"Imago animi. Volti dal passato". The catalogue of the open source exibition in now freely available online

Hi all,
I am very happy to write this post, because finally the catalogue of the Open Source exhibition "Imago animi. Volti dal passato" (en: "Iamgo animi. Faces from the past") is freely available online. This has been possible thanks to an agreement between the Municipality of Cles, which hosted the exhibition, the editors and the publisher of the catalogue.

The official logo of the exhibition

Here are the link to the catalogue and to some of our articles:

1. "Imago animi. Volti dal passato" (introduzione) (en: "Imago animi. Faces from the past" - introduction) 
2. "Ricostruzione facciale forense: realtà o fantasia?" (en: "Forensic facial reconstruction: reality or fantasy?")
3. "Lo strano caso del cranio di Francesco Petrarca" (en: "The strange case of the skull of Francesco Petrarca")
4. "Il sorriso perduto di santa Paolina Visintainer" (en "The lost smile of St. Paolina Visintainer")

Have a nice day!

Francesco Petrarca, the mocap experiment in Blender

This post is related with the Wikipedia editathon we are organizing for the open source exhibition "Imago Animi", a project derived from the previous experience of "Facce. I molti volti della storia umana".

This time I will write about the experiment in facial MoCap we performed with the 3D model of the FFR (Forensic Facial Reconstruction) of Francesco Petrarca. The poet was indeed one of the five historical personalities connected with the city of Padua, who were the protagonist of a specific session within the exhibition "Facce". Moreover Petrarch is also present in "Imago Animi", due to the fact that its mortal remains were studied by the scientist Giovanni Canestrini, born in Revò, a town very close to Cles (Trentino - Italy), where the exhibition is currently open to visitors.

The image below (Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License) is the result of the Forensic facial Reconstruction of Francesco Petrarca, performed starting from the cast of the skull, found in 2005 in the "fondo Canestrini" at the University of Padua.

The FFR portrait of Francesco Petrarca

This cast is the only data available for the FFR, because, as the 2013 recognition on the mortal remains revealed, the skeleton of Petrarch is currently buried with a female skull, dated (with the C14 techniques) between 1134 and 1280 (almost one century before the life of the poet). The aDNA analysis performed in 2004 by Prof. David Caramelli (University of Florence) confirmed this thesis (the skeleton had a male DNA, while the skull a female DNA) [1].

In 2015 Arc-Team has been commissioned to perform the Forensic Facial reconstruction of Petrarca and other historical personalities, in order to prepare the open exhibition "Facce". The work started with the 3D documentation of the cast of the "fondo Canestrini", done (with SfM techiques) by Luca Bezzi (Arc-Team). The cast was previously validated by Dott. Nicola Carrara (of the Anthropological Museum of the Univesrity of Padua), with osteometric measurements based on the drawing published by Giovanni Canestrini on his study about the mortal remains of the poet [2]. Cicero Moraes, the forensic specialist of Arc-Team, later performed the FFR in Blender, with the techniques developed during the years starting from this first post in ATOR: Forensic Facial Reconstruction with Free Software.

Once achieved the final 3D model, we decided to test Blender potentialities in facial MoCap, starting from previous experiences. In this case the idea was a short video in which Francesco Petrarca would have "reciting" one of its poetry and, in particular, the proemial sonnet of the Canzioniere ("Voi ch'ascoltate in rime sparse il sono...").

The video below shows the final result...

... while this video shows the "making of".

For the two open exibitions ("Facce" and "Imago Animi") has been chosen a combination of the previous videos, in order to show also the technique of facial MoCap. The final product, you can see here below, has been performed by Cicero Moraes (Arc-Team) using the facial MoCap tools of Blender, starting from the original video registered by Luca Bezzi (Arc-Team), with the technical help of Dott.ssa Emma Varotto and Dott. Nicola Carrara (Anthropological Museum of the Univesrity of Padua), which recorded the excellent performance of the actor Antonello Pagotto.

This post wants to be also a tribute to all the people involved in the project, for their professionalism and kindness!
Have a nice day!

Bibliography

[1] N. Carrara, L. Bezzi, Lo strano caso del cranio di Francesco Petrarca, in Imago Animi. Volti dal passato, 2018

[2] G. Canestrini, Le ossa di Francesco Petrarca, 1874

Imago Animi editathon

Hi all,

sorry for the long silence, but working in archaeology and cultural heritage is not a simple task and this year we had very few time for our open projects and, consequentially for ATOR.

This new post is to report that in 2018 we went on with the open source research about "Facce. I motli volti della storia umana" ("Faces. The many aspects of human history"). The new step consisted in the opening of a new derived exhibition, called "Imago Animi. Volti dal passato" ("Imago Animi. Faces from the Past"), hosted in the Councilor's Palace (Palazzo Assessorile) of Cles (Trentino - Italy).

One of the goals of this new event is to go on with the scientific dissemination of the open source material produced until now and regarding the topic of the human face, under an anthropological, archaeological and artistic point of view. To speed up this work, we are trying to organize a wiki editathon which will be focus on the exhibition "Iamgo Animi", in order to enrich many of the pages of wikipedia which are connected to these arguments and to upload old and new facial reconstructions, done during the preparation of the event.

As an example, I post here the reconstructive portrait of Bernardo Clesio, the Italian cardinal, born in Cles, who was the main contributor of the famous Council of Trent. His facial reconstruction is one of the new work done by @Cicero Moraes (Arc-Team expert in 3D forensic facial reconstruction) for the new exhibition. These images are also particular because they are not done through the forensic facial protocol we developed during the last years here in ATOR, but rather with a new iconographic technique, based on the art-historical study on the known portraits of Bernardo Clesio (performed by Marcello Nebl), validated by a comparison to select the the common facial features (performed by @Luca Bezzi), in order to achieve a philologically reconstructed 3d portrait (modeled by @Cicero Moraes). This workflow has been necessary because it has not been possible to organize a forensic study on the remains of the cardinal (deu to the strict time table of the preparation of "Imago Animi").

Here below are the two iconographic reconstructive portraits performed with the technique described above.

The iconographic reconstructive 3d portrait of Bernardo Clesio

The iconographic reconstructive 3d portrait of Bernardo Clesio (profile)

Like always, the material uploaded in ATOR is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
I hope this post was useful and that the editathon will give a small contribution to the Wikipedia project.

Have a nice day!

Facce: a digital poster for the exhibition

The opening of the exhibition "Facce. I molti volti della storia umana" will soon take place in Padua (14th February 2015), so I started to work also on dissemination tools, trying to focus on new media potentialities.

While the real communication experts will take care of the traditional promotion (posters, handbills, etc...), I would like to use the opportunity to test different methods.

Basically I am just developing a digital poster, which should be an reminder of the exhibition (with some essential informations) and, at the same time, an interactive showcase for the photos that the people sent us (and will send us) for our crowdsourcing campaign regarding the pareidolia phenomenon.
I think that the best way to realize this idea is to compile an app for Android, so that it will be accessible to many different smartphones. I designed the app to contain a WebViewer, linked to an address in our server, in which I uploaded an interactive gallery of images.
My first step has been a fast search in internet to find all the tools I was needing to develop my app, of course checking the licenses and choosing the open source software (an the simplest ones, being a newcomer in such field).
As first I focused on the gallery and I chose an MIT licensed  jQuery tool (jssor), with which I build this slideshow:

Than I looked for a software to develop my app and (thanks to +Michele Mazzurana) I came across another MIT licensed software, MIT App Inventor. This software has two main advances: it is based a GUI (very simple) and it does not require an emulator to test the work (if you have an Android device, you can directly connect it with your project).
Here is a screenshot of the direct link between the software and the mobile:

Direct link between MIT App Inventor and the mobile

If you want to test the app, you can download it here. Please notice that to visualize the gallery you will need an internet connection, so (depending on your contract) your provider could put additional costs (no problem if you have a flat rate or if you use free wifi access).
I hope this post was useful, have a nice day!

PS
If you have pictures regarding the pareidolia effect, you can upload them on the FaceBook page of the exhibiotn "Facce" (do not forget to write the author, the title and the license, for the credits). Day by day the pictures will be uploaded in the gallery of the app.

3D printing for Cultural Heritage

As many of you know,

since last year we are working on the preparation of the open source exhibition "FACCE. I molti volti della storia umana" (here some news in ATOR: 1, 2 and here the official page and the FB page). Of course all the software we are using are Free and Open (FLOSS), but for some particular exhibits, we are working also with open hardware.

Our interest in this specific topic dates back to 2006, when we started investigating the potentialities of open hardware in archeology, especially in the field of aerial photography e rapid prototyping. We get the first results in 2008, with our UAVP prototype (here some news from ATOR: 1, 2) an all the other UAV we built (KK, etc...).

For the exhibition the main open hardware we used are 3D printing machines. We experienced different solutions: +Leonardo Zampi printed the 3D model of the Taung Child thanks to the Kentstrapper machines, an ideal choice if you want an hardware which is ready to work out of the box (here the related articles: 1, 2)...

The Taung Child printed in the Volta printer (Kentstrapper)

... and we build our own device from the scratch, a Fa)(a 3D, thanks to +Giacomo Falaschi  and +silvio tassinari , of Roma Makers.

Building the Fa)(a 3D at Roma Makers lab.

One of the main issue in 3D printing for Cultural Heritage is to replicate an object in the right scale (otherwise you will just print a souvenir) and this is why it is very important to know how to perform a 3D scan, but also how to post-process your data ( (in ATOR you will find a lot of informations about this), in order to send the right file to the machine.
Here are some example of the models we are printing for the exhibition (scale 1:1): some 3D skulls of hominids (different individuals of Homo georgicus) we were able to scan, tanks to the kindness of Prof. David Lordkipanidze, during our mission to Tiblisi and Dmanisi. We will use them to prepare some Augmented Reality interactive exhibits related to paleoart.

3D printed skull (side view)

3D printed skull (front view)

And here is a short video of our Fa)(a 3D in action:

Have a nice day!

“FACCE. I molti volti della storia umana”, an open source exhibition

It's been more than one year since the conclusion of the Taung Project and many things have happened. Today I want to post something related with one of the most important derivations of this project: the exhibition "FACCE. I molti volti della storia umana" (en "Faces. The many aspects of human history"). The event is organized by the Anthropological Museum of the University of Padua, from an idea of Dott. Nicola Carrara, and it is a cooperation between the Museum, the University, Arc-Team and Antrocom NPO (the same actors of the Taung Project). I will not go into details of the exhibition, due to the fact it is still a work in progress being its opening planned for October 2014, but I post the preliminary presentation we did during the European Academic Heritage Day 2013 ("Down the Rabbit hole", backstage of knowledge production).

 As you ague form the title, the main topic of the exhibition is the human face, which, in the words of the French photograper Gisele Freund, is also the "the only part of the body to be exposed naked to the first comer." Actually the thematic sessions planned for the event are six:

1. "Guardiamo in faccia la diversità umana" (en "Let's face human diversity"), which is dedicated to human evolution and will take advantage of the forensic facial reconstructions of the principal actors in the phylogenetic human three, preformed by the Brazilian digital artist +Cícero Moraes.

2. "Una faccia, una razza?" (en "One face, one race?"). This section will show the division of mankind into races proposed by various authors in the 700-800, which will have more deleterious effects in the first decades of the 1900s. Nowadays, thanks especially to human genetic studies, we can say that the division of Homo sapiens into races is just a cultural and social construction, without any sense in biology.

3.  "Una faccia, un destino?" (en "A face, a fate?"), in which the main topic will be physiognomy, analyzed from the artistic aspects of the XVI century till the pseudoscientific approach in the XIX century criminology in connection with phrenology, another famous pseudoscience, well-accepted in the same period.

4. "Con quella faccia un po' così" (quote from the popular Italian song "Genova per Noi" of the singer Paolo Conte), a session in which will be proposed different forensic facial reconstructions of historical personalities connected with the city of Padua.

5. "Ma che faccia fai?" (Italian popular expression). This part of the exhibition will be dedicated to human facial expressions.

6. "Dalla faccia alla maschera: il volto simbolico" (en "From the face to the mask: the symbolic aspect"). The final session will take advantage from the contribute of the Museo Internazionale della Maschera, Amleto e Donato Sartori and will show the symbolic aspect of the face: the mask.

The contribute of Arc-Team to the exhibition, in addition to the forensic facial reconstructions that will be created by our expert (+Cícero Moraes), will cover the touristic fruition of the event through scientific interactive installations mainly based on Computer Vision (from Augmented Reality to Facial Recognition and Motion Capture). In the presentation you can see some of the projected prototype, as well as some sources of inspiration (e.g. the movie "A scanner Darkly") some examples from the software we will use (e.g. Openframeworks). 

As you probably guessed from the title of this post, the main peculiarity of this event will be the fact that it can be considered an "open source exhibition", maybe the first of its kind, due to the fact that all the produced material will be released under the therms of the Creative Commons Attribution, which is a license approved for free cultural works. Moreover open techniques will be used also to collect material for the exhibition itself, with specific crowedsourcing campaigns, while part of the budget will be probably collected wit crowdfunding. I will have time to post more news about these last two topics, by now I just hope that you'll enjoy the presentation below (like always, to navigate just click on the image and use the spacebar to browse the slides).

For a better visualization, click here