenSeadragon
API to recreate our relighting tool in a web browser using a three.js overlay.
It looks good. However, as is par for the course with these things, there is always room for improvement.
And one of the major limitations to our new technique was that in order to keep things simple,
we were loading in the textures for the overlay as a single, large image.
The problem here is that three.js will automatically downsized textures to a maximum
of 4K resolution to help maintain performances on devices like mobile phones.
What this meant was that our 2.5D renders would only ever be a maximum of 4K using this technique.
Not a problem for this image being roughly that size. But what about larger images like the Gough Map?
Well, thanks to the collaboration we've had with Factum, we were able to meet up in Madrid and we were
able to tackle some of these challenges together by just having it in front of us and discussing it.
And you can see here Jorge and myself, this is the moment when we managed to activate a debugging process in the Mirador viewer,
which allowed us to visualise some of these complex issues because it's really difficult
thinking about 3D in your head, alone! And within a couple of minutes of the pair-programming,
we were able to get this working.
We were able to display this information
in front of us. And then a few weeks after we got back from the Madrid trip, we had solved the issue.
And here is a view of the application with a tool menu added that enables you to change the direction of the light used in the overlayed scene.
And you can see towards the end of the video that our plugin just happens to work with - on the right hand side
You'll see a menu, there, from a application called Mirador Imaging Tools,
and as Bob Ross would say, it was a happy little accident that it worked with it.
You'll see in it in a few seconds. It changes the colours of our 3D render so we can use this other tool directly with our
application which we've developed here and you can see the light is changing the direction of the,
Well, the light is changing direction and you can see it interacting with the surface, using the normal map.
But, where to now? The primary thing that we need to work on would be to get our images loading seamlessly as Mirador loads them.
Currently, our tile servers do a lot of the heavy lifting to reload the images into a three.js rendering layer
but this would not be ideal if we were to release it publicly.
But the good news is we already have something close to solving this problem and again.
It's thanks to the OpenSeadragon community who have been very helpful.
What else? What else can we do? Well, the examples we have developed in our plugin currently use only one of the available materials,
which is really good at rendering metal objects like the copper plates.
But it's an inappropriate choice for other materials, like paper or vellum or wood and things which aren't shiny normally.
And so we would like to investigate using the different materials available in three.js.
But to do this, we'd also need to generate additional map types with the Selene.
We'd also perhaps like to write their own shader code, and Jorge has kindly offered to to help there.
And we'd like to try our own renderer, our own custom renderer and see what we can do and maybe use an alternative renderer to three.js,
which is PixiJS, which might be a little bit more lightweight and be run things a lot smoother in the web browser.
We'll see. And these are just some of the avenues for further research that we'd like to do.
But I think it's important to say that after all, this one thing is clear we have a great foundation which we can build upon.
Thank you.
This is Damien Bove, who is a Gough Map expert and been working with me.
I'm not an expert! Absolutely an expert! Working with me.
I think you came during the actual recording of the Map. Yeah, that's right.
And then lots of sort of follow up sessions examining pinholes and things like that.
Yeah, Well, we've got 10 minutes, so no history. There won't be any history.
This is the Gough Map and it's full of holes!
That's right. That's the that's all you need to know. We didn't need a 3D scan to see the holes because you can see them with the naked eye.
You can see them on conservators photographs or really high-res images.
And even the hyperspectral images, you can see some of the holes.
You can see some of them at the point. It's only recently that we've come to understand what the holes are because until, well,
fairly recently they were thought to have been made by the engraver, James Basire, in the preparation of Richard Gough's British Topography.
William Basevi Sanders was the first one and came up with this.
He said, because Gough had made no allusion to it in his account, he thought that Basire must have done it, which is a bit unfair, I think.
And Parsons, nearly a hundred years later, he was a librarian here, I think, he said the same thing.
Well, they're entitled to their opinion, but we think Basire is innocent,
and it's the other way round.
That the holes were made, not while coppying from the map, but they were made to create the Gough Map.
And coppied from a precursor that we call 'P'.
So when I say 'P', that's the precursor to map. While some holes mark out the mountains and the river heads,
most of them, the vast majority are marking out both the shape and the location of the signs.
The place signs and these four here are just the standard common ones. There are various shapes with spires and towers and walls.
This is the standard one. You see the little cottage?
They've got three generally. Actually, when they started off in the north of Scotland, they did four for the cottage, one in each corner.
And then as they moved south, they became more economical with their designs.
And moved on to three. You find some of them have got dozens of holes and some have only got a few.
So. The signs are small.
Some of them are less than centimetres, maybe seven or eight millimetres across.
So you'd expect there to be some discrepancy between the inking and the pinholes.
But in many cases, dozens of cases, the discrepancies are systematic.
The top ones you can see are where the the river has been painted across the pinholes.
So they've moved the sign away from the river. They've drawn the sign away from the river.
The lower ones. That's where they seem to have picked it through and then decided that the pages have slipped.
And so they've pricked through twice. That's why you've got. Two identical shapes,
Forms, but slightly offset. Edinburgh.
There are dozens of these kind of things, here the sign's been drawn quite a way south of the -
that's the Firth of Forth on your left and it's been pricked
There, and then somebody decided to draw it.
there instead almost exactly in the same shape, so they must have had the other one to work from because it's so similar.
Two or three of you have mentioned pouncing. I don't think this is pouncing in that pouncing is
Where powders fall through the hole to to create a design.
This is more direct. This is just poking a holes through, basically. Poking holes through the top layer.
Through the precursor map into the new map. I don't know what else to call it. Pricking, that's it.
We've not seen it on any other maps. Some other maps may turn up, but we haven't seen any.
We've been looking around. We've seen pouncing, but pricking patterns -
we haven't seen this. Well, we think they were improvising just a great extent.
You can see where they've been changing their technique as they go, and I think they're making it up as they go along really.
They weren't mapmakers. Probably. They were probably used to making books.
And this may have been the first map they ever copied. I don't know.
The first Factum scan - we're the three lucky recipients of two - revealed something we hadn't seen with the naked eye and that was the scoring.
There are these scored marks around the cartouches, the regional cartouches.
And what's interesting about scoring is it matches, almost exactly matches the pinholes rather than the inking.
So we think it is another.
Well, it's another method of of copying that they they abandoned halfway I
think because it's a few cartouches have it and the rest don't. It's another abandoned method.
This is a map of all the pinholes I have found to date.
And from this you can see. We have an idea of what the precursor looked like.
You can see that vertical line down the middle there, the pricked wall, Hadrian's Wall.
2123,
Holes so far. And this is settlements by pricking, so the red ones are the pricked settlements and the blue ones are the unpricked ones.
And then comes the second scan.
Which means I'm going to go back and do these again,
because we're finding all kinds of new things. You see where the blue is, the blue, unpricked ones.
This is we presume, they were revising those areas, especially the coastline around East Anglia
And Kent there, they were revising those areas so they left them unpricked. Along the wall as well there's a lot, along Hadrian's Wall.
So we come to the second scan and this is great because then we can draw lines across the
Pinholes and take a profile.
Which solves all our problems. But it doesn't really, I'm afraid to say. Now,
I asked John to look at Bolton Castle because it's a very difficult one to look at.
And his reply to me began, 'I can see now why research into this map is a) exciting,
b) infuriating and c) probably a lifetime's work'
John took vertical cross-sections and horizontal cross-sections and diagonal cross-sections and he measured the depth of each hole.
And he looked at oblique images and moved the light sources around,
which I quote 'hasn't led me to be any more or less confident about my conclusions'.
He did find three triangular indentations roughly equal in size and orientation.
We don't know what to make of them, but a different shape
May represent a different tool, a different person or different episode.
I suggested that rather than looking at a single hole, we should look at clusters.
And if the clusters come in the recognisable form of of a sign, then we cold maybe lower the threshold for proof.
I think that might be a bit dangerous because you can basically see anything. That's what you learn with the Gough Map
If you look hard enough you see anything and once you see something in your mind, you can't unsee it then.
John finished his letter, his email by saying, 'Please let me know your thoughts' before telling me I was going to France for a fortnight!
So I think that maybe he's fed up after the few weeks of this!
Can you explain what Bolton Castle is important?
Bolton Castle, well, I don't quite know yet, but we think the dating of Bolton Castle - we have an idea of the dating of the precursor map.
And if it was pricked through from the precursor map, it might make that later than the imagined date.
So it's a bit complicated,
but it seems we sorted it yet. It might be the machine learning solves this problem but we can't. Well maybe John can.
Yes. We often talk about pinholes.
But they are more 'impressions'
Some of them are poked through, but some of them are just impressions. The tool is being pressed into the parchment rather than poked through.
And this is what the parchment looks like close up.
So if you imagine with dirt and ink and damp and 600 years of abuse,
it makes a bit of a challenge to identify what's what's an intentional hole and what's just a mark.
We often call these pinholes, by the way. But the tool was almost certainly not a pin was more likely an awl or a knife point or something.
We call it a pinhole because it's more euphonious than awl impression.
And also my wife calls me 'Professor Pinhole', and it's an honorary title.
I don't want to lose it! This is Winchester.
This is a problem because these look like holes, but they don't show up very well on the 3D.
I should give them to you, John, to look at. There's an inked cross below, but there's an uninked cross -
a pricked cross above. And two smaller crosses.
To the left and right. Which are just small indentations.
They show up in photographs, but the profiles are inconclusive.
Same at Chichester. There there's a large pricked cross.
Which hasn't been inked-in. And interestingly, there seems to be a kind of fleur-de-lis
On the hyperspectral, the Multi-spectral image, which we hadn't seen before.
So maybe that's what was being poked through or pressed through from the precursor map.
So next thing is trying to recreate a Gough Map hole with some old parchment and various tools.
And I've been doing this. I've got an envelope full of holes which I'm giving to John so you can test them.
I've got them under microscope. I'm going to try and get them under 3D scanner for comparison and see if we can recreate them.
And that's it.
Good morning, everybody. Just while we're getting the slides sorted out, I can get started.
My name is Jo Story and this is Jess Hodgkinson, who is a PhD student at the University of Leicester working with me.
It's a very great pleasure to be here this morning, not least because coming to the Bodleian Library is always a thrill,
because it contains some of the most important manuscripts that I am interested in at the moment.
My particular interest at the moment are on what we call insular
manuscripts, so manuscripts that were written on the islands of Britain and Ireland in the period
between round about 600 and round about 900 A.D. and on manuscripts that were written using
the similar types of scripts so, insular scripts on the continents in Carolingian and Francia
in the same kind of period, English and Irish missionaries left the islands and founded monasteries on the continent,
both in Central Fancia and in Eastern Francia.
And those monasteries continued to produce books in insular style for generations after the original missionaries had died.
So my interests in particular are in that phenomenon of the existence and continuation of insular book production,
both within Anglo-Saxon England and on the continent in this period.
And indeed, Jess when she was doing her Masters degree was one of my sort of assistants on a on a sort of proof of concept of this project.
She's since moved on to a to do a Ph.D. and is including insular manuscripts in her research.
And she's going to tell us about the amazing things that we found with John's help in one of them.
But I just want to say just a couple of things about the importance of this new technique.
for my research and for research in medieval manuscripts in particular, this type of research looking at this micro topography,
these micro landscapes, is as Adam said at the beginning, going to really transform the way in which we understand two aspects of these books.
One is the readership and engagement with these books after they were created.
As Jess is going to to show you we can see things that we have never seen before through this technique.
The other is in understanding in much greater detail and with completely different techniques and in a totally different way.
Some of the methods of the making of these books, and I'm thinking here in particular about the way the vellum was prepared,
both from the point at which it came off the carcase of the animal to the production of the of the prepared vellum that we can see in front of us.
I'm working with another team at the moment on insular vellum, and we're very interested there in things like hair follicles,
things like the marks that were made with the lunellum when
the parchment maker was scraping the hair and the fat off of the skin.
Those are the types of things that we can start to pick up with this method that
we have never really been able to see in any kind of systematic way before.
Those lunellum marks could be kind of like a fingerprint of a manuscript maker, of a parchment maker.
And this type of technology is going to give us a tool to see that in a way that we hadn't before.
I also really, really want one of those Mirador viewer things for ourselves.
Can we have one? Can that be your next trial please? Because this is great,
because being able to take these images but then open them up to that wider community so that we can surface them on the web
and then to start to play them with the community is just going to be transformational with what we can do with this material.
Okay. So I'm going to begin by providing a quick introduction to this manuscript,
which is Bodleian Library Manuscript Selden Supra 30. I'll then discuss some of the newly discovered inscriptions,
how they were found and revealed, and what the next steps might be.
Manuscript Selden Supra 30 is a biblical manuscript.
It's a copy of the New Testament book, The Acts of the Apostles, and it's written in Latin.
It's quite a small volume, only slightly bigger than an A5 piece of paper.
It was copied by two scribes in a type of scrap called uncial
And the opening displayed here shows most of page 18 and a little bit of page 19, and that's within the first scribe's stint.
Certain features of the manuscript, including the style of uncial script used
indicate that it was written in the geographical area we now know as England,
most likely somewhere in the Kingdom of Kent in the first half of the eighth century.
So that's sometime between around 700 and 750AD.
Very early in its history manuscript Selden Supra 30 appears to have been used by a woman or a group of women. Two Latin prayers were
added to page 70, which was originally left blank, by different hand in a style of uncial script,
which appears to be roughly contemporary with the main text.
The first prayer is a petition to God made by an anonymous woman described as God's unworthy servant, which in Latin is 'indignam famulam'.
This strongly suggests that at the time the prayer was added,
the manuscript was being used by at least one woman and the prayers may have even been copied into the manuscript by a female scribe.
Prior to the new discoveries, which I'm going to talk about.
One marginal inscription was known about and this was the letters E, A, D, B and E, surrounded by two crosses incised into the lower margin of page 47.
This was first reported by Elias Avery Lowe in the second volume of Codices Latini Antiquiores, in 1935.
Given the manuscript's apparent links to women established by the prayer,
Lowe suggested that these letters were abbreviations of the Old English female name Eadburg.
Earlier this year, I discovered another inscription etched into the margins of manuscript in Selden Supra 30, which had never been noticed before.
At the bottom of page 18 I found Eadburg's name, written in full, preceded by a cross.
The inscription is very faint and almost invisible to the naked eye. In an image under normal light,
you can't really see the inscription at all on it, as you can see here.
So ARCHiOx took a 3D photometric stereo recording of the inscription using the Selene scanner.
And this is what it revealed.
And this was then subsequently enhanced by Jorge Cano using virtual relighting, image stacking and principal components analysis.
And that allowed us to see it a bit more clearly. And so now we've digitally annotated in blue the letters we think we can currently see.
However, deciphering the inscription is still very much a work in progress.
It's increasingly difficult to read towards the end, but you can very clearly see the name Eadburg, preceded by a cross at the start.
Certain letters within the inscription do appear to suggest that it was written in the old English vernacular language,
not in Latin, like the main text, which is really exciting. In addition to taking recordings of the inscription on page 18,
John took recordings of other pages of manuscript Selden Super 30, which appeared to have something etched into them.
This has revealed an astonishing number of marginal additions which have never been noticed before. Unlike the letters spotted by Lowe on page 47,
which were etched into the parchment with a sharp implement, probably a knife,
and are easy to see, these new inscriptions are almost invisible to the naked eye.
The lines are far shallower, some less than a fifth of the width of a human hair.
This indicates that they were made using a different type of implement, perhaps a stylus, using a technique known as drypoint.
The newly discovered inscriptions reveal that Eadburg's name, written in full,
was incised into the parchment of manuscript Selden Supra five times on five different pages.
The instances of Eadburg's name which have been discovered so far are shown here.
And for each you've got the recording taken by ARCHiOx and then a digitally annotated image just immediately below that.
Certain letter forms, particularly the distinctive A, U and G, are common to all the newly identified inscriptions.
This could suggest that the same scribe made all of these editions.
Though I can't currently say definitively who added Eadburg's name to this book,
It is possible that it was the Eadburg herself.
Although small in scale and feint, these inscriptions showed that someone was evidently keen to preserve Eadburg's name in the pages of this book.
Whoever was responsible for these editions,
they provide clear evidence of a reader's interaction with this manuscript and of that active engagement with the text it contains.
I am hopeful that as I study the inscriptions further, I may uncover more clues about who this reader was and why they added Eadburg's name to this book.
Eadburg's identity also remains a mystery for now.
There are at least nine known English women who have that name who lived sometime between the mid-sixth and mid-tenth centuries.
It's also possible that the Eadburg of manuscript Selden Supra 30 left no other trace on the historical record.
Further analysis of these editions may provide more clues about who Eadburg was and how she's linked to this book.
So alongside Eadburg's name - everyone loves these, they're so cool! - alongside Eadburg's name,
Several small, intriguing drypoint drawings have also been discovered, and just four examples are shown here.
Some are clearly human figures, though further investigation is needed to establish exactly what or who they depict.
The inscription added to the low margin of page 13 which is the top right image has been mostly lost when the lower margin was cut away.
And we don't currently know when or why that happened.
All the figures, like the written inscriptions, are very small and some like those on page 11, which is the bottom left image,
might have been made by incising a line around thumb or finger to form the outline of the figure.
Analysis of these drawings and of the other inscriptions is still in its early stages, but I'm hopeful that, as I study them further,
I will be able to better understand their meanings and significance. Without the technology used by ARCHiOx to record these inscriptions.
These drawings and Eadburg's name would have remained hidden in the margins of manuscripts Selden Supra 30.
The discovery of Eadburg's name provides tantalising new evidence of apparent links between women,
books and literate culture in the early medieval period.
It also shows the potential of this technology to help us learn more about surviving early medieval manuscripts
and to bring to light the readers and users of these books in a whole new way through the marks they left behind.
Thank you. And just to follow up, in case you're wondering, the one on the top right was SpongeBob!
And just to finish off with really, this I think is a a perfect example of serendipity in academic research,
but that serendipity is not just Jess's sharp eyes spotting something nobody had seen before,
but the coming together of that observation with this new initiative in the Bodleian and and the Bodleian's willingness to try it out,
to see what would happen, to see what would come next. And, and it's a real moment to thank the Bodleian for their openness,
not just allowing PhD students in to look at some of their most precious books,
but also for that open mindedness to try something new with these extraordinary resources.
So thank you. Perhaps we should mention as well, Matthew Holford, who's one of our fantastic curators
and Martin Kauffmann for making the connection between the project and Jess's research, which has made this happen.
So I'm going to introduce Alessandro Bianchi, who is our Manager of the Japanese Library and Curator of Japanese Rare Books and Manuscripts.
And he's going to talk about Recreating Materiality: 3D Recordings from Japanese Originals.
Thank you very much, John.
So looking at selected case studies from our Japanese collections,
I would like to show how we can use 3D recordings to study the materiality of an object,
investigate its manufacturing process, and even examine and describe its condition and damage.
So my first example is a painted album
that comprise of a set of decorated portrait cards which I will use to illustrate how
this technology can improve remote consultation and examination of primary sources.
So what happens if there is an image online and you can't see the original, right?
If you look at traditional photography, we see that the painting layer is almost as if this portrait card was painted on top of a white page.
But if we compare the 3D recordings, we'll see that the portrait card actually sits on the paper and it's pasted on top of it.
This can be further seen by looking at this slanted 3D rendering and the high resolution surface data
extracted using photometric technology reveals some of the material features on the manuscript
which again are not seen it with standard photography and we can use this to study the
complexity of the painting layers as well as the different texture of the paper.
How thick the card is and so forth. So this technology brings the remote user and reader much closer due to regional.
Despite looking at an object through a screen.
Now, the same technology can be used also to identify different printing techniques and gain insights about the manufacturing process of various works.
And for example, if we take a look at this, this is a page from an artist book, and we compare traditional photography with the 3D rendering.
We see that there is a lot going on, in the centre, a rectangular area, rather flat and slightly sunken.
And then there are a lot of creases and all around the printed text.
Now these are traces left during the production of this and of this object,
and they suggest that a special technique of stencil printing, called katazome was used to produce this book.
So the artist first applied the thick coating of a special resist dye paste using a mask.
And this is the flat, rectangular area that you see around the printed text.
Then the text was dyed. It was printed in yellow.
Using a yellow dye. And finally, the excess paste was removed, washing the page in abundant water.
And so the creases are the results of this process of the page and the paper drying.
So none of this is possible to see from normal photography.
But again, these 3D renderings allow us to look at the objects as if we had an original in front of us.
Conversely, if we look at an example of a 3D rendering, a 3D recording of a woodblock print, so relief printing
in this case, we'll see that there is a highly textured surface.
It recreates the outline of the colourful image. Now, these raised and sunken areas, and I would like to show you here and a blown up detail.
These areas are the traces left on the surface of the paper by the wood blocks that were used during the manufacturing process.
Now, woodcuts like this one were created by hand pressing a sheet of paper against the printing block using a flat bat,
and in the case of polychrome prints, multiple blocks were used.
And this process was repeated over and over again for each colour block.
For example, if we look at the kimono, the flower pattern on this kimono here,
since the original blocks of this print were preserved, we know that it was created in two steps.
First, the silhouettes, the pink silhouette of the flower was printed, and then using a second block, the red accents were added.
And so all the details of the petals. This means that one single sheet of paper was pressed multiple times against various blocks.
And understandably, during this process, each block left a microscopic dent on the paper's surface and these dents, which are
not visible with an observation of the original
just with our naked eyes, are revealed by photometric technology,
which allow us to see how the paper's surface was altered during the printing process.
So if we take a look at the detail from this Kabuki actor print,
we can understand how 3D recordings reveal this alteration on the surface.
Now you'll notice that there are sunken areas corresponding to the gold accents on the kimono.
You can see them here, here, and on the hilt of the sword.
This is because the metallic pigment was overlaid on top of the blue and in the red areas using the second block.
Therefore,
Firstly the blue and red layers were printed, and then using a second block, the gold was was applied, thus creating a deeper sunken area.
This is, it's very important for us to look at these new material evidence that we managed
to record digitally because they can provide information about how a print was made,
even though the original printing blocks are not surviving.
If we look at the detail of this kimono sleeve, for example, and we look at the 3D rendering, we see that there is a lot going on here.
We can distinguish three levels, a raised area in white, and medium layer in pink and this sunken area in red.
So what does this tell us? What does this rendering tell us about the production of this print?
If we look at this small portion and we try to isolate each colour,
we understand that the pink pigment was applied first and this little misregistration in the print
can give it away that they didn't create a complex pattern like the one that we see here,
but it was most likely one single block with a circular shape cut into it, in the surface.
Then when the pink layer was printed, the woodblock
compressed the paper's surface and the white circles which correspond to the area left unprinted look raised because again,
no block was pressed against them. The red pattern,
was then printed on top of the pink layer and thus this is why it appears sunken here in the 3D renderings.
And we have these three layers, a printed layer on top with the white circles, first pressing with the pink layer, and then the red area which is sunken.
So even if we no longer possess the original blocks, by examining sunken areas and raised areas,
in these 3D renderings, we can, so to speak, reverse engineer the printing process.
And we can understand how this kimono and certain effects created with relief printing were made.
Now, while studying Japanese woodcuts, we stumbled across some unexpected results.
For example, in this print, which looks in perfect condition from normal photography and even from observation with the naked eye,
reveals a very clear crease here in the middle and multiple creases horizontal on top.
This gave us the idea to use this technology to study damage and improve our assessment of the condition of an object.
And we started experimenting with other works
On paper in particular, we tried out mapping the damage, the extent and type of damage in this 14th century, printed hand scroll.
And we obtained very good results using a depth map or a heat map filter to identify the extent of the damage, but also the nature of the damage.
Whether the paper was and raised and
whether it was detached from the mounting or whether it was a sunken area,
for example, worm-hole or other kinds of damage such as wear and tear.
And you can see the orange part, the raised one and the lime-green ones are the worm-holes, for example, or parts where the paper is missing.
But this technology has far greater potential and can be used to analyse, describe and study damage in a completely new way.
And so we joined hands with colleagues in our Conservation Department, Marinita Stiglitz and Robert Minte,
and we began experimenting with more complex scenarios, such as analysing the damage in the painted layer of the 17th century manuscript.
And you can see here from the initial recordings already that the damaged areas are very clear.
And if we apply the depth map, the crackling of the gold foil here in the clouds on top, flaking pigments, other abrasions,
And even you can see here that there are fibres in the paper substrate that are creating damage to the painting layer.
Become very clear. But there is more.
And using these 3D renderings we could, so to speak, we can create a digital environment
that allows you to perform incredibly complex observations as well as very detailed and precise, accurate measurements.
And we can recreate therefore a non-invasive and contactless digital environment to study and look at damages, and look at objects in a very
new and effective way that is incredibly respectful of of the original objects and allow us to look at things under a different light,
but also collaborate remotely with colleagues across the globe.
So, for example, if you were to share this data with colleagues in Japan, we would be allowed to do that without having to send the objects there.
And it's also possible to, as has been shown before,
recreate illuminations and create a raking light effect without having to shine lights directly onto objects,
which is a great thing in the case of Japanese paintings, because the pigments are very volatile.
So there is a lot of potential here.
And I think that if we continue working on this technology, implementing AI and other machine learning technology,
it would be really a game-changer and it would allow us to change the way we look at
things and the way we work and research and approach matteriality in a digital way.
Thank you. Our last speaker is Chiara Betti. The starting point for ARCHiOx was to record,
lots of the copper plates from the Bodleian's collections, the Rawlinson copper plates.
And she's going to talk about the collection, which is being researched by her.
Thank you, John. As John said, I'm Chiara Betti and I'm a third year Collaberative Doctoral Partnership PhD
student, and I'm studying the Rawlinson copper plates, 755 of them. And they are kept at the Bodleian Library.
So in the next few slides, I will demonstrate how the ARCHiOx renderings have really transformed my research.
I will start with a very brief introduction on Richard Rawlinson and his collection, and again, an introduction to his printing plates.
And then I will delve into two case studies the first, a mezzotint plate, the portrait of Lady Brandon, and then the so called Invidia plates.
So Richard Rawlinson was an 18th century antiquarian collector and clergyman, and under many aspects he embodied the typical early modern collector.
He came from an upper class family. He had a very good education.
He was a fellow of the Royal Society in the Society of Antiquities of London, and therefore he was very well-connected with other peers.
However, he was one of the very few gentlemen who was lucky enough to go on a Grand Tour before it became popular
Late in the 18th century. He spent six years between France and Italy, and there he had the chance to see many art collections, many private libraries.
And he also purchased many books and objects in general, which are scattered between the Bodleian, the Ashmolean and the various GLAM museums at Oxford.
So Rawlinson amassed a very impressive collection. He's very often described as a universal collector.
I also call him a hoarder because he amassed over 5000 rare books and manuscripts, prints,
drawings, coins, hundreds of seals and seal matrices and various curiosities,
including skeletons, herbaries, chalices, most of which today lost and of course, 755 printing plates.
So the Rawlinson plates are a unique collection
Because of its scale, no other private collector has amassed such a big collection of printing plates.
And the production and acquisition of this collection is exceptionally well documented by manuscript material, which is mostly at the Bodleian
And at St John's College The collection of plates consists of two groups, the commissioned copper plates,
which Rawlinson commissioned to illustrate his other collections and the second-hand ones that he purchased from auctions or directly from engravers.
The subjects range from topographical views, seals, portraits, medals, many, many subjects.
And we find some of the most prominent engravers in the Rawlinson collection of plates like George Vertue,
George White, Michael Burghers, Wenceslaus Hollar, John Smith and hundreds of other famous British engravers.
So let's delve into the first case study, the mezzotint plate of Lady Brandon. So you can see an impression and a traditional colour recording.
This is a mezzotint by John Smith,
also called John Smith, the mezzotinter after William Wissing. And this is one of three of Smith's copperplate in the Rawlinson collection,
so mezzotint plates are the worst preserved and that is due to their intrinsic fragile nature.
A mezzotint plate can only pull a handful of very good impressions before having to be reworked or re engraved.
But ARCHiOx renderings have really transformed my research into mezzotint plates and allowed me to see details I could not really see with the naked eye.
And features that do not show in the impressions. So Smith's plates were defaced, so cancelled after he his death.
As per his will, but the printer, publisher decided to cancel the cancelling signs,
the scratches, to continue printing the plates and of course, the impressions.
And in one of the plates you can see the scratch with the naked eye.
But on this one I could only see it by zooming in thanks to the ARCHiOx rendering.
And there, there is a scratch which is really barely visible on the plates.
But this demonstrates that it's an original John Smith plate.
So this scratch was deleted, so polished away so that the plate could be reprinted again.
But this is the definitive proof that it's an original Smith's plate, that it's not a copy which often happened in the 18th century.
So this is the scratch. And again, it's not visible in the impression.
The second case study, are the so-called Invidia plates. It's a group it's a group of three very small plates, which are part of a series of 12 small plates.
And they're after much larger engravings of an Italian series, the Speculum Romanae Magnificentiae.
And they all represent ruins from Rome.
These 12 plates are likely to have been purchased by Rawlinson when he was in Italy or commissioned soon after his trip to Italy.
And we have the original wrapper in the Rawlinson collection.
So in the Rawl Copperplates a.0 there is the wrapper and you can probably read 'Views of different Palaces in Rome'.
And we have a whole volume of original wrappers with annotations with their former content on the wrapper.
So this is the first of the three plates. All of the 12 plates have holes at the top, nail holes, and it's not clear why they have these holes,
but probably the plates were used at some point as decorative elements for some furniture or some other purposes,
I don't know, to be honest. So the first plate represents the Cerchio di Antonino Callo,
and it's after Giovanni Battista de' Cavalieri, the same subject, of a much, much larger engraving.
The second one is the Tempio di Fortuna Virile after again, de' Cavalieri.
And the third one is Li Trofei di Mario after Etienne DupâˆšÂ©rac.
So these three plates are etched on the reverse.
So out of the 12th plates, only these three have another design on the reverse.
And the first one shows a man in Elizabethan fashion holding a scroll that reads 'To Invidia' and it's engraved in the right direction.
And this is important. I will get there in a moment.
The second one shows some legs and the third, a woman screaming and probably running away and a man with a hat.
So if we place these three plates next to another, like a jigsaw puzzle, we get a new image.
So this is as I went with my own devices, with my camera and with my phone, although the images were much, much worse.
But the ARCHiOx rendering allowed me to take a further step forward.
So John kindly stitched the three images together and these allowed me to try and search for impressions of the original plate.
So the three plates come from a larger plate that was etched with this image
and then was cut up to be reused and make the the series of Roman engravings.
But the problem is that I couldn't find any impressions, and I think the answer might be in the in the scroll.
So as I said, it's engraved in the right direction.
And printing plates contain text. So the text must be engraved in the reverse so that when you print, it will show in the correct direction.
So I've been wondering if this again was a decorative plate or it was a mistake.
I don't know. But I initially thought that this was an allegory of envy, Invidia, because 'To Invidia' is the Latin or Italian word for envy.
And the iconography is consistent with the depiction of Invidia
So this is how it is traditionally represented.
But a few days ago when I was preparing for this conference and I took another look at the ARCHiOx
stitched image, I saw a couple of details that I hadn't noticed before.
So the man at the back has crutches and there is a table with a tablecloth.
And that made me think because this is not the allegory of envy.
This is a representation from the parable of the rich man and Lazarus, because this is how it's traditionally represented.
So I have an image. So this is a German print from the Monogrammist DS.
And that is Lazarus with crutches. And this is the table with a rich man.
And the representation of Invidia in the Rawlinson plate is unusual but not unlikely so Invidia
is usually represented as a cat in this kind of parable or representation of the parable and not as a woman.
But it's consistent with the with the story, with the parable.
So I hope I've demonstrated how the ARCHiOx rendering has really transformed my research.
Without those images, I wouldn't have been able to see those details.
And they also improved the fruition of the set of objects, printing plates are extremely difficult to photograph.
And every time I had to speak in public about my research and I have to use my own images,
it was very difficult and frustrating because you cannot convey the same excitement about your discoveries without good images.
It also helps with information for the general public because with good images,
the public, so non-experts can understand what we are talking about when we talk about printing plates,
especially the mezzotints you have seen, how difficult it is to photograph metal things,
but the 3D renderings have really, really transformed the experience for me, and for everybody else.
So thank you.
So, I've just been told that maybe isn't time for questions because we're running late.
But I would like to conclude by really saying a few words on behalf of Lady Hamlyn, who's arrived and has asked me to do it on her behalf.
So, first of all, I'd like to say a very, very big thank you to the Helen Hamlyn Trust, because without her support,
both what we're doing in Venice and what we're doing here with John and the team in the Imaging Services.
So, Lady Hamlyn, thank you very, very much. And I think there's a little present coming down for you to say thank you.
So I hope everyone here can feel the kind of excitement that comes out of the materiality of the things that are here in the Bodleian.
And, you know, for me, looking at all the different examples and thinking there are thousands and thousands
and thousands of objects in this collection that could benefit by the work.
That John's doing. So, of course, photography is critical.
Traditional photography and the great work that's gone on here for years and years is vital.
But this is another tool. It's another level that gives access to it.
And I kept thinking when I was listening, many years ago
Simon Schaffer and I curated an exhibition called Noise that was was mainly at Cambridge I'm afraid, but you know, we can't be perfect!
And in it we were looking, it was basically something looking at pattern recognition and looking at universal language and looking at data synthetics.
And there was one quote that really stuck in my mind when Patrick Blackett from Imperial College was asked what experimental physicists do.
He answered this question - and it's quite a long quote - but more or less
He says, You know, he has to blow glass, but he could never earn his money as a glassblower.
He has to make carpentry things, but he never earned his money as a carpenter.
He has to wire electrical circuits,
but he never, and I'm looking at Jorge, because that picture of the wooden frame with the lights and the improvisation that goes on.
And then he concludes and he said, You know, I do that for 95% of my time, but for the rest of my time,
I do what a physicist has to do, which is cultivate an intimacy with the behaviour of the physical world.
And I think what's going on in ARCHiOx is cultivating an intimacy with the surface of the objects that are here.
And you know, Jessica's research, I sit there, I feel in that sense that this is being brought forward because of the work,
John, and the team doing here and because of the work that goes on, in Factum, in Madrid.
And I think it's this sense of sharing, sharing insights, thoughts, ideas,
access and different kinds of visualisation that allows a real intimacy with knowledge to grow and expand and, you know, without Lady Hamlyn's support.
And it should be said, I mean, the Bodleian has been amazing. So they opened up access to what we're doing in Madrid.
It took quite a long time. Being amazing often
is something that happens over a period of time!
But, you know, now, once we started, I remember even, John, it's true, the first week when Jorge and Carlos and others and Celeste,
who was doing a lot of the Lucida recording here came, it was very obvious, very fast that something was happening.
And, you know, I feel we've just scratched the surface.
I feel there's four or five things that have come up that can really be followed.
I love the Japanese prints. I mean, for me, the sophistication of what was going on in those printmaking studios,
which is nonverbal, I mean, the printing of textures into the white.
So the white is reflecting differently in different parts of the print is an
awareness of the visual languages that artists and printmakers work with.
And I think how information is mediated and transformed from one state to another is exactly what ARCHiOx is focussed on.
And I'm incredibly proud and happy with the collaboration that's grown up and I hope that this is the beginning of something very significant.
So thank you all for being here. And there's an exhibition upstairs.
I don't quite know the protocol because I know there's certain
numbers here there and everywhere, but there's an exhibition upstairs and I hope many exhibitions will follow because actually, you know what
this technology does make possible is to show things in context where they've never been seen before and I think watching Nick Millea this morning,
and I'm very Nick's not here. But he had to go to London,
but looking at the facsimile of the Gough Map and he'd come running up because he'd been told the Gough Map was on display and
Of course it's a recreation of it, but it's a three dimensional print in colour with front and back that in exhibition is identical.
I mean, of course it doesn't contain exactly the same information because as you can see,
there's still a separation between the real world of what we're able to record,
and there are things that we're not recording and there's a lot of innovations that we still need to perfect.
So this is very much a work in progress, but the results are pretty amazing and I hope as many of you as possible can see them.
And I hope it'll be the beginning of many, many more exciting revelations.
So thank you all very much. And if you have questions, I'll be here.
I'm sure John will. And so off the record, please come and ask anything you like.
And Richard and Andy, and Jorge and Carlos, so, please.
And thank you all for coming. And thank you for sharing this great day.