In 2015, a major donation was made to the University Art Collection by Transport for London. Murals by Eduardo Paolozzi were removed as part of renovation works to a station. The University was able to make the case that the reconstruction of these murals in Paolozzi's home city, coupled with the potential for numerous teaching and collaborative projects, was preferable to the other institutions who expressed interest.
Prior to physical reconstruction, the murals will be photographed and laser scanned in the Sculpture Court at ECA by the Digital Imaging Unit. As well as the digitisation itself, a number of talks and events will be held in the space during this period. Not only does ECA provide us with the requisite floor space for such a task, it will serve an important period of student and public engagement, further raising awareness of the project. This will also give our students a sense of ownership in what is a unique exercise.
After digitisation, a period of processing and preparing the images both in 2D and 3D representation will begin. The latter task is particularly time consuming and will require back filling of time in DIU and additional computer hardware to handle the type of digital content being processed. We are proposing the temporary post of 3 months is created to allow for existing DIU staff to carrying out this work, as well as the purchase of new computer hardware. This will allow for the fragment images to be prepared in a timely manner without impacting on the day-to-day service of the Unit. Moreover, the IT infrastructure that will be purchased as part of this, as well as the skills developed within the DIU, will increase the expertise and capacity of the Unit itself.
A bespoke 2D image collection will be created and made publicly accessible via collections.ed.ac.uk and explore the design of a metadata game. We will ask people to essentially put the jigsaw back together for us. Much like the photography in the ECA Sculpture Court, this will serve a very practical purpose but with a clear focus on engagement.