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Recently I was asked to scope the digitisation of a beautiful scroll we have in our collection, Or.Ms 510, or better known as the Mahabharata. Gemma Scott, our former Digital Library intern, says that:
‘the Mahabharata tells the tale of a dynastic struggle between two sets of cousins for control of the Bharata kingdom in central India. One of the longest poems ever written, eclipsed only by the Gesar Epic of Tibet, it is said to have been composed between 900 and 400BCE by the sage Vyasa, although, in reality, it is likely to have been created by a number of individuals. To Hindus, it is important in terms of both dharma (moral law) and history (itihasa), as its themes are often didactic.’
Our scroll dates to 1795 and came to Edinburgh University in 1821 when it was donated by Colonel Walker of Bowland. It is 13.5cm wide and a staggering 72m long, housed in a wooden case, wound around rollers and turned by a key in the side. It has 78 miniatures of varying sizes and is elaborately decorated in gold, with floral patterning in the late Mughul or Kangra style. The text itself is dense, tiny, and underpinned with yet more gold leaf decorations.
I have spent the past 6 weeks digitising mosaic fragments here in the DIU. Recently removed from Tottenham Court Road Tube Station, London, these mosaics were once part of a mural by the Scottish artist Eduardo Paolozzi that was first installed in 1984. The mosaics, now part of the University of Edinburgh Art Collection, make up about 5% of all the Tottenham Court Road murals by the artist, with the mosaics I am working on coming from the station archways more specifically. In an article for the Guardian Newspaper, London Underground’s design and heritage manager, Mike Ashworth, called this “one of the UK’s largest art conservation projects of the last decade” so I am very pleased to be involved.
There are approximately 600 fragments of various shapes, sizes and colours spread over 42 boxes and 4 pallets. Unfortunately, the mural was not removed with conservation in mind so it is not exactly in great condition. It will be challenging to piece it all back together, first digitally and then physically. The long-term plan is to reconstruct the mural and install it within the university campus therefore giving it new life. So watch this space…!
I have been tasked with digitising each fragment. On completion, the aim is then to use the images in conjunction with image recognition software and an image of the original design, to digitally re-assemble the mural. This should provide a new digital image of the mural which will assist with the proposed physical reconstruction. The process will inform us whether areas of the mural are missing, and would need to be remade in some form.
On a technical level, I have been using a high-spec digital Hasselblad-H4 camera and professional, Bowens studio lights in my digitisation process. To begin with, I capture several mosaic fragments in one shot and then go on to crop, and edit, each piece individually before saving as a separate, new file. The tricky part comes in ensuring that the scale of each fragment is represented correctly with every image produced. This is why placing a ruler within each raw image capture is crucial so to allow for the mosaics to be scaled to a 1:1 ratio by resizing them in Adobe Photoshop. If the size of the fragments were to be incorrect then this could cause problems later down the line when trying to complete this digital jigsaw (see image below!). Further, the faces/upside of the mosaics must be perpendicular to the focal plane of the camera and, collectively, the mosaics must be of equal distance to focal plane. The same principles apply for the positioning of the ruler itself. This confirms that perspectives are not distorted and that the relative size of the mosaics remains consistent throughout the project.
Currently, I am awaiting the arrival of the pallets as I have digitised all the fragments from the boxes. The majority of what is still to come are much larger mosaics fragments. I may be required to digitally stitch multiple images together in order to produce a single image. This is because some mosaics may be too large to photograph in their entirety on the copy stand. No doubt this will raise some new challenges to overcome!
In the studio, with a very limited access to backdrops and props, it can be difficult to enliven the more creative shots of objects. We are well set up now for standard record images against a neutral grey background and it is easy when you need to close in on the details of objects, however, these can start to look a bit ‘samey’ when you have lots of images to do for a project. This is the position I found myself in recently when working on the MIMED collection of musical instruments (see http://images.is.ed.ac.uk/luna/servlet/s/s4mynr). Thankfully, at the University we are blessed with some stunning locations to use instead, but with both of the obvious choices – St Cecilia’s Music Hall and the Reid Concert Hall – off limits for redevelopment, an alternative location required a bit of forethought and planning. Our colleagues at the Anatomy School very kindly agreed to let us use their beautiful Rowand Anderson designed building which provided sympathetic architectural details to arrange the instruments against and Malcolm and I decamped from the studio for 2 days to continue with the project.
The work that DIU are developing around moving image has grown considerably in the last two years and the demand for moving image has increased exponentially with each new film produced. We now have around twenty two separate projects archived on the servers, some of these include up to six films in one project. A good example of that is the Curators short films that appear on the Universities Collections web page. Recently we produced an exhibition introduction film for Towards Dolly : A Century of Animal Genetics in Edinburgh. The Dolly intro film features on the University Collections page, social media and also on the Towards Dolly exhibition App. This is the second exhibition App we have contributed to which is proving a popular way to deliver content. The izi App is a free download from the Apple App store and contains information on the Dolly and “Out Of The Blue” exhibitions. We have also made our first contact with digitising 8mm film in the form of Eric Lucy’s “Drosophila Egg” for the Towards Dolly exhibition which is currently open.
Projects under way at writing include time-lapse films “Documenting the Redevelopment of St Cecilia’s Hall” the first section of which you can see below. This section is the very early stages and we are now starting to film the deconstruction of the 1960’s caretakers flat. This is an ongoing project which shall also include film of musical instrument conservation work to be shown on screen within the new development and musical performance using the collection itself.
The performances captured already include the exhibition opening concert for “The Stuart Sound” exhibition currently open in the Centre for Research Collections which featured a beautiful performance of the anonymous, ” but probably” Padua Lute circa 1620. Also captured are the recording sessions from the Edinburgh College Music Box Studio. These are active projects still to be completed.
In addition we have created seven two minute films as content for the upcoming Main Library guide App soon to be released on the Apple and Android App stores. We also have a ton of footage still to be bashed and coerced into a watch-able form. Watch this space for new material soon.
Last week saw the start of a new project- photographing many of the University’s Musical Instruments while they are in storage at the Library during the re-development of St. Cecilia’s Music Hall. These images are planned for use in the new museum space, in printed materials, for social media and interactive Apps. The only guidance we have been given is ‘coffee-table book’ which gives the DIU team huge scope for interpretation and creativity. As the project progresses we hope to bring 3D photography into the mix, but for starters, this week the musical instruments team brought me 3 items for some studio shots.
The first was a Triple-fretted clavichord, possibly Flemish and c1620 (ref. 4486). Although this piece was quite simple and unadorned, it did have a bright red ribbon woven through the strings and the keys made a beautiful pattern, so I decide on a detail shot to highlight the mechanism.
The second item was a Rahab from Western Malaysia, c1977 (ref. 2101). This was a far more ornate and colourful piece. In fact, I was torn- both the front and back of the instrument presented interesting features to photograph, but how to get both sides at once? While at the Rijksmuseum conference Malcolm and I were impressed by their use of a black reflective surface in the photography of fashion accessories (see https://www.rijksmuseum.nl/formats/accessoires/index.jsp?lang=en). Malcolm suggested that we might be able to get a similar effect using a piece of black velvet and some glass, so I set up the studio to try it out. In the end I chose an angle looking down on the instrument that allowed details of both the strings and the red woollen back to be seen, however, the reflection adds further interest to the shot.
The final piece presented quite a different challenge. It is very rare that an object comes to us that leaves me scratching my head, but the ‘Jingling Johnny’ or Chapeau (ref. 6110) certainly did. A large, top heavy shiny brass instrument covered with dangling bells and fragile metalwork set atop a stick- how to keep it upright and perfectly still? The many shiny surfaces indicate that we will need to build a light tent to minimise reflections. This was clearly going to require some thought and planning, so we reluctantly decided to return this one to the store to reconvene another day!
In the coming months we will keep you posted on the projects progress.
It is hard to believe that more than a month has passed since the fantastic “2 and 3D: Practice and Prophecies” Conference at the Rijksmuseum in April. So much was packed into those 2 short days: standardisation in colour and targets (who knew standards were so non-standard?), mass-digitisation and bespoke object specific photography techniques, panoramas, multispectral and 3D imaging, digital asset management and the role of photography in heritage institutions. This was a heritage photography event not to be missed, which is why I was delighted when the Association for Historical and Fine Art Photographers (AHFAP) offered me their competition bursary to attend. I gathered so much information in Amsterdam that I am still sifting through the notes and links and chasing up my post –conference ‘to do’ list! However, I would like to share a few of my highlights from the conference. Continue reading “2 and 3D Reflections”
Last week we were very excited to see a new LUNA collection go live- ‘Geology & Geologists’. This brings together images from the CRC’s Lyell collection (a wonderful mixture of correspondence and drawings), Arthur Holmes Geology medals, as well as recent images from The Cockburn Museum, School of GeoSciences. The Cockburn collection contains photographs of past Professors, and historic photos of the department as well as plates of fossilised fish.
For the past month or so the DIU have been capturing our first ever time lapse footage of the installation of the current library festival exhibition RASHID AL-DIN 1314. We filmed over several weeks trying to capture the main installation events. This included the prep work by conservation, the delivery of objects from the National Museum, swathes of discussion over the exhibition, hard core carpentry skills and an insane press pack in full flight all leading up to the opening night. What we captured is only part of the story in that all the planning had been completed and work scheduled before shooting began including our own part of supplying the images for the display boards and background supports. It has been a huge revelation to see and document the level of application that goes into creating a Library exhibition. The overriding impression is of a truly massive collaborative effort involving many departments across institutions. Definitely worth a watch if only for the wonderful music by our very own Art Collections Curator Neil Lebeter.
In the last couple of weeks I have been out to visit both the Reid Musical Instrument Museum and St. Cecilia’s Music Hall to document the buildings prior to a makeover.
The Reid is a particularly challenging location for a photographer: tight spaces with mixed lighting and tall glass cabinets lining the walls and centre of the room. Reflections everywhere. It turns out that this was not a good day to wear my new white top! Continue reading “Interior Challenge”
This week saw the start of a small project to digitise some papers that recently came to the CRC from the The Cockburn Museum, School of GeoSciences. The collection contains an interesting mixture of lecture notes, photos, etchings, scrolls, correspondence and large format drawings. What is more, many of these papers come from some of the biggest names in the field. Today I scanned 112 pages of Charles Lyell’s handwritten notes on mountain ranges in Madeira, including pen and ink geological sketches. These delicate and precise drawings of geological details show what fine draughtsman this influential geologist was (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Lyell).
The correspondence of Sir Archiblad Geikie also figures largely, along with a portrait photograph. Geikie was appointed the first Director of the Scottish branch of the Geological Survey in 1867, as well as holding the geology and mineralogy professorship here at the University (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archibald_Geikie).
Also included are some photo’s of the old Geology Museum, and perhaps my favourite – 6 plates of fossilised fishes. We hope to be able to deliver these all online in the not too distant future!
