The deployment of 3D modeling and 3D printing techniques in historical heritage is nothing new. 3D modeling has been used in creating digital environments since the mid-1990s. These models were created mainly to situate its users among the reconstructed ruins of historical landscapes, especially from antiquity and the Middle Ages, such as Ancient Rome, Egypt, or Medieval Britain (Dave, 2008: 40). 3D modeling was also used in various mixed media practices, such as virtual and augmented reality (Kee & Compeau, 2019). In both cases, there’s a transposition of historical distance into spatial proximity, by means of which layers of time are juxtaposed into the present.
Despite much recent buzz about the metaverse, in the last couple of years, it was not just the creation of a virtual, digital reality accessed by electronic means that would become the focus of attention of scholars, artists, activists and entrepreneurs. Instead, the conversion of digital media into material space has also been emphasized and explored, exemplarily in a series of projects related to historical heritage. In this paradigm, 3D modeling and 3D printing are not used to place the user’s physical body closer to a digital representation of past sites and objects; instead, they are used to bring a material, reconstructed historical artefact closer to the observer. This reversed archaeology is the subject of this paper, where I want to explore this new criterion for how historical-artefactual material is reproduced, especially as it implicates the two-way transit between the material and the digital in the domain of heritage studies as well as historical practice.
There are considerable gaps and aporias regarding the theoretical understanding of the nature and implications of these 3D models and recreations. The focus on the recreation of lost or distant historical artefacts diminishes the fact that the recreations themselves are novel historical products; it also neglects the troubled materiality of these objects and how they dislodge key concepts, such as original, copy, authentic or forgery. What are these objects, if they are not merely substitutes for a lost, distant, incomplete, or ruined original?
Throughout this paper, I’ll address this question through a focus on the categories of copy, object, and media. The main argument of this paper is to demonstrate the aforementioned ‘reversed archaeology’: 3D printed reconstructions of historical heritage sites, along with 3D printings in general, are digital media, materialized through technical processes. In this way, they complicate the question of authenticity, instead going directly to the problem of what a (digital) object is, thus unsettling long-held assumptions regarding original and copy, as well as material and immaterial – categories which hold special importance regarding heritage practice. The paper’s three sections deal with these issues, (1) progressing through an understanding of copy as media, following Ines Weizman’s lead (Weizman, 2017); (2) discussing the concept of objecthood as applied to digital media; and (3) concluding with overall implications for heritage studies.
Preservation through reproduction
“If All Else Fails, 3D Models and Robots Might Rebuild Palmyra”, reads the title of a New York Times piece on the unveiling of the reconstruction of the Monumental Arch of Palmyra in London in 2016 (Farrell, 2016). Erected during the reign of Roman emperor Septimius Severus in the second century AD and destroyed by ISIS in 2015, the replication of the Monumental Arch using state-of-the-art 3D printing techniques was the result of the initiative of the UK-based Institute for Digital Archaeology with the support from UNESCO and Dubai’s Museum of the Future. It is part of a set of much-publicized projects directed towards preserving the rich historical heritage of the war-torn Middle East, especially the countries of Syria and Iraq. These projects include US-based company CyArk, whose mission statement includes the crowdsourcing of photos in order to construct 3D models and replicas, as well as other initiatives, such as Project Mosul and Google Arts and Culture’s platform, which enables the exploration of some of the main sights of Mosul, such as Al-Nuri Mosque, through 3D online reconstructions. Needless to say, the deployment of 3D modeling and 3D printing in the face of disaster is not exclusive to the Middle East; after the earthquake that befell on Nepal in April 2015, 3D modeling was also set to restore some of the historical heritage of its capital, Katmandu, while in Brazil, as I’ll expound on soon, the same techniques have been used to restore part of the former collections of the Museu Nacional, destroyed in a fire in September 2018.[1]
Some of these projects, especially those related to Syria and Iraq, were also controversial. The placement of the printed, reconstructed Arch of Palmyra in, of all places, London, was discussed by Iranian-born, US-based artist Mohrehshin Allahyari (2019) as a prime case of what she calls “digital colonialism”, while it could also be thought of as an example of what David Joselit (2013) calls “image neoliberalism”, especially present in reactions against the devolution of heritage looted or sacked by former imperial powers and housed in the world’s main capitals. The fact that most of these projects focus on Mesopotamian or Roman heritage, and not the Islamic, Ottoman, or modern periods, a choice often justified by the inclusion of the former in the category of the heritage of all humankind, confirms Aaron Tugendhaft’s critique of the neglecting of the broader, more recent history of the Middle East by Western media, as well as by the international community (Tugendhaft, 2020). After all, it is only part of the heritage of these places that is deemed worth saving – and reproducing – for posterity.
Besides the important political claims embedded in these critiques, it could be added that some of these projects, especially those that gained broader public recognition, share a conservative outlook towards the nature of their own activities. The New York Times piece is revealing in this regard, as it argues that the creation of replicas could be a way of salvaging historical heritage, notwithstanding the fact that what turns these objects into heritage is their uniqueness and authenticity.[2] Regardless of the discussion of the “aura” of these artefacts, to use Walter Benjamin’s often-quoted term, this perspective establishes a clear-cut distinction between a lost original and its recovery through a recreated copy, while at the same time trumping this distinction because of its advocacy of preservation through reproduction. The fact that preservation has increasingly tended towards reproduction shows that it is less about maintaining the attributes of the original than of understanding the progressive transition of historical heritage into media, for it is media that is preserved through the circulation of its copies. Thus, these replicas should not be seen as proxies for lost originals, but as a new category of objects with a thwarted discursive and material relationship towards their originals. The following set of examples shows both how these categories become convoluted and problematic, but also the creative potential of 3D modeling and printing as it relates to historical heritage.
Egor Kraft’s Content Aware Studies (Figures 1-3) is a series of interventions that brings together Classical statuary and artificial intelligence (AI).[3] Kraft has created 3D models of Greco-Roman statues, which (it is well-known) are often fragmented, as they reach modernity in ruined, incomplete form. Yet, in Kraft’s project, they nonetheless serve to feed a database upon which AI is used to present automatic, machine-generated restorations. Digitally modeled or printed upon the originals, these “restorations” frequently verge on the uncanny, as the algorithm tries to “complete” the statues, drawing on the basis formed by fragmented objects. Content Aware Studies is conceptually relevant because it highlights that, by exacerbating technical mediation, and not by diminishing it to reach the similitude to a previous object (the original), 3D models and 3D printing can also distort and not only restore, a lost or damaged original. More precisely, this project achieves restoration through distortion (Kraft & Kormilitsyna, 2021; Gomova, 2019).
Another example is the much-celebrated series Material Speculation: ISIS (Figures 4-6), developed by Mohrehshin Allahyari, already mentioned above.[4] Appalled by the destruction of Mesopotamian artefacts by ISIS at the Mosul Museum, as shown in a broadly circulated video in February 2015, Allahyari consulted with scholars and collectors with the intent to create 3D replicas of some of the destroyed objects, such as a Lamassu relief and the statue of King Uthal. These also, however, are not just replicas, as they enact an ingenious and never-ending circulation between original and copy. Each replica comes with a flash drive that contains the 3D file to create further copies. Even if the files are available elsewhere on the Internet, the implication is that to create another replica, it is necessary to excavate and destroy the previous object containing the flash drive inside, thus transforming the replica of a historical artefact into the original of new, derivative copies.
A more harrowing example is provided by the collaboration between NEXT Lab, at PUC-Rio, and LAPID, at the Museu Nacional do Rio de Janeiro, together with the Instituto Nacional de Tecnologia, also in Brazil (Figure 7). Initially the result of an informal partnership between Prof. Jorge Lopes, director of NEXT, and archaeologist Sergio Kugland, then director of Museu Nacional in the early 2000s, the 3D modeling of items from the museum’s collection gained renewed significance after the September 2018 fire that destroyed most of its collection. Soon after the fire, it was proposed to combine “the ashes from the museum with 3D printing materials to physically materialize the lost artefacts that already ha[d] 3D files from CT scanners” (Lopes, Azevedo, Brancaglion Jr., Morse and Ribeiro, 2019: 182). As stated by the team, the results are “remarkable 3D printed models made of ashes from the wooden coals obtained from the leftover buried remnants”, thus using the very material ashes from the museum itself to create replicas of the lost items that it housed (Lopes, Azevedo, Brancaglion Jr., Morse and Ribeiro, 2019: 182; 187).[5] Among the recreated objects are the skull of Luzia, the oldest human remains ever found in Brazil, as well as the mummy of Sha-Amun-En-Su, an item that was a favorite of the Museu’s visitors, and the fossil of Mariliasuchus amarali, an ancestor to modern reptiles that inhabited Southeast Brazil 80 million years ago. Again in this case, the very distinction between original and copy is blurred, as the ashes of the destroyed original artefacts are used to create 3D printed copies.
These examples illustrate that even if 3D prints are copies or replicas, they often render problematic the status of the original. The three examples demonstrate that 3D copies do not necessarily stand in for a lost, absent, or distant original, fulfilling the role of representation, but that they can deviate from their models or, alternatively, reach similitude through a series of technical operations. In this way, they are not the supplement to an original achieved through an understanding of copying as representation; instead, they are new objects resulting from the presentation of digital media in material, printed form. It is now necessary to continue pursuing a more complex understanding of copies and what copying means in order to understand these replicas.
Between 2006 and 2007, the Spanish group Factum Arte worked on creating a facsimile of the painting Le nozzi di Cana (1563) by Venetian artist Paolo Veronese (1528-1588). The sixteenth-century painting is housed in the Musée du Louvre, having been transferred by Napoleonic troops in 1797 after defeating Venetian forces in the Revolutionary Wars. To transfer the large painting – it measures 6.77 m in height by 9.94 m in length – the troops cut it into pieces and removed it from its frame, later reassembling it in the Louvre, thus making it subject to both deformation and restoration. Applying the most advanced scanning technologies available at the time, Factum Arte composed a high-fidelity, original-sized facsimile of the painting, placing it in its original context in the San Giorgio Monastery in Venice. The placement of the surrogate in its original context can be thought of not only as an artistic restoration, but also as an historical reparation, thus bringing the painting, part of Venetian heritage, to where it belongs.
For Bruno Latour and Adam Lowe, reflecting on this episode, the restoration of Le nozzi di Cana through a facsimile that fulfills the role of the original demonstrates that it would be apt to recast the “original” not in terms of “pristine” or “authentic”, in the sense of closer to a source, but as the start of a trajectory. The trajectory would place the original as the initiator of a series of appropriations, including copies and reproductions. “The intensity of the search for the original,” according to Latour and Lowe,
[…] depends on the amount of passion triggered by its copies. No copies, no original. To stamp a piece with the mark of originality requires the huge pressure that only a great number of reproductions can provide (Latour and Lowe, 2011: 277-278).
Therefore, it could be said that the existence of the copies creates the original. The original’s afterlife and trajectory show that there is neither a clear-cut distinction between original and copy nor a hierarchization between them, establishing instead a continuum between these different categories.
This speaks to what Hillel Schwartz (2014) calls a “culture of the copy”, that is, the changing set of attributes, attitudes, habits, and reactions ascribed to or adopted in the face of copies, as well as to the techniques for creating them. One telling example is the Renaissance’s completion or reconstruction of ruined originals. As examined in detail by Leonard Barkan, it was usual that Renaissance artists, mainly sculptors, felt compelled to change, copy or “restore” statues that had been recently unearthed in broken or fragmented form. In most cases, this was due to these artists’ competitive stance regarding their classical models. This emulative reaction to the original served Renaissance artists’ claims for artistic greatness. However, this is further complicated by the fact that, as Barkan asserts, “most of the statues the Renaissance could unearth […] were themselves Roman copies after Greek originals” (Barkan, 1999: 9; Forero-Mendoza, 2002).
Needless to say, the originals – Greek or Roman ones – were neither under copyright nor historical protection, so these changes, among them undue restorations, were part of the trajectory of the statues. The completion of the fragmented original, its copying or even its substitution by reproduction was part of a relationship to past objects that consolidated, through restoration, the place of the present towards an authoritative, although relatively uncertain, past. Christopher S. Wood rightly notes that “the reception of historical artifacts in premodern culture was shaped by a powerful presumption in favor of their mutual substitutability”:
One artifact was as good as another, at least within classes of artifacts that shared a purpose and pointed to a common referent. Images and buildings were understood not as the products of singular historical performances, but rather as links to an original reference point. An artifact took its meaning from its membership within a chain of referential artifacts stretching back in time to a hidden origin, but not from its absolute place within that chain. Artifacts within such a claim could be substituted for one another without impairment of reference. The knowledge that one happened to possess about the particular or local circumstances of an artifact’s fabrication, or its absolute position within a chain, was not allowed to interfere with the referential linkage or the presumption of substitutability. This, at least, was the model that guided the use and interpretation of things (Wood, 2008: 15).
Before authorship, authenticity, authority and antiquity were all conflated, the original bore the meaning Latour and Lowe ascribe to it, that is, it held the character of being first in a sequence, the originator of a lineage.
The transition to modernity is characterized by the development of a more acute sense of different historical eras, thus emphasizing authenticity as a relation between the original and other objects that pertain to the same time. This contextual understanding privileges the cognizance that objects were created either at a specific time, thus being representative of a historical period, or by a specific person, the author, signaling the beginnings of copyright law in its modern form.[6] Both processes demonstrate a consolidatory ambition to make the past more fixed and certain.
Besides this, another important development was the presence of a more accurate visual comprehension of the past, especially through advances in reproduction techniques such as printing and engraving (Woolf, 2005). This connects the formation of a more detailed, differentiated comprehension of the past to the development of a growing visual culture in the early nineteenth century, as represented by the convergence of commerce on the one hand, and spectacle, on the other. Especially in relation to urban settings, such as large metropolises like Paris and London, this was reflected in the rapid placement of novel devices, such as panoramas and dioramas, as well as new technologies, from small, portable instruments of wonder, such as zootropes and phenakistoscopes, to daguerreotypes and moving pictures (Crary, 1992; Charney and Schwarts, 1996). Through reproduction, these techniques made it possible to bring foreign, exotic places into domestic, more familiar settings, such as the European cities where they were presented (Rouillé, 2005). This function, which was executed also by photography, meant that reproduction could be linked to the creation of model settings where unknown or inapprehensible circumstances could be controlled and understood – something that copies, through play, have been recognized to do at least since Aristotle (Poetics, 1148b; Schwartz, 2014: 76-84).[7]
The convergence between reproduction techniques and a more developed visual culture signaled, more importantly, that copying could become detached from the original’s physicality and circulate more freely. Instead of creating another object, which also posed the threat of forgery or counterfeiting, the new reproduction techniques pointed to the circulation of copies as images. Copies, in other words, became media.
In fact, one way to frame an understanding of modernity could be through developing a series of acts and techniques that made copying easier. Delphine Gardey describes this as the development of a new “moral economy” of writing, as noted in the relationship established towards “values, rules, the ways to define what is an adequate gesture or even the criteria to judge work done and its products”, leading to privileging speed and circulation over certainty and conservation (Gardey, 2008: 16; see also Gitelman, 1999 and Krajewski, 2011). Gardey’s understanding, however, is only half of the picture. The growing speed and easiness of copying meant that the acts of creating an original and reproducing it as a copy became more distinct, yet paradoxically more diluted and similar. The contiguous distance between these two acts accounted for the mediatic nature of these copies, especially in the case of the reproduction of objects as images, starting with lithography in the mid-nineteenth century, and reaching 3D printing in the early twenty-first century. Even if made faster and circulating more freely, these copies became increasingly more exact – the consequence of a “high-fidelity” approach that could only be achieved through technical means.
As highlighted by Ines Weizman, “[t]he possibility to store and re-store information about objects digitally has made it possible to approximate ‘originals’ in ways that were unthinkable until very recently” (Weizman, 2017: 59). Regarding architecture, she writes:
Both computer-generated and parametric work put pressure on the notion of authorship and ownership. Mechanical modes of design and fabrication are challenged by new techniques for producing differences in serial formations. This also refers to modes of architectural survey. LIDAR scanners can now capture the 3D reality of entire buildings down to a fraction of a millimeter. Employed in tandem with 3D printers, this means that, if a system to automate the scanner-printer duo existed – buildings could finally reproduce themselves endlessly and at varying scales (Weizman, 2017: 59).
Despite the almost science fiction scenario presented by Weizman at the end of this quotation, something similar could be said of historical heritage practice, as 3D printing makes it possible to serially reproduce historical artifacts – something that is creatively truncated in Mohreshin Allahyari’s work. However, 3D printing continues the path of mechanization and mediatization of copies, although with a few twists. I would like to conclude this section by mentioning some specific consequences of 3D printing regarding the previous discussion of copies, as it is applied to historical heritage practice.
3D printing reverses the familiar path from materiality to media, or we could say from original to copy, as evoked above by the progressive development of faster, easier means of producing copies. This does not mean that these copies are not reproductions, but that they are both reproductions and novel objects – originals unto themselves, it could be said. This exacerbates the contradiction highlighted by Ines Weizman, that is, “the copy becomes a reproduction – a media form in itself – referring both to itself and its original, a part of an endless series of ‘aura-less’ multiplications” (Weizman, 2017: 54).
The last part of the quote, however, is complicated by the fact that when refracted through the prism of preservation through reproduction, the very novelty, and materiality of these reproductions – the fact that they reverse the trajectory from materiality to media instead into a trajectory from media to materiality – indicates that they share some of the aura of the original. Only through the sublimated transference of the aura to the copies could they become substitutes for a lost, destroyed, or distant original.
Heritage artifacts, it is necessary to remember, signify exactly because they are imbued with historical or aesthetic values that make them testify to a particular time and place. The appeal of 3D-printed copies is that they keep some of this mystique while being able to appear in multiple settings at once: uniqueness and multiplicity are not in opposition. This means they are situated at the intersection between the culture of memory – preservation – and the culture of copy – reproduction. This is what makes them problematic in terms of heritage objects. To understand this, however, it is necessary to tackle the looming question of what kind of objects these copies really are.
Digital matters
If 3D copies manifest the comlex convergence between preservation and reproduction, it is because, despite their appearance as physical objects, they are, first of all, media objects. As stated at the beginning of this paper, they are media-made material. In this section, I want to focus on the relationship between digital technology and discussions around materiality.
Matter in media has gained a renewed centrality with studies centered upon the infrastructural aspects that enable media to work (see Parikka, 2015). These studies focus on different aspects of media operations, such as the links between mining activities in developing countries and the manufacturing of digital devices; the deployment of different media sources and their environmental impact in generating energy, especially coal and oil; and the logistics of supply chains that connect different parts of the world usually in a hierarchical way, as products are designed in the Global North but assembled in the South (Bratton, 2016; Cubitt, 2016; Crawford and Jones, 2018). Overall, these studies question the rhetoric of ‘transparency’ and ‘immateriality’ that serves +to separate digital technologies from previous technological transformations since the Industrial Revolution. It is not without reason that the predominant metaphor for modern computing is the “cloud” (Hu, 2015; Thylstrup, 2019: Peters, 2015). In a more restricted sense, it could be possible to assert that many of these studies, especially those more engaged with the field of media archaeology, are indebted to the work of German theorist Friedrich Kittler, more specifically his suspicion of software over hardware (Kittler, 2014). Despite the many advances that Kittler’s oeuvre made in the understanding of media, both old and new, the aforementioned studies challenge the binarism his work created between hard and software as if it were a divide between material and immaterial (Scarlett, 2017: 5-7; for the gendered aspect of the divide between software and hardware, see Chun 2011: 29-34).
It is this very divide that is dramatically upended in 3D printing, as it renders palpable what was originally a media file through the combined action of hardware and software.[8] This line of thought could be further extended by considering – phenomenologically – that 3D prints are the subject of a “soft materialism”, as they are made of a gelatinous resin that becomes solid while it is modeled. Initially liquid, these objects only gain shape as they cool down and turn solid.
Another line of contention regarding digital media and materiality emerges from discussions about the interface (Galloway, 2014; Hookway, 2014; Emerson, 2014; Halpern, 2015; Thielman, 2018). A term that originated in the mid-nineteenth century in fluid dynamics (Hookway, 2014: 20; 24), it became nearly ubiquitous with digital technology. Recent scholarship has stressed the mediated, non-transparent nature of interfaces, understanding them as the threshold between the invisible workings of different computation devices and the visual renderings that appear on screen for human users. Notwithstanding the many productive assumptions garnered from this perspective, it is easy to see that it still promotes the materiality of computational processes standing in strict counterpoint to the evanescent character of its media operations, thus reinforcing the divide between the hardware and its material functioning, and the interface, which is devoid of materiality.
This kind of reasoning is helpfully problematized by Matthew Kirschenbaum’s proposed categories of forensic materialism and formal materialism (Kirschenbaum, 2007). The former refers to the inscription of digital files in hardware, namely in the hard drive, which provides a durable, material character to the recording of digital information; the latter refers to the performative character of the presentation of digital files to users. Here, Kirschenbaum theorizes about the very functioning of computers, as digital files are not stored in a single place in the computer’s memory unit as if it were a sequence of bits, but rather they are inscribed in different locations on the hard drive, becoming seemingly unified only when they are read by the computer or opened upon request by the user. This is an important aspect related to the objecthood of digital media, as I’ll emphasize later.
Even so, neither the debates around the interface nor Kirschenbaum’s categories are aptly applied to 3D printing. For one reason, 3D prints evade the dichotomy between surface and depth invoked by interfaces as well as by forensic and formal materialisms. It could be added that they are a media form that hides itself in the object’s materiality. While this means that they could be superficially apprehended as simple, material objects with well-defined contours and not, as I’m approaching them here, as complicated media forms, this also means that they push the interface away from their material renderings. In fact, this is their main appeal: 3D prints are, on the one hand, potentially exact reconstructions of the material objects they drawn upon, becoming the perfect surrogates for their models in a way that could not be done by human hands, while, on the other hand, they refrain from disclosing the computational processes that made them possible. 3D prints evade the concurrent claims of media, materiality and objecthood that might neatly categorize them; instead, it is the complex and dissonant character of this entanglement that needs to be more thoroughly elaborated in order to understand them.
Discussing these issues, Ashley M. Scarlett rightly states that “digitally enacted information is undermining historically established perceptions of what matter is,” in the sense that “this is not simply an extension of rhetorical dematerialization, [but that] technological actors are articulating new objects and matters that are thoroughly computational, introducing new phenomena in need of conceptualization” (Scarlett, 2017: 7). What could materiality mean if it was conceived from the point of view of computation? For Scarlett, following the lead of Johanna Drucker (2009; 2013), who adopts a performative understanding of materiality, the foremost consequence is that materiality and tangibility – that is, two terms for the physical character of objects – are not synonyms and can be disambiguated. Digital media can perform materiality without enacting physical objects.
At the same time, computational processes – of which digital media are a prominent part – also have tangible effects on material, palpable reality. It is the complexly mediated character of modern computing that trumps any simple connection between materiality and tangibility, both in its processes as well as in its products. One could mention, for instance, the varied forms of remote action enabled by computational devices and digital media, which form a central part of German filmmaker and theorist Harun Farocki’s concept of “operative images”.[9] The mediated character of action renders problematic the concepts of Vor- and Zuhandenheit advanced by Martin Heidegger while discussing the relationship between the subject and her world through technical means, such as tools (Berry, 2011: 127-131). The nuanced materialities enabled by digital media are, thus, at the center of the discussion.
To continue in attempting to disentangle the knot between media and materiality, it is necessary to zero in on the nature of digital objects, as objecthood is the third element mentioned before. The understanding of what a digital object is has become a central concern in the field of digital preservation, especially of digital artworks. Preservation becomes important for the continued access and presentation of digital artworks, even if – or, perhaps, because – digital information is notoriously unstable. Therefore, preservation of digital artworks adopts a series of strategies to counter digital media’s volatile character while simultaneously trying to conserve and reenact its intrinsic dynamic, interactive character. In an early symposium on this issue, this was called the “variable media approach” (Depocas, Ippolito and Jones, 2003), a position that turns away from preservation approaches based on the fixity of the object preserved, which, regarding digital media, would mean separating form and content.
More recently, Dragan Espenschied (2021), preservation director of the New York-based non-profit digital arts organization Rhizome, addressed this theme of moving from variation to reenactment as the main principle behind the preservation of digital artworks, thus raising the problem of digital objecthood. As he expounds, it is often supposed that digital artworks correspond to the files – and their extensions – that house them (Espenschied, 2021: 116). However, digital artworks are not just digital media files; considering them only this way would exclude a series of situations, such as the requirements of specific hardware to enable digital artworks, as well as artworks that make reference, in varied ways, to media elements that were outside the files from which they ran, such as artworks that involve browsing on search engines or navigating on video platforms, as well as social media platforms (Espenschied, 2021: 128-129). Espenschied’s approach, which emblematizes Rhizome’s understanding of digital preservation, is premised on recognizing the operational, performative aspect of digital artworks. This is done by probing the limits to the well-functioning of these artworks in contemporary hardware and software, and later creating virtual machines to recreate them in proximity to their original context.
Even if Rhizome’s approach could be considered conservative regarding preservation – an accusation that Espenschield himself raises (Espenschied, 2021: 134-135) – it has the benefits of showing that the limits of digital artworks – and, by extension, it could be said, of all digital objects – cannot be established on their own. Instead, their limits are stated from the outside. They are a consequence of the relationship between different digital objects and different computational processes.
It could be said that Espenschied’s object-oriented approach to digital preservation is a consequence of the more general object-oriented programming, one of the leading programming paradigms developed since the 1970s. Object-oriented programming considers the relationship between data and code as sets of “objects”, thus being classified and manipulated through a series of attributes and categories. This complex web of categorization means that however more densely or thoroughly an object is categorized by the computer, the broader the programming possibilities attached to it become. This leads to the field of “knowledge representation” and what is called computational “ontology”. Both are related to how objects are represented to modern computer systems. Drawing a comparison with speech, Yuk Hui, following the lead of computer scientist Tom Gruber, writes:
An ontology is the representation of the knowledge one has of the world, and it is composed of both a formal and an informal part: the formal parts work like axioms that allow meanings to be derived (syntax); the informal parts are, for example, explanations in a dictionary, composed of free texts (semantics to which machines are indifferent) (Hui, 2016: loc. 1800).
Even if Hui proceeds in a more cautionary mode and presents some limitations to this comparison between computational ontology and speech, his explanation is noteworthy because it highlights the role of formal features in modern computation. “Content,” in the sense of what is represented, needs to be established against a previous grid of signification composed by different categories that render it computationally meaningful, that is, operative. The objects thus represented do not have previous contours than those given by this grid. Hui makes this explicit when he adds that “facts can only be meaningful when they can be subsumed by forms, whereby they can be regulated and calculated” (Hui, 2016: loc. 1538). Regarding the discussions made here, this means that digital objects are not previous, given objects, but that they are produced through computation.
Suppose the limits of objects are not established by the object itself but rather by the way it is framed by this grid of categories and by its contrasting relationship to other objects. In that case, it could be said that digital objecthood is an affordance of computational processes. The concept of “affordance” as related to computing and digital media has been advanced by Ashley M. Scarlett and Martin Zeilinger (2019) in a recent dossier on the topic.[10] For Scarlett and Zeilinger, modern computing and digital media challenge the centrality of perception in affordance theory, which is in itself a consequence of the fact that neither object nor environment are well-defined with relation to it. For instance, as I’ve already mentioned here, if the proceedings of modern computation remain largely invisible to the user, and objects are a result of computation, rather than a previously established form given to the senses, then widely accepted accounts of affordance, such as that developed by Don Norman on design theory, cannot be sustained.[11] To counter the limitations of the concept, Scarlett and Zeilinger argue that digital affordances relate not only to the possibilities for action brought by the usage of digital technologies, but also to the workings of what enables them, from hardware to software through algorithms (Scarlett and Zeilinger, 2019: 20-31). Regarding the objecthood of 3D printed materials, then, this means that they are not objects that could be analyzed only in terms of what they can afford – e.g., a different engagement with heritage, or, the preservation of lost artifacts – but also in terms of what affords them – the comingling of hardware and software through a specific take on materiality.
3D prints are media made material in the sense that, to use Kirschenbaum’s concepts, the formal materiality of modern computing is transposed into physical objects, thus inverting or bypassing the forensic inscription of the object in the computer’s memory unit. This does not mean that these files are not inscribed in the hard drive – in fact, they can become generative through the interplay of stored information and the algorithms used to analyze it, as in Kraft’s Content Aware Studies – but that the 3D print is a product of the transposition of computed media into a physical, tactile object. The possible uncanniness of 3D prints, highlighted in this series of works by Kraft, originates from this, although it is frequently minimized by the reference to a previous object situated in the physical world.
The claims of the original
Up to this point, I have proceeded to highlight the mediatic character of 3D prints, either as copies – which enable the principle of preservation through reproduction – or, as in the formulation presented here, as media-made material. The major consequence of this move is to place the 3D prints, which are usually thought of as reproductions when it comes to heritage artefacts or sites, at a distance from the models they are considered to replace. However, heritage signifies precisely because it attends to the logic of historical vestiges: something was there and, through the action of time, human agency, or a combination of both, it only remains in a changed, frequently altered, damaged or fragmented state.[12] It is the link between different states of the same object (or location) that signals it as a survivor of previous times, thus bringing it uniqueness and authenticity, fulfilling Alois Riegl’s theorized concept of historical value (Riegl, 198). Concerning digital reconstructions, however, it is this very link that is weakened, although not necessarily severed, pointing to another conception of heritage itself.
Nonetheless, it would be easy to reaffirm the congruence between digital technologies and intangible cultural heritage. But if, as Chiara Bortolotto argues, the introduction of this concept in heritage practice (after UNESCO’s 2003 Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage) brought to the forefront the transition “from objects to processes” (Bortolotto, 2007), then why are objects, and not processes, being fostered by the initiatives studied here? It is to try to answer this question that I want to conclude this paper. I’ll proceed, firstly, by understanding the role of 3D modeling and printing where it first appeared regarding heritage practice, that is, in digital reconstructions of archaeological evidence. Following this, I’ll discuss these reconstructions against the backdrop of intangible cultural heritage, something that these 3D prints seem to strangely both confirm and reject. I’ll then conclude by returning to the mediatic character of these objects and, through a brief reference to the media operations that render them possible, I’ll argue that it is their iconic character that challenges the traditional conception of heritage artefacts as indexically bound to another time. It is their placement as another type of sign that makes them at the same time, amenable to and a reaction against the main tenets and conceptions of heritage practice.
When available, 3D modeling techniques become a staple of current archaeological practice, especially in non-invasive investigative approaches, such as LiDAR (Light Detection and Ranging) and varied photogrammetric practices. These are part of the array of techniques borrowed from forensics, which led also to the development of forensic archaeology since the 1980s (Anstett and Dreyfus, 2015; Hunter and Cox, 2015; Ferrándiz and Robben, 2015; Groen, Márquez-Grant and Janaway, 2015; Blan and Ubelaker, 2016; Dziuban, 2017; Moran and Gold, 2019). Despite the relevance of this topic, I’m concerned here not with archaeological practice, but with the usage of 3D modeling techniques in the confluence between archaeology and heritage, that is, with what some authors refer variedly to as “virtual archaeology”, “virtual heritage”, “digital archaeology” or “digital heritage” (Evans and Daly, 2006; Cameron and Kenderdine, 2007; Dave, 2008; Silberman, 2008).
In this sense, 3D modeling has been used since the early 1980s and increasingly in the 1990s to replicate historical structures, the United Kingdom being an early center for developing these technologies while still maintaining its lead in the field. The deployment of these techniques, notwithstanding their appeal in exhibition settings or their capacity to engage audiences, was met with a lukewarm reception by more established practitioners both in archaeology as well as heritage (Kalay, 2008; Cameron, 2007; Witcomb, 2007; Roegiers and Truyle, 2008; Silberman, 2008). At least for part of the researchers in both fields, there was the suspicion that these reconstructions, while striving to great exactness, could mislead audiences into thinking they were the only, authoritative way to represent past buildings and artifacts. This was more of a concern as these reconstructions could bypass debates in both fields, presenting as undoubtable evidence what is the result of hypotheses and conjectures by specialists. Thus, the seeming exactness of these reconstructions could, in the first place, neglect actual archaeological practice, especially the formulation of hypotheses to fill in the gaps of historical evidence; second, it could also misdirect the attention of the public from the values attributed to these places and objects which render them historically relevant towards the places and objects themselves. It was argued that these could be rendered into (falsely) “objective” views, obscuring the previously mentioned scholarly practices. Third, as a result of this, these reconstructions, precisely because of their visual appeal, could also reduce multiple perspectives into a single, unitary view, all the while neglecting the construction of meaning by the communities related to these items.
These criticisms point to a perennial fear relating to the aestheticization of the past, a gesture that many feel diminishes critical engagement towards its nuance and inscrutability. This line of critique bemoans the placing together of virtual reconstructions and a growing consumerist attitude towards the past (De Groot, 2008). Neil Silberman, for instance, argues that these reconstructions should serve “historical reflection,” in the sense that they should stimulate the audience into thinking of these reconstructions not as objective, authoritative representations but as the product of the constrictions that face historical representation in our technological present. Such constrictions, Silberman argues, are themselves historical (Silberman, 2008: 83). Besides this, the emphasis on communities and the meanings they attribute to heritage items reflects the growing understanding of the role that heritage itself plays in fostering diversity, as well as its own nature as a historical construct.
Despite the relevance of both arguments, it is also possible to point out that they are based upon an assumed understanding of 3D digital models and reconstructions as historical representations. Both arguments intend to restrain these techniques into what could be scholarly historic or archaeological methods, all the while soliciting the role of historical evidence as some kind of check for digital reconstructions. As representations, these arguments conceal an ideal of historical correctness that is based upon a correspondence with the past and are based, therefore, on the claims of the original over its copies; moreover, where evidence is absent or the archaeological record is mute, they try to make scholarly practice into a mechanism to lend credibility to these reconstructions. The framework that many of these contributions seek to offer – for instance, the collaboration between scholars and technicians – intends to build a methodologically sound ethics to ensure that these reconstructions do not appeal solely to audiences in the present nor deviate from their originals. However, can such an ethics hold the answer to the question posed before, namely: can it satisfactorily explain why objects, and not processes, are favored by these techniques?
It is also worth considering that, even when digital copies, in their varied forms, are valued for themselves, this appreciation maintains the rigid opposition between the performative aspects of heritage, such as its relations to the values held as relevant by communities, and the static character of objectual, albeit digital, reconstructions. This kind of historico-critical appraisal reprises, in a reversed fashion, the aforementioned divide between material infrastructure and digital representation of media studies, indexing an aporetic gap which a further critique can explore, namely the fleeting character of both what heritage is itself, as well as what digital technologies really amount to.
As it is well known, the concept of heritage has been revalued in the last few decades to include not only original artefacts, buildings, and historical sites, but also what was labeled, after much discussion, as intangible cultural heritage.[13] The already mentioned 2003 Convention on the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage considers this category as
(…) the practices, representations, expressions, knowledge, skills – as well as the instruments, objects, artefacts, and cultural spaces associated therewith – that communities, groups and, in some cases, individuals recognize as part of their cultural heritage. This intangible cultural heritage, transmitted from generation to generation, is constantly recreated by communities and groups in response to their environment, their interaction with nature and their history, and provides them with a sense of identity and continuity, thus promoting respect for cultural diversity and human creativity (UNESCO, 2003a, article 2, item 1).
The 2003 Convention is relevant not only for introducing a novel concept that broadens the scope of heritage practice beyond UNESCO’s 1972 Convention Concerning the Protection of the World Cultural and Natural Heritage and the program that ensued, the World Heritage Program, initiated in 1978, but it is also relevant because it consolidated a series of previous discussions related to the limitations of a particularly Eurocentric view of heritage that was enshrined in the 1972 Convention and its Operational Guidelines, approved also in 1978 (Blake, 2009; Labadi, 2010; 2013; Bortolotto, 2016; Logan, 2018). Many of these discussions were related to the role of communities in the future preservation of their traditions. Even if the 2003 Convention doesn’t solve all the problems related to the role of minorities and local groups in relation to heritage (Blake, 2009), it is possible to agree that it led to
(…) a shift from an archival documentation paradigm based on philologically determined authenticity, to one that stresses the importance of reproductions and transmission of practices for elaboration and adaptation by future generations (Bortolotto, 2007: 27-28).
This only became possible after the concept of authenticity was revised in relation to heritage, especially after the 1994 Nara Document on Authenticity, approved after the convention held at the Japanese city in November of that year. Even if authenticity is not mentioned in the text of the 1972 World Heritage Convention, it is nonetheless mentioned in the Operational Guidelines, where it is bound to the physical character of objects or buildings. The Operational Guidelines place authenticity as the continuity or restoration attending to an original condition of heritage items, stating that these “should meet the test of authenticity in design, materials, workmanship and setting,” in the sense that “authenticity does not limit consideration to original form and structure but includes all subsequent modifications and additions, over the course of time, which in themselves possess artistic or historical values” (UNESCO, 1978: §9). These criteria define authenticity vis-à-vis the character of the original as a genuine artefact; heritage items could not be forgeries nor copies or reconstructions. If considering the original as authentic serves to counter the dissemination of forgeries, it is nonetheless inadequate to heritage traditions based on the ritual reconstruction of sites nor to heritage items whose materiality is not its main character.
This is what led to the 1994 Nara Convention, whose Document defined authenticity as intrinsically related to how communities think about their traditions. According to the Nara Document, “it is not possible to base judgements of value and authenticity within fixed criteria,” meaning that “heritage properties must be considered and judged within the cultural contexts to which they belong” (UNESCO, 1994: item 3, §11). Conceived this way, authenticity is not bound to the original, genuine artefact, but results from the negotiation between different stakeholders – communities, governmental agencies, non-governmental organizations, and the UNESCO itself (Labadi, 2013: 124). For Bortolotto, whom I have already quoted here, this means that authenticity is not necessarily a criterion for inclusion in heritage lists, but becomes an instrument to assure its durability in the future, which is especially relevant for oral traditions.
It is worth noting that Sophia Labadi’s concept of “post-authenticity”, which she uses to describe the current situation regarding debates about authenticity in heritage practice, could be used – with a few tweaks – to describe what’s happening with 3D printing.[14] In this case, despite the relationship between heritage and “grand narratives”, such as those at the root of national identities, I would like to lessen the emphasis on the connection between “post-authenticity” and post-modernism and stick with the relationship between different stakeholders of heritage practice. What this implies is that authenticity is not an intrinsic feature of heritage items but acquires a performative character. It is the performance of authenticity which becomes relevant to current heritage practices, even if it is a surrogate authenticity, such as the case of 3D models and prints. Understanding this is crucial to overcome the challenges related to the role 3D reconstructions perform in heritage discourse.
3D reconstructions seem both to confirm and negate these broader developments of heritage practice. On the one hand, they are only authentic in specific settings related to the loss or absence of the original, the power of the companies or countries behind these reconstructions, and the appeal of the technologies used to create them. In this sense, they corroborate Labadi’s understanding of authenticity as the negotiation between different stakeholders. On the other hand, being virtual models or material prints, they are products, which could be understood as objects, thus acquiring relevance because they embody, even in a secondary way, traditional conceptions of heritage. 3D reconstructions enshrine the object as the foremost expression of heritage.
To understand this, it is worth returning to themes from the previous section of this paper where digital objecthood and digital materiality were under focus. As a result of this discussion, it was stated that objects are not necessarily tangible and, at the same time, that the digital is not necessarily immaterial. Instead, objecthood and materiality are affordances of digital technologies, reshaping the understanding of both what an object is and what the effects of materiality are. The same could be said of digital objects in heritage practice, which can not simply be conflated with intangible cultural heritage, even if they lack physical expression. 3D prints destabilize heritage practice, though they seem to ratify, because of the emphasis on objects, their most conventional definitions, even if they are not printed and do not come to be, as a result, tangible objects.
In order to untangle some of the difficulties brought by 3D prints to heritage discourse and practice, it is possible to direct attention to the UNESCO Charter on the Preservation of Digital Heritage, also approved in 2003. As in Espenschied’s description of the work at Rhizome, the Charter also considers that digital heritage should be stabilized into unique and authoritative objects; to quote the Charter, it states that “Long-term preservation of digital heritage begins with the design of reliable systems and processes which will produce authentic and stable digital objects” (UNESCO, 2003b: §5). Nothing could be further away from intangible cultural heritage.
How, then, should we understand 3D digital reconstructions of heritage artifacts and sites? To answer this question, it is necessary to describe some of the previously mentioned techniques used to create these reconstructions in more detail. Usually, what is used is some form of photogrammetric technique. Both photogrammetry and LiDAR are based upon the same principle: a device shoots a patterned beam of light (in the form of a laser) or an electromagnetic pulse, such as in radar and sonar devices, and the receiving end of the apparatus records and transcodes the objects that stand in the way of these beams as images.[15] Photogrammetry is involved, therefore, in the transformation of space into a series of coordinates that can be read by a machine – images are one of the products of these technical operations.
3D prints, therefore, are a result of the aforementioned “operative images”. This concept has gained traction in various ways in the last couple of decades, especially after the work of German filmmaker and essayist Harun Farocki (2004; Elsaesser, 2013; Paglen, 2014; Blumenthal-Barby, 2015; Eder & Klonk, 2017; Lee, 2019). Operative images refer to the actions performed by and through images; in this sense, the focus is not on what images depict in reality but how they enable processes that affect (and inform) the real.
Regarding this, I find it useful to work with Aud Sissel Hoel’s critical elaboration of this concept (Hoel, 2012; 2016; 2018), as it strays away from the exacerbated claims regarding operative images while advancing it towards understanding what these image-enabled processes are. Drawing upon Charles Sanders Peirce’s late philosophy of continuity[16] and diagrammatics, Hoel’s work goes beyond the divide between the documentary and artistic roles of photography or other similar image-making devices.
According to Hoel, Peirce developed a diagrammatical approach to iconicity to account for the role of instruments in scientific practice. Rejecting both mechanistic understandings of objectivity, which posed the withdrawal of the observer as the condition for reaching objectivity, as well as abstract reasoning as a way to bypass empirical observation, Peirce sought not to conflate objectivity with the functioning of apparatuses but to integrate the deviations inhering in these devices into a form of knowledge that was indebted both to abstraction and empirical observation. “Diagram-icons,” in this sense, are different from the static conception of icon he devised in his initial three-fold typology of signs (although this typology is still relevant, as I’ll soon expose); rather, diagram-icons are a generative abstraction that are based upon but not identical to perceived matter, thus conditioning the way phenomena are observed and conclusions regarding them are drawn. Hoel sums up this line of thought when she states that, according to Peirce, his “concept of evidence requires an operational conception of iconicity, where the iconic element is governed by a generative rule, much like Immanuel Kant’s schemata” (Hoel, 2012: 263), drawing the further consequence that
the concept or predicate, in other words, is seen as a schematic or diagrammatic structure that generates new relations, new modes of seeing. Hence precisive abstraction involves creative or constructive powers that productively transform the phenomenon in the very process of revealing it (Hoel, 2012: 265).
Furthermore, by drawing together both abstraction, observation and instrumentation, Peirce’s diagram-icons imply that knowledge is not based upon representation, which accords importance to indexical correspondence with reality; rather, it results from a mediation between different constituents, of which none is more privileged than the other to make claims towards knowledge.
Deeply rooted in epistemology, Peirce’s approach to diagrams enables a way to solve some of the confusions arising from the concept of operative images, including the question regarding their ambiguous visual character. Suppose operative images, as often stated, are usually “read” by machines, which understand code. In that case, the operations they enable could preclude the production of images, which would be important only as a byproduct of their functioning (and would acquire meaning only for those humans that see them). Instead, in Hoel’s words, “the diagrammatic approach (…) redraws the boundaries between images, texts and numbers as we have come to know them, emphasizing interconnections rather than oppositions” (Hoel, 2018: 26). It is here that it becomes useful to contrast “diagram-icons” and ordinary icons.
According to a well-known definition, icons participate in the tripartite economy of signs as described by Peirce by having the property to resemble the thing signified, either by reproducing it or by having the same nature of it. This character is further complicated in the diagram-icons mentioned here, as, according to Hoel, they are “defined in dynamic and operational terms. They do not simply depict the (already) visible; they make visible the (hitherto) invisible”; and, more importantly,
they do not simply resemble their objects; they make similar by providing a viewpoint or standard according to which phenomena are seen and determined. (…) Diagram-icons are forceful devices that reveal their objects by imposing a stable viewpoint or standard according to which the objects in question can be systematically delineated and compared.
The diagrammatical approach to iconicity has important consequences not only for photography but also for other image-making technologies:
When extended to photography, the diagrammatic approach highlights the role the medium plays in co-constituting objects and observers. Hence, there is a directionality to photographic mediation that falls outside the purview of the indexical notion of evidence. For as diagrammatic tools, photographic methods are understood to involve mediated, two-way exchanges with reality (Hoel, 2016: 65).
This is relevant for the relationship between 3D prints and heritage practice because, as stated before, these digital reconstructions are not indexically bound to an original, as it happens with traditional approaches to heritage, usually based on the claims of the original or their authenticity. These prints are not caused by an original; instead, most of the time it is exactly the opposite that happens: it is the absence of the original, either because it was destroyed, is inaccessible or could not be located, that motivates the making of the reconstruction.[17]
In this sense, it is useful to understand 3D prints not, once again, as indexes whose correspondence to an original is the main criteria for evaluating their character as representations, but as icons whose relationship of resemblance towards an original opens the space of mimesis and creation. Considering the understanding of icons against the backdrop of indexes and symbols, as first described by Peirce, the iconic character of 3D reconstructions of heritage is most evident in the fact that they usually resemble their originals in only some aspects and not others. For instance, when the original is solid, they could be translucid, as in Mohreshin Allahyari’s Material Speculation: ISIS; or when the original was built in a grandiose scale, the copies could be made in a diminished size.
They are not, however, solely invented objects, although the possibility of deviation shows that the originals make limited claims towards their copies. The absence of indexicality is not an excuse for arbitrariness; instead, as Hoel points out, operative images are co-constitutive of the objects upon which they intervene. In this sense, the attention to photogrammetric techniques shows that these reconstructions are made through careful, even if machinic, observation techniques that could render them as more exact and detailed than their originals. 3D reconstructions of heritage, thus, elevate the stakes of authenticity further, bringing together copies, objects, and media.
*
In this paper, I have sought to formulate a more proper basis for the theoretical understanding of 3D models and 3D copies in heritage practice. I started with the understanding of copies, then proceeded to the discussion of how digital media complicates the notion of materiality and followed with a long discussion regarding these technologies and recent developments in the concept and practice of heritage. When these three strains of discussion come together, it becomes possible – so my argument goes – to conclude that these recreations change or reverse the conventional indexical nature of heritage into the performative operation and iconic character of media constructs. As I stated at the end of the previous section, this does not mean that these objects are solely inventions without relation to their “real-life” originals. Instead, it is precisely because they relate to these originals that these tensions pointed here appear, especially those related to the concept of heritage. My goal, therefore, was to demonstrate the shortcomings of equating tangibility and indexicality when applied to 3D-modeled or printed reconstructions of heritage. This equation previously led to a narrow concept of authenticity that had no space for a proper understanding of these same models and prints. 3D models and prints belong to two different but interrelated regimes, one from heritage, another from new media, and, perhaps, by considering this, it becomes possible, as I hope the examples showed, to construct more imaginative, innovative approaches to historical heritage.
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**I would like to thank the organizers, attendants, and fellow panelists at the 5th Biennial Conference of the Association for Critical Heritage Studies (ACHS) held online in June 2020, as well as at the Heritage Justice Spring Symposium also organized by the ACHS in June 2021 and at the Art Machines 2: International Symposium on Machine Learning and Art organized by the City University of Hong Kong in 2021. On these occasions, I had the pleasure to learn from the questions posed, especially by Hilay Morgan Leathem Ventura and Walter Francisco Figueiredo Lowande, as well as to know Egor Kraft’s Content Aware Studies, which became part of the investigation conducted here.
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Notes
[1.] For some of these projects, see the websites for The Institute for Digital Archaeology, http://digitalarchaeology.org.uk; CyArk, https://www.cyark.org; Rekrei (formerly Project Mosul), https://projectmosul.org; Google Arts and Culture, “The Art and Soul of Mosul”, https://artsandculture.google.com/project/return-of-mosul/lostheritage; see also Drone Imaging, the company behind the 3D modeling of Basantapur Square, heavily damaged in the 2015 earthquake in Katmandu, https://www.dronesimaging.com/en/earthquake-in-nepal-3d-modeling-basantapur-square/.
[2.] There are, naturally, other ways to understand heritage that are not bounded to the original artefact nor place. Those will be discussed in the third and last section of this paper.
[3.] For more information on this project, see “Egor Kraft – Content Aware Studies [Film Trailer]”, available at https://vimeo.com/419305104, uploaded May 16th, 2020.
[4.] See Material Speculation: ISIS (2015-2016) at http://www.morehshin.com/material-speculation-isis/. See also Allahyari & Rourke (2017).
[5.] Lopes et al., “From ashes to ashes”, 182; 187.
[6.] The relationship between copyright and copying is emphasized by Ines Weizman, when she states that “While in modern fiction the doppelgänger had to be murdered to escape the threat of replication, modern copyright law was set in place to control and regulate such crimes in the field of culture. Copying, I here posit, is a cultural form that is the most fundamental basis for media” (Weizman, 2017: 58). A broader, more anthropological argument regarding the role of mimesis and cultural practices is made by Taussig (1992).
[7.] According to Aristotle, “From childhood men have an instinct for representation, and in this respect, man differs from the other animals in that he is far more imitative and learns his first lessons by representing things. And then there is the enjoyment people always get from representations. What happens in actual experience proves this, for we enjoy looking at accurate likenesses of things which are themselves painful to see, obscene beasts, for instance, and corpses” (Poetics, 1148b).
[8.] This could also be said of computer printing in general, a question seldom posed regarding digital media. An exception is Gitelman, 2014, which is also related to the concept of “post-digital” as elaborated by Cramer, 2015.
[9.] This concept was formulated mostly in Eye/Machine, a video installation produced by Harun Farocki in 2011 and then elaborated on in a series of essays, including Farocki (2004).
[10.] Ashley M. Scarlett and Martin Zeilinger, “Rethinking Affordance”, in Media Theory Journal 3, no. 1 (2019), 1-48, also available at https://mediatheoryjournal.org/ashley-scarlett-martin-zeilinger-rethinking-affordance/.
[11.] As an analytical category, “affordance” was first theorized by J. J. Gibson who “sought to account for the fundamental means through which agents (human or otherwise) navigate, conceptualize and more generally relate to their environment”, In this sense, “affordance” refers to the relationship between an agent and its environment. Don Normal, on the other hand, developed the concept as the affordances imbued in objects, translating it into a design vocabulary to which the concept remains mostly attached (Scarlett and Zeilinger, 2019: 5-6).
[12.] The main trope of historical vestiges could be thought of as synecdoche, that is, the establishment of a relationship of pars pro toto regarding the remains from the past and the past itself. To further develop this insight, see Ricoeur, 1988: 116-126.
[13.] There are previous developments inside UNESCO related to an expanded notion of heritage, such as the creation, in 1982, of the section of “non-material heritage”, following the critiques voiced since 1972 by indigenous groups regarding the limits of the definition of heritage as stated in the World Heritage Convention. Also in 1982, the World Conference on Cultural Policies, held in Mexico City, recognized a broader understanding of heritage, without formalizing it, however. See Bortolotto, 2007: 23.
[14.] Regarding Sophia Labadi’s original formulation (Labadi, 2010), I think the relationship to post-modernism is overstated, as well as the critical intention of pointing the role of intangible cultural heritage to national identity. It is for this reason that I use “post-authenticity” as a performative take on authenticity, thus acquiring a denotative more than connotative character.
[15.] Other techniques for the construction of 3D reconstructions are based on the combination and extrapolation of photographic evidence.
[16.] This refers to the mathematical understanding of the nature of geometry and, additionally, to the role of reasoning in comprehending the symbolic relationship between cognition, perception and abstract thought. For an exploration of this concept and its importance in Peirce’s late oeuvre, see Stjernfelt, 2007.
[17.] I’m aware, however, that for Paul Ricoeur, expanding upon Martin Heidegger’s reflection on the historical, it is the dialectics between presence and absence that creates the trace. My argument is a simpler one and relates only to the causal relation between trace and imprint, which becomes more loose when considering 3D prints.
Figures
Figures 1-3: Egor Kraft, Content Aware Studies © Egor Kraft
Figure 4: Mohrehshin Allaryari, Material Speculation: ISIS, “King Uthal” © Mohrehshin Allahyari
Figure 5: Mohrehshin Allaryari, Material Speculation: ISIS, “Lamassu” © Mohrehshin Allahyari
Figure 6: Mohrehshin Allaryari, Material Speculation: ISIS, “Gorgon” © Mohrehshin Allahyari
Figure 7: 3D printed replica of the skull of “Luzia” © LAPID/Museu Naciona/UFRJ and INT/MCTIC
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