UBC Physics & Astronomy Department Colloquium on May 20, 2021. Presented by Brent Seales (U Kentucky).
phas.ubc.ca/re...
Abstract
Progress over the past decade in the digitization and analysis of text found in cultural objects (inscriptions, manuscripts, scrolls) has led to new methods for reading the "invisible library". This talk explains the development of non-invasive methods, showing results from restoration projects on Homeric manuscripts, Herculaneum material, and Dead Sea scrolls. Premised on "virtual unwrapping" as an engine for discovery, the presentation culminates in a new approach that may indeed be the pathway for rescuing still-readable text from some of the most stubbornly damaged materials, like the enigmatic Herculaneum scrolls.
Short Bio
W. Brent Seales is Professor and Chairman of the Department of Computer Science at the University of Kentucky and a Getty Conservation Institute Scholar (2019-20). Seales' research applies data science and computer vision to challenges in the digital restoration and visualization of antiquities. In the 2012-13 academic year he was a Google Visiting Scientist in Paris, where he continued work on the "virtual unwrapping" of the Herculaneum scrolls. In 2015, Seales and his research team identified the oldest known Hebrew copy of the book of Leviticus (other than the Dead Sea Scrolls), carbon dated to the third century C.E. The reading of the text from within the damaged scroll has been hailed as one of the most significant discoveries in biblical archaeology of the past decade.
15 сен 2024
