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FACCE. I molti volti della storia umana. Una mostra open source

Telmo Pievani, Moreno Tiziani, Alessandro Bezzi, Luca Bezzi, Cicero Moraes, Nicola Carrara

«Archeologia e Calcolatori» 2016, Supplemento 8, 271-279

Abstract

In 2012 a partnership between Arc-Team s.r.l., Antrocom onlus and the Museum of Anthropology (University of Padua) started the Taung project, whose aim was the facial reconstruction of the fossil known as Taung child, a specimen of Australopithecus africanus discovered by Raymond Dart in 1924. It was a perfect pilot project of open research, developed with open tools and focused on sharing knowledge and data. On the basis of this experience, three years later the same partnership organized the exhibition called FACCE. I molti volti della storia umana, which opened to the general public in Padua on the 14th of February 2015. The main topics of this exhibition were the human face and the reconstruction of 27 skulls, 22 of them related to human evolution and 5 related to famous people connected to Padua (St. Anthony of Padua, Luca Belludi, Francesco Petrarca, Giovanni Battista Morgagni and the mummy of an Egyptian priest preserved in the museum’s collection). The common thread of this exhibition offers an opportunity to address well-known anthropology issues, highlighting how the boundaries of the study of this discipline have changed a lot over time, often coming to overturn today what was affirmed in the past. The main characteristic of this event is the fact that it can be considered an open source exhibition, maybe the first of its kind. All processes, from the scanning of skulls using Computer Vision techniques to the modelling of the faces and presentation of the results to the media, were performed using only Free and Open Source Software. Moreover, all the products (images, videos and augmented reality apps) will be released under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution, which is a kind of license approved for free cultural work.

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Subjects:

Virtual Reality and 3D Modelling Data dissemination and education

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Publishers:

CNR - Istituto di Scienze del Patrimonio Culturale

Edizioni All'Insegna del Giglio