The colours of the past meet the technology of the future
The Danish-German collaborative project TORCH uses new technology to deepen our understanding of shared cultural heritage.
The Conservation Centre Vejle and SDU are part of an interdisciplinary collaboration that gives museums and cultural institutions access to advanced technology - and shows how research and culture can enrich each other across disciplines and sectors.
- The Dark Ages may not have been so dark after all, but rather an explosion of colours, says associate professor Jacek Fiutowski from SDU Nanophotonics, who is heading the TORCH research project.
”Using advanced technologies such as spectroscopy and digital imaging, we can reveal hidden details in historical artefacts, giving us a deeper insight into their origin and condition.
New technology sheds light on cultural heritage
Through the project, cultural institutions and the museum sector gain access to research facilities and technical expertise and in return bring their professional knowledge and real-world challenges to the research.
The result is new knowledge about colours, materials and manufacturing techniques:
- The project gives us a unique chance to understand what Ribe looked like in colour centuries ago. Recently, we looked at an old merchant's house at Mellemdammen 18 in Ribe. The common assumption has been that houses in Ribe were brown, black and yellowish colours, but it turned out that Mellemdammen 18 was painted with a rich palette of red, blue and green colours. It was so colourful and so beautiful, says Lise Ræder Knudsen, conservator at Conservation Centre Vejle, full of enthusiasm.
The conservator will use the technology and the new knowledge to create augmented reality for your mobile phone, so you as a tourist in Ribe can see what the street once looked like. In this way, the experts will not only gain new historical knowledge themselves, but also translate scientific analysis into communication and make the new knowledge vivid and accessible to everyone.
Collaboration across sectors and borders
Conservators work with historical artefacts on a daily basis, but rarely have access to the kind of advanced analysis technology available at a university. In the TORCH project, this gap has been bridged: Conservators take samples from historical building parts and archaeological finds, which are then analysed at SDU's laboratories in Sønderborg and at Kiel University.
The collaboration integrates different subject areas such as engineering, materials research, chemistry, informatics as well as design and creativity to shed light on previously unknown aspects of history.
Lise Ræder Knudsen sees great potential in the collaboration:
”We have lots of projects in the pipeline. We have Danish artefacts to scan and our German colleagues have ships and ropes from the Viking Age to analyse. It's very interesting and can lead to new insights.
About the TORCH project
TORCH (Technological Enlightenment to Preserve and Explore Regional Cultural Heritage) is a Danish-German project connecting the cultural sector with research environments in Denmark and Germany.
With partners such as NanoSYD, Konserveringscenter Vejle, CAU Kiel, Newtec Engineering A/S and Museum für Archäologie Schloss Gottorf, the goal is to transform historical knowledge into a living, interactive experience and to connect past and present through research and technology.
The TORCH project has received approximately DKK 10.7 million in funding from the EU programme Interreg Deutschland-Danmark.
Kontakt
Er du interesseret i at høre mere om dine muligheder for at samarbejde med SDU?