Digital Art History Workshop

On Nov 11, 2024, Mengge Cao, Postdoctoral Scholar in the Department of Art History, in collaboration with the Research Computing Center, led a digital art history workshop. During the first part of the workshop, students were introduced to key concepts including the difference between “digital” and “digitization,” “data” and “capta,” as well as the basics of computer graphics and 3D imaging technologies. The importance of a question-driven approach to digital art history research as opposed to a tool-driven one was explored, in order to avoid the common pitfall that “when given a hammer, everything begins to looks like a nail”. Using his dissertation research and CAEA’s Dispersed Chinese Art Digitization Project (DCADP) as examples, Dr. Cao demonstrated his approach to combining data analysis with historical research.

In the second part of the workshop, students were invited to try photogrammetry scanning with their own mobile devices, and experience mixed reality applications in VR headsets. By demonstrating the accessibility and relatively easy learning curve of these tools, the ability for researchers without technical backgrounds to produce “rapid prototypes” was emphasized, rather than focusing on perfection. In addition, Dr. Kea Johnston from the Institute for the Study of Ancient Cultures (ISAC) shared her process of designing automatic workflows for creating 3D models of ancient Egyptian art objects, and Prof. Niall Atkinson (Art History) discussed his spatial reconstruction of soundscapes in Early Modern European cities. Students expressed a strong interest in learning more about the applications of 3D scanning and immersive technologies in art historical and archaeological research, pedagogy, and curatorial practices. Dr. Cao is currently planning a second workshop focusing on 3D scanning for the upcoming winter quarter.