Emerging materiality through dynamic digital conservation

Abstract In the neuralgic field of restoration of delicate sculptural artworks, the contribution of high-precision, contactless three-dimensional (3D) recording in the documentation of their current condition and their further digital investigation are proven valuable. However, the incredible possibilities of the digital sphere oppose the limitations of the matter, raising case-specific ethical and practical issues that highlight the complexity of the restoration process. The nature of the construction material(s) of any cultural artifact determines not only their aging and deterioration ratio in relation to their exposure to environmental conditions but also the ethically acceptable and practically feasible degree of intervention for their conservation. So far, the digital conservation approaches concern artifacts made of rigid materials, such as ceramic and stone. Their very nature determines their conservation treatment in the real world and dictates their digital approach, which orbits around the repositioning of their detached fragments, the supplementation or reconstruction of their lost parts, the design of support structures for display or storage, etc. The singularity of the ‘Xenophanes’ figurine lies in its strong plasticity and the malleable contemporary construction materials (wax and plasticine), which require specialized conservation interventions to be preserved. Over time, the inclination of the figurine has changed significantly, posing stability and deformation issues; its head and stick are detached, and both hands are lost. The timeline of the weathering of this particular artwork is documented at two points in time, in 2005 and 1994. This paper presents the first stage of an ongoing investigation. It includes the documentation of the artworks with both active and passive recording methods, their post-processing methodology offering the opportunity to combine their strengths and integrate them in the resulting 3D model. This final model was subsequently used to accomplish the digital restoration of the figurine to its earlier state(s). The workflow of 3D keyframe animation facilitated the restoration of our non-rigid figurine in digital time. The complexity of the decision-making process for the digital restoration of flexible artworks is highlighted by a series of ethical and applied considerations that arise during the procedure, along with the desire for a digital 3D object that corresponds to the singularity of the authentic artwork in order to evaluate the restoration possibility of the latter. The nature and needs of the figurine studied here allow a dynamic digital post-processing conservation approach that moves beyond reassembly, and within the limits of the tolerances of its construction materials for its reformation, in order to study the restoration steps to earlier states as well as the simulation of a possible physical approach to the object. In such an approach, where the materiality and plasticity of the authentic artifact are interwoven with the protocol for the digital conservation approach, the knowledge and experience of an Information and Communication Technology (ICT) skilled conservator was instrumental.