Color The Temple: Using Projected Light to Restore Color

One of the goals of the MediaLab is to explore the use of design and emerging technologies to improve the museum experience. Projection mapping, also known as spatial augmented reality, is a technology that can turn physical objects and buildings into a surface for projected light. This technique creates an enhanced experience for the audience by combining digital information with real objects. While the MediaLab was exploring how projection mapping could be used in the Museum, an opportunity arose to collaborate with the Department of Egyptian Art.

Did You Know The Temple Wasn't Always Beige?

Temples in Egypt, and in much of the ancient world, were not only carved with detailed reliefs, but also painted with vivid colors, like the example from the Karnak Temple Complex shown above. The small square shows a cleaned surface in an otherwise soot- and grime-covered relief scene. This small section at Karnak allows visitors to see the temple in new ways, and we set out to do this digitally with The Temple of Dendur.

Research on Colors and Patterns

To start the process of our digital recreation of the colors on The Temple of Dendur, we began by using a variety of sources—including the Temple itself, surveys of both Dendur and other temples, and objects from the Met's collection—to research the original colors of the Temple. Looking first to the Temple, we considered exploring several of the scenes. Ultimately, we focused on one scene in which the figures and glyphs were well preserved in the stone, because it would allow us to isolate various elements to tell the story of the scene. Logistically, we needed to be on the south wall, away from the direct sunlight coming through the windows, so that the natural light wouldn't wash out the projected light.

We looked for remnants of color on this scene, both with the naked eye and a technique known as visible-induced luminescence (VIL) imaging, but, unfortunately and unsurprisingly, we found none. Although the arid desert is a good environment for preserving antiquities, sand and wind erosion over two thousand years, as well as flooding, deteriorated the surface. However, early reports regarding the Temple before it was flooded provided some key insights.

Making It Digital

The first step in the process of projecting colors onto the Temple was to create a digital version of the scene we chose. We used high-resolution photographs of the south wall, where our chosen scene was located, as a reference for our recreation. Our goal was to create a type of image that we could use to easily switch the colors of different parts of the scene, so we decided to make a vector-based image instead of a raster, pixel-based image because this type of image would allow us to easily change the style of each shape independently. We imported the photographs in Adobe Illustrator and added a layer to the image so that we could trace the original lines of the scene.

One of the benefits of our project was having access to the Temple as the primary resource for research. Once we started creating vector images and line drawings, it became apparent that the original carved lines of some of the hieroglyphs and figures were subject to erosion and therefore not very visible. We didn't want to simply copy and paste from what past scholars thought the Temple's carving should look like. Instead, we compared our line drawings and previously published versions of the hieroglyphs and figures with the stone itself, and came up with a version that combined that information.

We used MadMapper to align our drawing with the Temple because it allowed us to modify the graphics on screen such that they would appear correct if the projector was not facing the Temple straight on, or if we needed to make small adjustments to align with the carvings on the irregular surface of the stone. We bridged openFrameworks and MadMapper with Syphon, a plug-in that enables image sharing across applications in real time.

What's Next

Through rigorous research, prototyping, discussion, and iteration, we have managed to cast new light on the Temple by presenting it in a fashion much closer to its original form for the first time in many millennia. Using relatively recent advances in software, we were able to experiment with restoration using nondestructive means (projected light rather than a material like paint) to temporarily display content without presenting any challenges for conservation.