About

The immediate circumstances that compelled more intensive exploration of novel approaches to digital research and engagement were those of 2020 and 2021, and the exceptional public health restrictions that accompanied the COVID-19 pandemic in Melbourne.  Teaching in this context revealed some of the limits of videoconferencing and conventional PowerPoint, particularly when it came to the examination of memorialization and space.  This was especially so as the emergency persisted, and the burst of improvisation and novelty fell into a steady state - with attendant weariness from staff and students.  The stunning months of protest that followed the murder of George Floyd placed memorials, and public space, at the centre of public interest.  A very obvious avenue, assessing and contextualizing Victorian spatial heritage, and its politics, was foreclosed - precisely at the moment when it was most salient. 
 
Initial source image acquisition was necessarily restricted to those sites and spaces that could be pursued within one hour total transit and photo / video capture while on foot, within a 5,000m radius.  Given the restricted time window, multiple cameras were used simultaneously, trying to capture as many photos as possible within the time allowed within the emergency regulations.  While this did pose immense challenges, a number of representative memorials were within the radius, and formed the basis for several very successful tests, presented at the FaVer Conference in October 2020.  Major shortages of graphics hardware across 2020-2022 demanded further improvisation again - and older hardware was acquired, and intensive computer processing split across multiple obsolete machines, as opposed to modern high performance equipment. 
 
This strategy was complemented by outreach to local communities around the world, seeking suitable imagery of notable monuments in their regions.  Foremost amongst these was the striking memorial to John Humphrey, located in Winnipeg, Canada.  Humphrey was perhaps the figure single most responsible for the successful adoption of the 1948 Universal Declaration, foundation of the post-war human rights system.
 
Transcending the JPEG on a Slide: Object and Spatial Capture for Historians? 
 
A transient window of relaxed restrictions in May 2021 afforded the opportunity to capture one of the flagship monuments - the statue of Peter Norman, 200m silver medalist at the 1968 Mexico City Games.  Norman's solidarity with the 'Salute' protest of Tommie Smith and John Carlos would be recorded in the iconic photo of the podium, and, in 2012, recognised by the Federal Parliament.  When integrated into an ongoing research project on the moral claims of major events, and of sport, the statue was a striking exhibit of the ways in which sporting moralism is inscribed and communicated via space - and an example which could be studied despite closed archives and shut borders.
 
Once the restrictions fully receded, space and monument capture became an avenue to revisit a city which was curiously defamiliarized.  Sorties to document the political and attitudinal landscape of the state were promptly undertaken - in Melbourne's Olympic Precinct, its notable buildings and arts centres, its arboreal heritage, its over-abundant memorials to war and empire, and the slowly growing set of commemorations of social movements and historical injustices.  Over 100 3d captures were prepared across 2021-2023, as fluency and confidence with the various techniques matured.  Highly novel computer graphics innovations, those of neural radiance fields, and Gaussian Splatting, were applied to the data sets, allowing for more faithful recreation.