Digitising the Lazaret at Peel Island

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CyArk, Leprosy (Hansen's Disease), Moreton Bay, Peel Island, University of Queensland

Since 2012, students from the Architecture Faculty at the University of Queensland (UQ) have been involved in digitising the former lazaret at Peel Island for the CyArk project.  One of the pieces of equipment they have been using is the robot shown below. This proved invaluable in scanning the interior of the former doctor’s house at the institution, whose floors have been rendered unsafe for humans to tread due to whiteant infestation.

The three wheeled robot with GoPro cameras front and back

To explain how CyArk works, it is best to go to its website at cyark.org which explains to us initiated folk:

CyArk uses cutting edge technology to capture detailed 3D representations of world’s significant cultural heritage sites before they are lost to natural disasters, destroyed by human aggression or ravaged by the passage of time.

By bouncing laser light off the surfaces, 3D scanners measure millions of points a second, accurate to a few millimeters to create a 3D data set, or point cloud. Colours represent the intensity of reflection from the surface.

Individual data points are joined together via small triangles, connecting each of the dots and forming a wireframe. These triangles are used to form a solid surface from the points, which creates a solid 3D model.

The 3D model generated from the point cloud is then coloured using photographs taken of the surface of the structure. The result is a photo-real 3D model which can be used to further study the monument and used for conservation and education.

This week I attended a demonstration of the Peel Island project at UQ, along with other members of the Friends of Peel Island Association (http://www.fopia.org.au) and the Queensland Parks and Wildlife Service. The work already done by the UQ students is impressive and it is hoped to have the project uploaded on the CyArk site in the not too distant future. When this happens you’ll be able to  digitally explore the lazaret as it was back in 1955!

Peel Island Lazaret – c.1955 – buildings panorama (image from Dr Morgan Gabriel)

My only misgiving was the length of the project’s digital life on the web, given the rate at which the web’s technology is outdated. CyArk claims that it will keep up with all changes so that the project will last forever. Now ‘Forever’ is a rather a bold statement when it comes to the internet. I’ll be interested to see whether this claim holds true!

Collaborative Consumption

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airbnb, airtasker, über, goget, openshed

Collaborative consumption via Laptop

A recent article in a Probus magazine speculated that this sharing of resources, services and goods will be our future. How many of us still have expensive tools we bought for a house renovation job and have never used since? In hindsight, we might have been better off hiring them in the first place. I still have such tools, even though I have long since sold the house and now live in a unit. I keep them ‘just in case’. I could have hired them from one of the Hire Shops at the time. These days, I can hire them from Internet sites.  Not only that, I now can even use these sites to hire out my unused tools to others.

The Internet has certainly revolutionised the way we live and think. And not just in sharing tools. It has moved into other areas with a huge impact: Airbnb offers a cheaper holiday alternative to hotels; goget hires cars; openshed hires just about any household items; uber will taxi you; and airtasker will find someone to supply your need.

Of course there is an element of risk (such as quality, insurance), and I still feel loathe to try them out, but as time passes, and they become the norm, I, like many others, will weaken and accept them as everyday.

Digital Dark Age

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Aborigine, Cave art, iPad, Microsoft, Myst

Digital Dark Age

My iPad won’t come back!

My first doubts as to the longevity of computers were cast in the 1990s when my favourite game ‘Myst’ no longer worked after Microsoft updated its Windows operating system. Since then, an increasing number of my programmes have been rendered useless by the ‘advance’ of technology. And anyone who has been Secretary to a community group will know how quickly their groups laptops have fallen into ‘clunkiness’.

My concerns were recently reinforced when I read that Vint Cef, a Google Vice President, is worried that all the images and documents we have been saving on computers will eventually be lost as hardware and software become obsolete. He fears that future generations will have little or no record of the 21st Century as we enter what he describes as a “digital Dark Age”. Our life, our memories, our most cherished family photographs increasingly exist as bits of information – on our hard drives or in “the cloud”. But as technology moves on, they risk being lost in the wake of an accelerating digital revolution.

So what will we do if we can’t ‘google it’? My wife will be lost without Doctor Google to confirm her diagnoses; my Facebook will become friendless; my Twitter world will fall silent.

More worringly, as our present digital storage expands, so we are eliminating our more conventional hard-copy storage.

Will all that will remain of our lives be a black screen?

Maybe, after all,  the Aborigines had the right idea with their cave art.

Aboriginal cave art