Strong Heritage Presence at Spar 2011

CyArk and Partners Showcase Wide Range of Heritage Topics

by Elizabeth Lee
April 12, 2011
This year's spar conference had perhaps the largest showing of heritage presentations in recent years. CyArk has worked with Spar closely over the last few years to organize the heritage component of the conference. We were thrilled to have such a strong showing this year, with a variety of presentations and topics. Below is a quick summary of some of the highlights:

Tuesday morning got off to a great start with Chief Executive of Historic Scotland, Ruth Parsons delivering the final keynote. Ruth not only wowed the crowd with the fantastic imagery and visualizations for which Scotland's team has become famous, she also provided great insight into the business advantages of embracing technology. Spar also produced a great article about Ruth's presentation which can be viewed on their website.

The heritage conversations continued through the afternoon heritage roundtable. The panel discussion featured representatives from software companies, service provider firms, the heritage industry, and end users. The discussion was led by CyArk founder Ben Kacyra and sought to gain solutions to the challenge of deriving traditional 2D CAD deliverables from 3D point cloud data. The panel proposed the interesting suggestion of making the laser scanning machines smarter in their capture in order to aid in smarter processing of data.

Wednesday was full of exciting presentations on various heritage projects around the world. Things got started with Chris Tucker and Russell Gibb presenting on significant heritage at both the north and south poles. Both teams also approached CyArk at the conference to establish a relationship so that these unique data sets from early Arctic and Antarctic exploration can be shared via the CyArk archive.

The heritage sessions continued through the afternoon. This included a session specifically devoted to revisiting the Historic American Buildings Survey (HABS). Attendees were treated to presentations by NPS representatives Al Remley from the San Antonio Missions and Blaine Kortemeyer from Mt. Rushmore. Al showcased how the same technology used to meet the documentation needs of the park is also being used to address the educational initiatives of the National Park Service. Blaine was joined by Justin Barton of CyArk to present the Mt. Rushmore digital preservation project. As a member of the Ropes Team which carried a scanner over the edge of the mountain to scan the faces, Blaine provided an interesting perspective on the project. Additionally, John Russo (of ARC) and Mike Frecks (of Terrametrix) discussed their joint collaboration to document the Industrial Arts Building in Lincoln, Nebraska through the merger of terrestrial and mobile laser scanning to produce HABS documentation.

The final heritage session of the conference took place Wednesday afternoon. This session was geared towards a broader, international picture of digital heritage projects. The audience was transported to Taos Pueblo in New Mexico, USA with Preservation officer Louis Zamora, then to Babylon, Iraq with the Future of Babylon Project Coordinator Gina Haney, and finally to China with Zhong Chen. The breadth of presentations was really incredible.

The CyArk team left the conference excited about all the possibilities within the field of 3D capture. We would like to thank everyone who helped make the heritage sessions a success and look forward to continuing the conversations sparked by the event.
CyArk Founder Ben Kacyra questions panelist in the heritage roundtable
Ruth Parsons of Historic Scotland, Ben Kacyra of CyArk, Justin Barton of CyArk, Frank Sanchis of WMF, and Blaine Kortemeyer of NPS discussing things over lunch
Blaine Kortemeyer of NPS, Justin Barton of CyArk, Zhong Chen of Dynasty Group, Gina Haney of the Future of Babylon Project, Ruth Parsons of Historic Scotland, Louis Zamora of Taos Pueblo and David Mitchell of Historic Scotland following the final heritage session
Related Articles:
CyArk at Spar 2011