Hands-on workshop at the National Archives, London

 

New Digital Tools for Painting Analysis: Introduction to an AI-aided Heritage Materials Research Platform for Collaboration, Linking and Interpretation of Data. 

 

Wednesday 26th March, 09.30-14.30, Registration fee £5  

Please register at https://onlinestore.ntu.ac.uk/product-catalogue/science-technology/workshops/from-lima-to-canton-workshop-1-new-digital-tools-for-painting-analysis. 

 

Current development of research infrastructure for heritage science, both in Europe (E-RIHS) and in the UK (RICHeS), means that there will be an increased use of scientific analysis in cultural heritage research, employing multiple complementary techniques. Linking and organisation of data become an urgent priority to ensure effective analysis and interdisciplinary collaboration. Additionally, imaging spectroscopy, including reflectance and X-ray fluorescence spectral imaging are increasingly used in cultural heritage materials analysis. However, the high volume of data offered by non-invasive analysis requires a new approach to data collection, processing, and analysis. 

  

A new workflow and digital tools for the analysis of large amounts and different types of data has been developed by the international research project From Lima to Canton and Beyond: An AI-aided Heritage Materials Research Platform for Studying Globalisation through Art, and form part of the NTU ISAAC Research Centre DigiLab Service.  

 

The project is led by Professor Haida Liang of Imaging and Sensing for Archaeology, Art history and Conservation (ISAAC) at Nottingham Trent University in the UK, Dr Marcus Burke of the Hispanic Society of America, and Dr Blythe McCarthy of the National Museum of Asian Art in the US. It has brought together curatorial, heritage science and conservation colleagues from the UK (Nottingham Trent University; The National Archives; Royal Botanical Gardens, Kew; Royal Geographical Society; Royal Horticultural Society) and from the US (Hispanic Society of America; Smithsonian Institution; Library of Congress; Indiana University; Yale; Getty Conservation Institute, Museum of International Folk Art).  

 

A hands-on workshop designed for current practitioners of material analysis and those interested in applying scientific analysis to heritage materials will be held on Wednesday 26th March from 10am at the National Archives, London, UK, to disseminate the tools that have been developed.  While the workshop will begin with examples from the project, it is highly applicable to other heritage science projects for documenting, linking, organising, analysing, and visualising data during the various stages from data capture and analysis to collaboration. Participants can bring their own laptops and will be able to download the GUISI and MAPSI software to work on example data.

 

The program will include:   

 

1-      A short overview of the project and how the international team worked together to achieve the project aims. 

 

2-      An introduction to the novel workflow developed as part of the project that streamlines the combined use of mobile laboratory equipment and museum facilities for data collection, followed by a digital platform for data annotation, organisation, analysis, visualisation, and collaboration.   

 

3-      An interactive session with the opportunity to gain hands-on experience on the new digital tools.  

 

The project was made possible by a UK Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) and US National Endowment for Humanities (NEH) joint funding initiative: New Directions for Digital Scholarship in Cultural Institutions. It follows an earlier AHRC funded UK-US project AI for DIGILAB: A New Concept in Digital Infrastructure for Heritage Materials Research. 

​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​