ETU "LETI" will take part in Berlin Science Week
On November 6, a panel session devoted to the restoration of cultural monuments using high technology will take place as part of Berlin Science Week.
05.11.2019 1244
On November 6, at 18:00, the panel session themed Advanced Restoration Technologies: High-Tech Art and Museum Inspection and Restoration organized by the St. Petersburg Electrotechnical University "LETI" will take place at the Natural History Museum as part of Berlin Science Week.
Berlin Science Week is one of the most prestigious European scientific events. It brings together people from the world’s most innovative scientific institutions to celebrate science, connect and engage with the local and international scientific community and the public.
The discussion organized by ETU "LETI" researchers will be devoted to modern technologies for preserving architectural monuments, archaeological sites, and museum collections, as well as the challenges of using it. The main topics announced by the organizers are related to the use of the latest achievements in laser technology and optoelectronics: Heritage Science and Art & Science.
Within the Heritage Science area, ETU "LETI" researchers are engaged in research, restoration, and documentation of cultural monuments. In 2019, an English-taught summer school in this area took place at ETU "LETI" for the first time. During the session, Vadim Parfenov, Professor of the Department of Photonics at ETU “LETI,” will talk about laser technologies for controlling and restoring works of art and many years of work in the field of restoration, documentation, monitoring, and creating physical copies of St. Petersburg monuments using high technology.
Vadim Parfenov is engaged in the development of laser cleaning technology for historical monuments, sculptures, paintings, books from biodestructive microbes and the creation of laser devices for working with various materials (marble, porcelain, ceramics, etc.). By 2019, cleaning marble tombstones in the 18th-century necropolis of the Alexander Nevsky Lavra, marble sculptures in the Summer Garden, and Tsarskoye Selo was carried out under his leadership. In 2024, it is planned to create experimental laser equipment for precision automated cleaning of paper books and documents, and conduct a series of works on non-contact copying of marble sculptural monuments.
“We hope that within Science Week we will receive feedback. Our section will take place at the Natural History Museum, thanks to which we look forward to the participation of foreign museum specialists. It will be interesting to know what they think about the use of these innovations in such a delicate area as the restoration of paintings. I hope this will be a genuine exchange of views, discussion, and even dispute with specialists from the museum community.”
Researchers working in the Art & Science area apply the latest achievements of technology for the tasks of art and create new tools for the implementation of creative ideas and projects. Artur Karimov, Associate Professor of the Department of Computer Aided Design, will present a painting robot, which was recognized as the best development at the International Technical Fair in Bulgaria in September 2019.
Today, the painting robot allows creating acrylic paintings on canvas in gray tones by applying five basic colors and their mixtures in arbitrary proportions with a single brush. The developers plan to make a painting robot able to pass the artistic version of the Turing test soon; his paintings will be indistinguishable from works drawn by people.
According to researchers, robotic painting can later become one of the driving forces in the art and entertainment industry used by artists, printers, shops, museums, and galleries to create high-quality copies of artworks. Painting robots will allow realizing precise robotic technologies of restoration and conformal deposition of protective coatings.
