Answering Century-Old Questions Through New Technology
Many 16th century discussions on the topic of ideal proportions in sculpture were geared toward understanding Michelangelo's style and perspective. For Wasserman, the proportion and details of the second Pietá are curious; some parts are excessively elongated, while others seem suspiciously small. "The ability to stand each figure of this Pietá up straight without distorting the dimensions and proportions would provide valuable insight into the question of what Michelangelo's proportions were like, his general concept of proportions, how he meant the work to be viewed at his tomb site, and, perhaps, his intent in taking a hammer to it."
In 1997, Wasserman's desire to answer questions surrounding the statue and view it from new vantage points brought him to IBM and Gabriel Taubin, head of the visual and geometric computing group at IBM Research and specialist in geometric and image-based computation.
To Taubin, not only was the task at hand of artistic interest, but "it presented technological challenges in the area of data collection and assembly into a three-dimensional model that (goes) beyond the scope of existing techniques."
Digitizing the Florentine Pietá for a near-perfect replica requires IBM scientists to take nearly 700 individual digital shape photographs of this 2.5 meters tall statue. The relative positions of the shape photographs with respect to the sculpture must be determined to assemble all of them into a single accurate digital, three-dimensional representation of the work in the computer.
IBM, in conjunction with a company called Visual Interface Inc., used a Virtuoso shape camera, a six-lense camera that uses structured light and multi-baseline stereo techniques to capture three-dimensional shape images, to capture slightly differing points of views of parts of the statue. From these, a computer algorithm determines relative positions of the shape photographs to the surface and reconstructs the image in three dimensions. Texture and color information is captured by a color camera mounted on top of the Virtuoso.
While developing new hardware and software to manage the enormous amounts of data collected in digitizing this Pietá was challenging, Taubin sees some of these methods being applied more generally to the problem of digitizing very large real-world objects--priceless artistic masterpieces, for instance, or works of architecture. This would enable examination of an object in exquisite detail even without access to the original. Long-term, consumer applications such as three dimensional cameras and camcorders could be possible.
This winter, IBM's work on the Michelangelo's Florentine Pietá will be compiled in a book of essays on the sculpture that will be edited by Wasserman and published next year by Princeton University Press. "The main function of the book is to document the statue factually in as extensive way as possible," says Wasserman, "and also to have analytical studies, theoretical studies--from historical, scientific and aesthetic points of view--of the various information gathered from the statue. The fundamental importance of the book is to make available a fully-documented presentation of the statue and expose some of the questions and possible answers. These may be right or wrong but will at least open fresh areas of thought, with the idea that future scholars may add more documentation to it."
