Safeguarding cultural heritage: The technology empowering art conservators
The conservation and restoration of artwork is crucial as it helps save cultural heritage for future generations. The whole process, however, is time-consuming and costly as it requires analytic services and instrumentation support, or even the assistance of a scientific laboratory. For these reasons, high-quality conservation work is often reserved for the finest pieces.
A new era in art conservation
The EU-funded XPECAM project set out to change this with the XpeCAM solution – a patent-pending portable spectral camera system developed by Signinum and XpectralTEK. The goal is to empower art conservators by increasing productivity, knowledge, quality and the speed of the restoration process. This will also increase the value of a conservator’s work while reducing time and costs, as well as help ensure that high-quality conservation work is available for new market segments. António Cardoso, project coordinator and co-founder of Signinum explains: “The XpeCAM solution is an automated solution for art conservators to acquire data from a physical painted surface and understand what materials are there and used.” This is done by using spectral imaging acquisition hardware which is then sent to an artificial intelligence-powered web platform. Questions relating to the material distribution, layers of drawing, for example, can then be accessed in a user friendly interface. Cardoso emphasises: “We need to put in conservators’ hands the power to understand what is in front of them.”
Key successes during difficult times
In pursuit of their goal, the project faced certain challenges due to the COVID-19 pandemic. “It resulted with us reducing the project’s development considerably because of a of lack of contact.” The team had to readjust their reality according to outside conditions and variables. Despite this, the project was able to make its mark on the conservation community. Cardoso reports: “The general art conservation community views us as a mind changer and a standard setter for this market and recognise our ability to influence the community and listen to what we have to say.” Additionally, the project had a positive impact on Signinum. “We have created and implemented a totally new innovative culture inside Signinum. This is permitting us to consider new, different and more efficient approaches to challenges.”
Looking to the future
The project is beginning to receive concrete, positive feedback on their solution from their partners and end users. “Right now, we are entering the commercial phase, promoting several interactions with the overall community. This will be our focus in the immediate future as we need to produce sustainability in my team and the project.” In parallel to this, efforts are being made to promote greener, sustainable and intelligent conservation, with the organisation of events and actions with several partners worldwide. Cardoso concludes: “Cultural heritage is a keystone of the European identity. To understand where we want to go and what our future path is as a community, we need to understand and know our past. The XpeCAM solution is potentially one of the major players that can protect and sustain this asset.”
Keywords
XPECAM, conservation, cultural heritage, art conservators, XpeCAM solution, restoration, spectral camera, portable
