The Digital Restoration Initiative: Reading the Invisible Library
Prof. Brent Seales, University of Kentucky
W. Coulson Memorial Lecture
AIA - Philadelphia Society Fall Lecture
Sunday, September 23rd at 2 pm
Penn Museum
W. Coulson Memorial Lecture
AIA - Philadelphia Society Fall Lecture
Sunday, September 23rd at 2 pm
Penn Museum
Damaged artifacts that contain text make up an “invisible library” of written material that is incredibly difficult to read. But progress over the past decade using new computer techniques for the digitization and analysis of text found in cultural objects (inscriptions, manuscripts, scrolls) has led to workable, non-invasive methods for reading this invisible library. This talk shows results over the past two decades from digital restoration projects on Homeric manuscripts, Herculaneum material, and Dead Sea scrolls, culminating in the reading of the text from within a damaged scroll unearthed at En-Gedi, which has been hailed as one of the most significant discoveries in biblical archaeology of the past decade. The talk concludes by unveiling a new approach - Reference-Amplified Computed Tomography (RACT) – where machine learning becomes a crucial part of the digital restoration pipeline.
