Studio of Objects: The BIG One
(please view the accompanying gallery to this post)
I’ve already talked about the initial objectives of the Studio of Objects project - and I say objectives, but if we could boil it down it would simply be to “recreate Paolozzi’s studio.” I’ve already outlined the technical requirements and how we tested them - so on a cold and bright weekend in October we headed up to the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art. I say for the weekend…. I wasn’t involved in any of the preparation of the studio itself, but rather our partners at hijack and Dacapo (Gilly and Ceri) who worked very closely with SNGoMA. In practice this meant liasing with the gallery to give us access to the studio on the Saturday and Sunday, install significantly brighter lighting in both the roof and under the cabin bed, rent the Nikon D810 (and lens), arrange for delivery of the Leica P20 (Leica very kindly donated scanner time to the project), arrange (the airbnb) accommodation and to panic about any last minute glitches! All I can say is that when Adam and I turned upon on Saturday morning everything looked perfect! Given that the studio is being preserved…. it’s preservation (i.e. that it remains undamaged!) is paramount. So both lighting installation and laser scanning are higher risk activities. We’d really like to thank Kirstie Meehan at SNGoMA who spent the whole weekend making sure we didn’t damage anything! If you look at the studio space you will see that it is very cramped and it was important to minimise the number of people in it - we only ever had a maximum of two people (myself and Adam) and only when needed. Otherwise it was just myself.
One of the most important things to do when running a scan is - DOCUMENT EVERYTHING. The mists of time will change what you remember so it is critical that you note down every decision, step and procedure undertaken. Below is the field sketch Adam created for the studio along with the location (and name) of each of our scan locations. An accompanying table then notes down each individual scan at each location and the settings for that scan. We also noted down Nikon camera settings and the exact measurements on the Nodal Ninja.
This setup process took much longer than we anticipated, partly because we had to check everything was there and working, and then decide exactly where we would have the “scan stations” and the location of the HDS targets within the studio. We were also concerned about trying to minimise the problem with multiple returns noted in the scan testing. However our rationale was for excessive, redundant, scanning, but at the lowest “quality” setting which is significantly faster but didn’t affect (for our purposes) the data collected. Each full dome 360 degree scan took about 3 minutes to complete meaning the workflow became pretty slick - move and level tripod, attach scanner (which is “always on”), identify targets in the studio (and scan), then set the scanner in to a full dome scan (rapidly exiting the studio!). At this point we switched to the D810 which then meant attaching the Nodal Ninja and taking the 48/12 photos for the 24mm/16mm panoramas. In fact by the end of the day we were pretty tired and had only finished two scan stations - we retired to basecamp and left Adam’s laptop importing the scan data from the first scan which took 2 hours. We were satisfied that it’d been collected satisfactorily although the multiple return issue still remained….
Day Two dawned bright and early and a brisk walk to SNGoMA set us on our way - with the workflow optimised and scan stations decided, we very rapidly worked our way through the remaining locations. The trickiest element was scanning from the top of the bed. This is about 2m high and contains a fairly small bed with very little space around it. We could only have one person on the platform (me) which meant very carefully running through the workflow above in both a constrained space that had very limited access…. whilst 2m off the ground!! Safety was the priorty which meant conciously being aware of where the edge of the platform was at all times. Obtaining scans of the HDS targets was the trickiest part as in both scanner locations the on-board screen was very difficult to access and had poor viewing angles. Then, when it came to the scan itself, I hid behind the bed or under the tripod whilst on the platform!!
With the main scans complete, we then looked at “in-filling” the data we had. When you look at the studio you realise there are many nooks-and-crannies. With so much “stuff” there will always be shadows with line-of-sight scanning - the more scan locations there are, the more in-filling you can do. With that in mind we did four “fast” (noted as (F) on the sketch) scans at slightly lower resolution but designed to add a slightly different perspective. In total we had 11 scan locations, 20 separate scans at a mix of 1.6mm and 50mm spacing.
We didn’t think we’d be stressed for time, but with everyone leaving at different times via different transport it ended up being slightly rushed….. we had to make sure that all rental equipment was ready to go back Monday morning and was accounted for and packed. We also wanted to make sure that all data was backed up, and in particular that all data was off the scanner - in the end we collected 40Gb of compressed scan data on the P20 and about 40Gb of RAW camera imagery from the D810 (split between the spherical panoramas and the photogrammetry James undertook). As a final note, the first thing we did once back was to coalesce all the data (from different media) in to one location as a master copy and then mirror that to network storage at Kingston as part of the archival strategy.
With data collection complete, processing then began….. I’ve already noted the processing workflow for the spherical panoramas. Next up will be the laser scan data processing!
(Kirstie, Adam, Gilly, James, Mike, Chris)
