Haas, Franziska
Das Digitale und die Denkmalpflege: Bestandserfassung – Denkmalvermittlung – Datenarchivierung – Rekonstruktion verlorener Objekte
The ‘digital revolution’ is now in full swing. For heritage conservation, digital tools have opened new perspectives, finding application in the interactive visualization of past situations, the monitoring of threatened sites and artefacts, or the complex cross-referencing of heterogeneous collections of knowledge. At the same time, the limits and unsolved problems associated with using digital technologies are also becoming more apparent, for example with regard to maintaining the rapidly-growing volumes of data being generated.
And yet with digitization, we are not dealing primarily with a ‘technical’ innovation. Thus the effort to conserve digital heritage, including documenting, researching and publishing cultural assets, will transform more than just the institution of the museum. The new abundance of digitally-generated images can also be seen to be changing the standards of the scientific and academic discipline. A further and as yet underappreciated aspect of the digital revolution is the way it is rearranging the foci of attention in the knowledge ‘market’.
Perhaps the most noticeable consequence of digitization’s promise of exact and comprehensive reproduction is the knee-jerk insistence, following every instance of the spectacular destruction of a famous monument, on creating a reconstruction. Here it is clear that an affinity for reconstruction is inherent in the digital, to the extent that its primary feature is its capacity to translate all information into binary code, to capture and copy exactly, supposedly without loss of detail. In the digital age, the distinction between original and copy will therefore lose relevance – at the cost of a total manipulability of data, and of reality.
Virtual Palaces, Part II: Lost Palaces and their Afterlife. Virtual Reconstruction between Science and Media
This volume deals with digital reconstructions and visualizations of palaces, castles, and other kinds of residential architecture of the early modern period. It focuses not so much on the digital modelling of extant buildings, but rather on the virtual reconstruction of ‘lost’ buildings – in particular of palaces destroyed or drastically altered, or which were never actually built in the first place.
The thirteen papers collected in this volume were first presented at the PALATIUM workshop Virtual Palaces, Part II held in Munich in April 2012.
Avantgarde oder uncool? Denkmalpflege in der Transformationsgesellschaft
Under the deliberately provocative title "Avantgarde or uncool?", this volume examines traditions of how heritage preservation is perceived by itself and by others. The background to this critical review is the question of the necessity of repositioning the profession - not only in view of the current challenges of climate change, but also the increasing political and social need for participation. The volume thus brings together not only reflections on the profession's self-image in times of change, but also on professional positions in relation to current issues such as participation, climate change and diversity.
