How does it work?
Photography for reliefs A photo of an artwork can’t replace the original. But a start-up company in Basel has developed a new method to enable us to examine an artwork on our computer screens. Text: Florian Fisch Illustration: ikonaut
One work of art, lots of photos Truvis is a spin-off company set up in 2017 by the Digital Humanities Lab of the University of Basel. It employs a camera fixed at the top of a dome to make 48 high-resolution photographs of an object. These images are then used to generate a mathematic model of the object’s surface.
The browser calculates the image Users can get a realistic impression of the artwork on their screen because they are given a free choice of direction, light colour and perspective when viewing it. Their Internet browser uses the mathematical model to calculate the optical characteristics of every pixel. The image processing system for this ‘Reflectance Transformation Imaging’ is at the heart of the company’s work. With its technology, Truvis wants to document pictures before they are sent out on loan, and also aims to provide accurate images before a work is sold online.
Illuminated from all sides In total, 48 LED lamps illuminate the artwork from different perspectives, covering all the colours of the spectrum from infrared to ultraviolet. This means they can reveal information on the depth, brilliance and colour for every single pixel of the surface. The lamps produce little heat and use hardly any electricity, which means the photographic dome is portable.
Artmyn There is another spin-off company whose procedure is based on the same principle as Truvis. Artmyn was founded by members of EPFL in 2016. In its own photographic dome, Artmyn uses flash photography to make over 10,000 photographs per object, and their software does its calculations by different means. It can depict surfaces of up to four square metres in a resolution of 3,000 pixels per inch. Since February 2017 Artmyn has been working together with the auction house Sotheby’s so that art can be inspected remotely.
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