Recorded for posterity: 3D snaps of isle’s historic sites

Sunday 25 September 2011

IT is a mission inspired by the destruction of two 1500-year-old giant Buddha statues in Afghanistan, which were lost to the world forever after being reduced to rubble by the Taliban.

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These images of the remains of the community which existed some 80 years ago on the archipelago of St Kilda, off the Western Isles, show how hundreds of cultural heritage sites around the world are being preserved for future generations using 3D scans.

One day it could even enable tourists to walk around virtual reality recreations of ancient sites in museums thousands of miles away, in the style of a Star Trek “holodeck”.Ruins on St Kilda’s main island of Hirta were scanned in July this year to create a series of highly accurate images which capture the abandoned cottages and unique “sheds” made of stone and turf littered across the island.From the late 1850s, St Kilda experienced a sharp decline in population, food shortages and increasing isolation from the rest of Britain until it was finally abandoned in 1930.The digital images will be used to help the site’s conservation and made available to the public to allow a glimpse into the past life of the remote lonely isle. It is one of 10 sites being recorded by a team from Historic Scotland and Glasgow School of Art as part of a global project.When complete, the images will be stored by CyArk, a US non-profit organisation which was set up to digitally record heritage sites across the world, a project inspired by the destruction of the Buddhas of Bamiyan in Afghanistan.Elizabeth Lee, director of projects and development at CyArk, said around 50 sites had been recorded to date, with a target of capturing 500 sites over five years.She likened it to a digital version of the fabled library of Alexandria in Egypt, one of the wonders of the ancient world.“The library there was all about collecting information on a global scale for that point of history, so we are trying to do a similar thing and just capture as much information as is out there,” she said.“With the digital records, we have highly accurate models of these sites, which can be preserved for the future. Down the road, we can just begin to imagine what people can do with this type of data. “We have some partners who are taking the data and doing life-size immersive 3D projections, getting closer to the Star Trek ‘holodeck’.”Other sites which have been recorded in Scotland as part of the digital preservation project include New Lanark, Neolithic Orkney, the Antonine Wall, and the Old and New town of Edinburgh. Other sites around the world include Mount Rushmore in the US, the Rani ki Vav sculptures and steps in India, and the Eastern Qing Tombs in China.There are now plans for Scotland to become the first country in the world to digitally record all its historic monuments.David Mitchell, director of conservation at Historic Scotland, said the remoteness of St Kilda had presented a logistical challenge, with boats and helicopters used to transport the expensive scanning equipment.He added: “We were spectacularly lucky as it was wall-to-wall sunshine for two weeks. “From that point of view it could have been really difficult and it was really challenging to get all the kit out, but it went fantastically smoothly.“We are still processing the data, because we have collected such a vast amount of it.”

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Recorded for posterity: 3D snaps of isle’s historic sites

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