Contexts for Conservation

AICCM National Conference 2013 on the verge embracing innovation and new connections Thursday 24th October, 11am

Aaron Cope/Seb Chan: "Planetary: collecng and preserving code as a living object" The Smithsonian Cooper-Hewi Naonal Design Museum recently acquired its first piece of soware and interac- on, a music player an interacve data visualizaon for the iPad called "Planetary". And then promptly gave it away, releasing the underlying source code under an open license as a way to explore and push up against the re- alies of soware and hardware obsolescence inherent in most digital acquisions and more broadly how cultural heritage instuons can collect otherwise "intangible" objects like interacon design.

Doug Williams: Ironbark Heritage “Be Careful What You Wish For - Laser Scanning of Museum Objects: Planning, Workflow and Communicaon.” 3D laser scanning is becoming more commonplace in the museum and conservaon environment. However, the pro- cess is not always straighorward, nor are scans for one purpose always applicable for another and the intended end use of the scan will dictate the approaches used to manage the scanning process. For example, a scan used to cap- ture a very general shape to design a mount or stand may not be of sufficient resoluon to achieve a detailed 3D model for prinng or archival purposes. Issues of resoluon, accuracy, data storage and processing are important to think about when planning to use 3D scanning for conservaon purposes. We will examine some of these issues with reference to a series of scans performed for the Australian War Memorial.”

Alice Gorman: Flinders University In 1958, a new kind of human artefact entered a new environment, when Sputnik 1 successfully entered Earth orbit. Although it remained there for only for a few months, it was the precursor of an enre industry which has resulted in thousands of satellites, rocket bodies and other objects currently orbing the Earth. Many of these have great cul- tural significance. They represent numerous ‘firsts’ (eg the first acve telecommunicaons commercial satellite, Tel- star 1), naonal aspiraons in space, design and technology evoluon, and the ideologies which drove their launch – most parcularly in the Cold War. Elsewhere, I have argued that ‘space junk’ forms an organically evolved cultural landscape which has value in its own right. For this reason, and also because the Burra Charter recommends that in good heritage management one should “do as lile as possible but as much is necessary”, I have suggested that re- moval of space objects to Earth is not the most appropriate strategy. On the other hand, the space environment is far from the simple vacuum of popular imaginaon. It is rather a maelstrom of high-energy parcles, radiaon, hot gas clouds, magnec fields and meteor swarms. If we leave culturally significant spacecra in orbit, how will this affect the long-term integrity of their fabric? In this paper, I consider the impacts of the space environment on terrestrial materials used in spacecra industry, and the future prospects for curang what is, effecvely, an orbital museum. “