Tag: archives

‘Kevin Elyot, Crop Circles & Me’ by Polly Tisdall

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Polly Tisdall, the current recipient of the Kevin Elyot Award, is publishing an audio diary as part of her residency at the Theatre Collection as she explores the Kevin Elyot archive and her own writing practice.  The annual award established in 2016, generously funded by an endowment from members of Kevin’s family, supports a writer-in-residence at the Theatre Collection to inspire a new dramatic work or other creative or academic outcome.  It is given in memory of Kevin Elyot (1951-2014) – an alumnus of the University of Bristol Drama Department – and the influence he has had on writing and the Arts.

Polly’s audio diary is available to listen to here: ‘Kevin Elyot, Crop Circles & Me’ or via Polly’s website with new episodes being published throughout her residency.  We’ll also post episodes on our blog page with transcripts, with the first episode available below:

Speaker 1 (Polly Tisdall):

Bristol City centre. Just got off the bus, after wending my way through Fishponds and Eastville and St Pauls and just loving all the colourful leaves. This is my favourite time of year and I’ve got that kind of sense of beginnings, I suppose that I get still, like a new school year.

I still get that at this time of year and it feels a bit like a first day at a new school, and I’m just winding my way up Orchard Lane and thinking this maybe isn’t the quickest way to the Theatre Collection, but never mind.

Going on a little adventure.

Found the many, many, many steps past Trenchard Street car park. I remember this.

This is the route, the very steep, huffy, puffy route up to the Theatre Collection. At least it’s the one that I know. I have come up this way before.

And there’s something about coming through Bristol this morning with my mind half in the play that I’ve pitched for the Kevin Elyot Award that I’m going to be writing (Ahhh!) in the next year. And having that in mind and thinking through one of the characters I’m interested in potentially exploring in the play, it’s all very early days.

But I think trying to see the city a little bit through her eyes and imagining some of her impressions of Bristol if she was coming here for the first time, which, I think for that character she lives very rurally. I don’t think she gets to the city much and Bristol’s kind of her big, big city on the horizon.

Quite interesting to think about, even though I know the city really well these days, what she would make of my morning and the route I’ve been on and all these steps.

  1. And I’m here! ‘Theatre Collection, Archive and Museum of British Theatre and Live Art, Visitors Welcome, Admission Free, University of Bristol’.

And for those of you who maybe have never been here or don’t even know quite where it is, it’s not far from Park Street. And it’s a sort of a quite amazing building, with a rounded front and, sort of, I guess you would call them crenellations along the front. So it looks a bit castle-like, a little bit magical and it’s time to step inside.

So inside you come into a big panelled room, you can probably hear it’s a little bit echoey and quite exciting and someone’s coming down the stairs to greet me….

Speaker 2:

Welcome to the Theatre collection. We have your items for you, if you’d like to follow me.

Speaker 1:

Thank you.

———

Speaker 1:

Wow. So it’s been quite a fascinating morning.

I’m now standing just outside the reading room of the archive, just having a quick cup of coffee and refreshments because no food or drink is allowed in the reading room itself, with the materials from the archive, which is understandable.

And just reflecting on my first foray into the Kevin Elyot Archive. I asked for a lot of different materials really for my first day, mostly around My Night with Reg, which is one of Elyot’s most famous plays and I definitely asked for too many things!

I’ve got 4 big boxes. Blue boxes of materials around My Night with Reg, all sorts of notebooks and planning from Kevin as well as different scripts and drafts and also some screenplays from when My Night With Reg became a film. And each folder is just beautifully organised and wrapped up with, like, sort of canvas ribbon which might be very, very familiar to people who work in archives a lot. But this is all quite new to me and quite exciting.

And it feels a little bit like being given some gifts and treasures from Kevin’s work and his process.

And really today I’ve just looked in detail at two of his notebooks of his very early starting point ideas that become the play My Night With Reg.

But what’s fascinating looking through the notebooks is seeing that actually a lot of the ideas that surface in My Night With Reg start their life in other plays, in other ideas for other plays, for short sequels or sketches.

And they’re all just jotted down. And these themes keep popping up and reoccurring.

Some ideas that Elyot clearly didn’t want to lose, and he’s written notes to himself. Like ‘Don’t forget the tomato sauce theme’.

And it’s really reassuring and exciting to see, as I suppose somebody who is right at the beginning of their journey with playwriting. Because I’m thinking I’ve got notebooks strewn with some of those sorts of notes and not as detailed as Kevin’s, and certainly not as many notebooks. Not yet. But there’s a familiarity to me in seeing those process notes to yourself and all these questions he’s asking of himself and of his characters and of his ideas. There’s lots of question marks in brackets.

And I think that’s something that really strikes me about the process of playwriting. Certainly for me, where I’m at right now with thinking about the play that I’ve pitched for this award that’s in its extreme infancy. And also, I suppose as you go through a process: that you’re always in conversation with yourself.

A little bit like I am in this audio diary. You’re always in conversation with yourself.

Asking yourself things, bucking yourself up. There’s some really encouraging notes that Kevin has written to himself where you can see there’s been a burst of enthusiasm about the project and he’s written:

Oh! ‘My Night with Reg could be a real event. I just need to write a really good play’. And find the right set of characters and there’s like 3 exclamation marks. And that burst of energy feels familiar to me too, as a creative.

The moments when you get really behind yourself and really fired up and then other moments where you start to lose the plot and wonder if you have anything to say at all.

And that also came up in these notebooks. At one point, Elyot had scribbled down an idea for a play that was about a writer who actually had absolutely nothing to say.

And wow, that sort of stopped me in my tracks. Because isn’t that every playwright’s greatest fear that actually, we have nothing of interest to say?

So of course we don’t know, but I wonder if Elyot came up with that idea in one of those moments, or reflecting on those moments in the creative process, where you really doubt yourself as well.

———

And that’s it. I’m back outside the Theatre Collection, standing on the chilly streets, looking over at the very lovely Greek bakery. Looks very tempting.

First day of my residency through the Kevin Elyot Award, done!

Those questions that Elyot asked himself. All of these question marks at the end of sentences and what ifs. I’ve noticed he does a lot of writing out of ‘what if’ kind of paragraphs, of just ‘what if this is the through line?’

‘What if the dishy guy is somebody they never meet?’ Question mark.

Just as he’s scribbling to himself.

And already it’s really made me want to just go and write my own questions of my own characters, my own sort of ‘what if’ paragraphs. So I think that’s what I’m going to do now. I will pop across the road, maybe treat myself to a hot chocolate from the Greek bakery, and do some writing.

Staff visits to Bristol Museum and BECC

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Lucy Allen, Archive Assistant at the Theatre Collection, discusses two recent professional visits to Bristol heritage institutions.

In the four months since Joanna Gauld and I have joined the team as Archive Assistants, we have already been extremely lucky to be invited on two visits: the first, to the Conservation Department of Bristol Museum & Art Gallery, and the second, to the British Empire and Commonwealth Collection (BECC) at Bristol Archives.

Conservation at Bristol Museum & Art Gallery

In December we were kindly invited by Eleanor Hasler, paper conservator at Bristol Museum & Art Gallery, to a tour of the museum’s conservation department. This was a fascinating insight into the world of conservation, as we visited labs dedicated to objects, paintings and paper conservation, and were able to peek at the projects underway in each.

Of particular interest was a project to conserve an enormous album of building plans belonging to Bristol Archives – one of more than 300 in the collection – dating from 1911-1912. The album included plans for many well-known Bristol buildings, among them plans for the Bristol Hippodrome designed by Frank Matcham. We listened to a talk from Aina Berenguer, the conservator who had been working on the project, explaining the four months of work she had put into the project – documenting, cleaning, flattening and repairing the plans.

Aina Berenguer, the conservator of the building plans. Photograph credit: Daly, R., 2023, Bristol Museum & Art Gallery.

Other highlights we saw were a number of Japanese woodcut prints, with Eleanor Hasler providing some insight into the creation of these artworks, their historical context and how they came to be at the museum. Eleanor explained how at the time of production, the durability of the woodcuts meant they could be reused to make countless cheap prints. These now highly valuable prints were once worth about the same as a bowl of rice!

A final treat was a trip down to the art store beneath the museum, where we witnessed the hundreds of paintings, sculptures and other artworks held there by the museum when they are not on display. It was fascinating to how the museum ensures that these artworks are stored responsibly, and protects them for a future date when they will be brought back into the public eye.

British Empire and Commonwealth Collection

Our second trip followed in early February, when alongside colleagues from Special Collections, we were invited by archivist Jayne Pucknell to visit the British Empire and Commonwealth Collection at Bristol Archives.

Jayne explained the background to the collection, and how it came to be held by Bristol Archives after the closure of the former British Empire and Commonwealth Museum in 2008. She had selected a few key items from the collection for us to view, and explained to us the history behind these pieces. These included a selection of photographs taken by J A Green (Jonathan Adagogo Green), born in the late 19th century and believed to be the first professional photographer of Nigerian birth. Jayne pointed out Green’s strategic use of initials in his business proceedings, which obscured his Nigerian identity and played a large part in his ability to work with both colonial and indigenous clientele.

Palm nut cracking, New Calabar by J. A. Green, c.1900 (ref: 2003/174/1/24). Photograph credit: Bristol Archives: British Empire & Commonwealth Collection.

Whilst the J. A. Green photographs are an invaluable insight into life in colonial Nigeria from an indigenous perspective, many items in the collection depict life from the standpoint of the coloniser. For example, we also saw a late 19th century album of photos taken by a plantation owner in Jamaica. Many of these photographs depicted local Jamaicans in posed scenes, and often drew upon reductive stereotypes in order to appeal to a colonial audience.

Eight boys in a field eating watermelons, c.1860 (ref: 2005/001/151/1). Photograph credit: Bristol Archives: British Empire & Commonwealth Collection.

We also viewed a 20th century album of paintings by a woman living in a Prisoner of War camp under Japanese rule in China. These scenes gave the misleading impression of a pleasant environment and of positive relationships between prisoners and guards. The reason for this became clear to us when Jayne pointed out that, had the paintings instead depicted the harsh realities of prisoner life, they would undoubtedly have been confiscated. Photography within the camp was forbidden; sketching and painting were the only options available to record the experience, even if they must be done from a falsely cheery perspective. One sketch, depicting a guard from the camp, hinted at the harsher reality, reading: “pestered me to do his portrait, was advised to do so less something bad might happen to me”.

Final thoughts

These visits were both wonderful experiences as they allowed us to gain insight into the collections, work environments and roles of our colleagues within the heritage industry. It’s always such a treat to see “behind the scenes” and to hear about collections directly from the people who work so closely with them. We are extremely thankful to Eleanor Hasler, Jayne Pucknell, and the teams at Bristol Museums and Bristol Archives for generously inviting us to visit their sites and engage with their collections.

Firestarters project update: March 2023

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In 2021, the Theatre Collection successfully applied for a Research Resources Award from the Wellcome Trust for the ‘Firestarters’ project to make available the archive of the arts organisation, Welfare State International (WSI). The project was developed in response to demand to explore WSI’s innovative methodologies from a broad spectrum of researchers and practitioners and the archive will provide evidence and inspiration for future research and practice.

Founded in 1968 by John Fox and Sue Gill, Roger Coleman and others, WSI was a loose association of freelance artists brought together by shared values and philosophy.  WSI evolved from radical travelling performers to become embedded community artists and celebrants, working to weave art more fully into the fabric of life.  Under the Welfare State umbrella, a remarkable group of engineers, musicians, sculptors, performers, poets and pyrotechnicians invented and developed site-specific theatre in landscape, lantern processions, spectacular fireshows, community carnivals and participatory festivals.  The scale of the archive means that the project will take over three years to complete.  A comprehensive archive catalogue will be published online, key material will be digitised for preservation and access, and conservation work will ensure the long-term survival of this important collection.

The ‘Firestarters’ project to catalogue and make accessible the archive of the arts organisation, Welfare State International (WSI) is now underway, so we thought we’d share a project update and highlight some of the work we’ve done so far.  This first part of the project has focussed on establishing physical and intellectual control of the collection as well as safeguarding the long-term viability of the AV material through conservation and digitisation.

Cataloguing

As Project Archivist, I’ve undertaken background research and produced a full production list of more than 400 performances, events and projects for the period Welfare State International were operational to assist with the sorting process.  The first sort of 245 boxes has been completed and the second, more detailed, sort is underway with all performance-related material from the original accession now sorted by production. I assigned temporary reference numbers to all the AV material enabling digitisation to begin.

Metal film canister from WSI archive labelled with white tape that reads 'Ballad of Jimi Tunn' Welfare State Intl
Example of WSI film canister

AV digitisation

Since December 2022, Nigel Bryant, AV Digitisation Officer has digitised 146 magnetic and optical media items across 17 different formats including U-matic, VHS, Betacam, Hi8, Video 8, CD audio and DVD.  Both preservation archival quality copies and viewing copies have been produced. Digital copies of duplicate material have been identified and discarded and summary content descriptions of all digitised AV have been recorded.  Essential servicing of AV equipment also took place across several formats to ensure optimum quality of digital copies was maintained.

Video highlights have included a copy of the Barrow community film ‘King Real & The Hoodlums’ (1984) from 1” video tape, so very good quality.  The film was made for TV and involved 150 local people; script by Adrian Mitchell based on King Lear.  In addition to the film, there is also a recording of ‘King Real – making of’ feature from BBC Newsnight, which includes interviews with cast members from the local community.  This year is the 40th anniversary of the making of ‘King Real’, an occasion which has been marked by some of those involved in the film from WSI and the local community with a celebratory singalong in Barrow.

There are also recordings of other TV programmes featuring the work of WSI including the BBC2 programme Open Space with footage of ‘A Midsummer Night’s Belfast’ from a community residency in Belfast, June 1983, and the Thames TV programme Afternoon Plus featuring preparations for ‘Parliament in Flames’, interviews with WSI members, as well as audience reactions to the large-scale spectacle.  In addition to recordings of performances, there is extensive coverage of Ulverston Lantern Processions from the 1980s-1990s.

Footage of international projects includes rushes and an edit of a WSI performance ‘The Wasteland and the Wagtail’, a special commission for the 1st International Theatre Festival in Toga Village, Japan from July 1982, a complete set of high quality rushes from ‘False Creek: A Visual Symphony’ from World Expo ‘86, in Vancouver, Canada, footage of a performance of ‘The Dead Carpenter’ at Rotterdamse Kunststichting, The Netherlands in 1976, and rushes and edit of ‘Tempest on Snake Island’ for the Toronto Theatre Festival in May 1981.

Manual Film Inspections

In preparation for creating access copies for the cine film within the collection, Nigel and I have undertaken manual film inspections for all 152 16mm films, in addition to 7 Super 8mm films.  Before undertaking manual film inspections, I tested all the film for acetate film base degradation (vinegar syndrome), using A-D strips.  The small A-D strips are placed in the can and left for a specified amount of time depending on the storage conditions; the strips change colour to indicate the level of deterioration.

Manually inspecting each film is essential, so an assessment can be made about whether the film would be safe to run on a Steenbeck (flatbed film editing machine) to create access copies.  The inspection included identifying the film type and any edge codes to date the film, as well as measuring the film and core diameter to ensure appropriate storage.  A section of film was measured and compared to stock film to assess whether the storage conditions over the years had caused the film to stretch or shrink.

As the image below shows, the film was then manually wound onto a core, through a duration counter and viewer, so the film could be viewed, notes about the content recorded, and an estimated duration taken.  The film was also lightly cleaned during this process.  With manual film inspections, although possible to view the moving images, it is not possible to listen to any sound recordings, which makes the content more difficult to identify.

Man manually winding 16mm film from reel onto core
Nigel Bryant, AV Digitisation Officer manually winding film from a reel onto a core
16mm film passing through a duration counter and film viewer
16mm film viewer and counter

The majority of the films within the collection were stored on 2” cores or projection reels, so during the inspections all the films were wound onto the larger 3” cores for optimum storage.  Each film was assessed for physical damage including scratches, perforation damage, mould, dirt and oil, warpage and colour fading.  Splices were also inspected and repaired or reinforced where required.

Within the collection there are a few 8mm and 35mm films, which will be inspected once additional equipment can be sourced.  As can be the case with older formats, the equipment required to play or view them is often scarce and therefore can be expensive.

There’s been some great footage on the 16mm film, including some projects filmed for TV, one for the arts programme Aquarius with footage from a 3 week residency in Burnley in 1975 including the final show featuring a large procession and ice sculpture, a 1982 performance of ‘Doomsday Fair’ and an early performance from 1973 made in Rotterdam.

Still from 16mm film of man with black and white makeup wearing black google and red military style jacket
Still from 1972 WSI performance seen through 16mm film viewer

There is also some footage of a naming ceremony on Bodmin Moor from the early 1970s and the South West tour of ‘The Travels of Lancelot Quail’ from 1972, which was one month of processional theatre from Glastonbury through Somerset, Devon and Cornwall.  The footage includes the finale of the performance, as the group of performers climb aboard a boat on the beach at Marazion and head out to sea and board a submarine.  It’s been brilliant to see moving images of performances, having only seen a few photographic images whilst sorting the documentation.

We look forward to posting more project updates as we go!

Siân Williams, Project Archivist

Miniature Stage Lighting demonstration

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In January 2023, Keith McLaren, the depositor of the Miniature Stage Lighting visited the Theatre Collection to show us how the Miniature Stage Lighting worked and to give an insight into how the equipment could be used.

The Miniature Stage Lighting was deposited in October 2022 and has been catalogued as BTC334 Miniature Stage Lighting. It is equipment designed and made by Robert Stanbury who taught stage lighting to theatre design students at the Wimbledon College of Art in the late 1950s until the mid-1960s. He also made equipment for people including the eminent lighting designers Michael Northen and Richard Pilbrow and companies such as the D’Oyly Carte Opera Company. This particular equipment was ordered by Rae Hammond who was General Manager of the Everyman Theatre, Cheltenham and is generally for use with 1:24 theatre design models although the equipment is larger for practical reasons. The lighting includes a control desk and several luminaires.

I worked with a colleague who took photographs of the individual parts and the process of setting them up for use. I took notes of the steps and advice, and I am creating a guide for future staff to use the equipment. We hope that our work will enable future generations to access and use the Miniature Stage Lighting in an informed way.

The process included building the stand, connecting the control desk to the mains, and connecting the luminaires to the control desk. Trial and error were needed such as to find out which lamp was connected to which dial on the control desk and the depositor gave us advice about common problems. Some of these included wires touching the body of the lamp and dirty contacts (the parts on the control desk used to assign a lamp to the left or right control dial).

I originally invited Keith to the session thinking that we would light a set model. However, he said he found this idea interesting because you don’t generally aim to light the set directly, apart from possibly motivating light (sunlight, moonlight etc.), rather relying on incidental “bounce light” from actor light. We ran out of time anyway!

The Theatre Collection also holds other items relating to lighting including collections such as BTC 155 Michael Northern Collection. Michael Northen (1921 – 2001) was the first credited Lighting Designer in the UK and his work on “The Mousetrap” can still be seen in the West End today. The JD Joe Davis Archive contains the archive of Lighting Designer Joe Davis (1912 – 1984). There is also a Mander & Mitchenson Collection reference box for lighting & sound. In addition, individual items such as lighting plots, plans and diagrams can be found within many of the other collections held at the Theatre Collection and there is a lighting section in the Theatre Collection library.

If you have archives relating to lighting (or any other aspect of professional British theatre or live art) that you would be interested in donating, please have a look at our ‘finding a home for your records’ page. You may also be interested in finding out more about caring for your records.

If you are interested in finding out more about theatre lighting, then please have a look at our catalogue and read more about visiting us.

Keith turning a dial on the lighting control desk
Keith with the Miniature Stage Lighting. Copyright: University of Bristol Theatre Collection

Starting with 3D Data: A 3D Data Book Sprint

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When Ian’s Smith archive was donated to the Theatre Collection (TC) in 2020, it arrived with laser scans of his studio captured in 2018-19.  Ian’s studio was much more than a place of work.  It was like an artwork in itself that reflected Ian’s practices and artistic concerns, the interior including Ian’s collections of books, LPs, model toys and furniture, all carefully arranged and displayed.  Ian died in 2014, but it had felt important to create a record of this space to put with his archive. 

Artist's studio space
Ian Smith’s studio photographed by Malcolm Brown

It was the first accession at the TC to include these types of digital files and it really started us thinking about 3D data and asking questions about how we preserve and facilitate access to these files.  Since then, we have also started to 3D capture objects within our collections, raising even more questions and queries about the data produced at the point of capture. 

Thanks to The National Archives Archive Testbed Fund, we held a three day event using the ‘book sprint’ format to explore some of the questions that we have surrounding 3D data capture and preservation, using Ian’s studio as our case study.  The idea of a ‘book sprint’ is to produce a collaborative piece of writing in a short period of time and in our case, we wanted to produce a basic in-house guidance document (Starting with 3D Data) that would help us develop principles, workflows and procedures for managing 3D data. We wanted to share this guidance with the wider archive community, as we hope it will provide a starting point for non-specialised archive services, who, like us at the TC, are meeting the challenges of managing 3D data for the first time. 

We gathered a group of people together to take part with a variety of different expertise and experience in 3D data capture and preservation including: 

  • Sam Brenton, Digital Archives Assistant, University of Bristol
  • Malcolm Brown, Deputy Photographer, Cultural Heritage Digitisation Service, University of Edinburgh (created the 3D scans of Ian Smith’s studio in a freelance capacity)
  • Sarah Bustamante-Brauning, Digitisation Officer, University of Bristol Theatre Collection
  • Catherine Dack, Research Support Librarian, University of Bristol
  • Angie Dight, Director and Co-founder of Mischief La-Bas, wife of the artist Ian Smith whose studio was scanned in 3D
  • Stephen Gray, Head of Research Support, Library Services University of Bristol
  • Emma Hancox, Digital Archivist, University of Bristol
  • Kieron Niven, Digital Archivist, Archaeology Data Service, University of York
  • Sean Rippington, Digital Archives and Copyright Manager, University of St Andrews
  • Julian Warren, Keeper: Digital and Live Art Archives University of Bristol Theatre Collection
  • Sian Williams, Project Archivist: Ian Smith Archive, University of Bristol Theatre Collection

This blog focuses on the three key discussion areas we addressed each of the three days of the sprint that helped us develop our 3D data guidance document, Starting with 3D Data. 

Day 1: Data Creation

As Ian’s studio was our case study, we asked Angie to introduce us to his studio and guide us around the space with the photographs that were captured by Malcolm in 2018-19.

Angie talking through images of Ian's studio on the screen
Angie talking us through Ian’s studio

Ian Smith (1959-2014) was an artist, performer and artistic director, founding the acclaimed Glasgow-based performance company, Mischief La-Bas, with his wife, Angie in 1992.  As Angie explained, Ian, as a child of the 1950s and influenced by his older brother, loved 50s pop culture, was captivated by David Bowie and saw no divide between high art and low art.  His studio, ‘The Den’ was his thinking and ideas place, and it really encapsulated his eclectic collecting and creativity.  His artistic creations, known as ‘Pulptures’, described by Ian as ‘like sculptures but not as good’ adorn the walls and models of characters from film and TV, including his own bastardised creations, line the shelves.      

Ian’s studio became the springboard for our all discussions, but in terms of data creation it helped us to address the fundamental questions: 

Why capture in 3D?  In terms of Ian’s studio, it was part of the WASP Artist Collective of studio spaces in Glasgow, so it would not have been possible to preserve his studio in situ in perpetuity.  As described by Malcolm, the studio was like “stepping inside someone’s head”, as it really captured Ian’s personality and creativity.  As Malcolm recognised at the time, there was a compelling case for not only capturing the space in 2D, but also to experiment with 3D capture.  Although 2D can capture detail, laser scanning presents the possibility of capturing the space as a whole, its scale and relationships between objects. 

As with Ian’s studio, Malcolm recognised the value of capturing the studio in 3D, but it was agreed there should always be a criteria for 3D capture. In terms of preservation, there is limited argument for scanning robust objects.  Items should be prioritised for scanning based on a preservation need i.e. objects made inherently of material that degrades quickly and therefore require minimal handling or spaces/objects which may no longer exist.  At the TC we hold many set models, which were only ever made with the intention of being temporary.  The models are particularly vulnerable to damage with multiple and often fragile moving parts, but are high-use objects by researchers and teaching groups.  In these cases, there is a clear need to 3D capture and create a digital surrogate, as 3D models can be manipulated in ways the original set model cannot be due to risk of damage. 

How do you capture 3D?  Ian’s studio was captured by LiDAR or laser scanning, which uses light waves to calculate distance and is often used for larger spaces.  We explored other methods of 3D capture including photogrammetry, structured light and a hybrid version of both, as well as the challenges of each and different considerations depending on the method of capture, including cost implications and equipment requirements. 

Day 2: File Formats and Metadata

To ascertain what file formats we should be requesting at the point of deposit and what metadata should be captured and recorded, we heard from those in the group with experience of 3D capture, so we could understand the process in more detail.  Using worked examples, we looked at photogrammetry with 3D models of objects including set models.  We explored the challenges at point of capture i.e. difficulties with using a green screen and white objects on white background, what files to keep (DNG, TIFF) and creating a mesh to produce a 3D model.   

Group looking at worked examples
Book sprint discussions

Ian’s studio was LiDAR scanned to experiment capturing the space beyond 2D, but it was not processed at the time into a usable 3D model.  In terms of future deposits, it would be more likely that the depositor would produce a 3D model as the final product, as this would be the primary aim of capturing the space/object.  We are currently experimenting with the files of Ian’s studio to see if we can produce a workable model, and you can see how far we’ve got on Sketchfab.

What file formats and metadata should we have asked for at the point of deposit?  In archival terms, we want to preserve the raw data with minimal intervention at the point of capture.  But as our discussions highlighted, there is difficulty in this with 3D capture in terms of what is considered the raw data, as there is a lot of process involved in capturing and creating usable models.  In order to access the data it requires a process to create a model by creating a mesh.  This often requires the use of proprietary software.  We would therefore want to ask the depositor for their raw files (whatever they might consider that to be), as well as an access copy of the finished 3D model that the depositor is happy with i.e. a meshed OBJ file. 

In terms of metadata, it was helpful to hear about the Archaeology Data Service, and what we can learn from archaeologists, who regularly capture 3D data. The Archaeology Data Service already has a set of principles in terms of what metadata is requested from the depositor, which will help to develop our own set of principles.  We started to consider what questions we should have asked for at the point of deposit of Ian’s studio scans, such as:

  • Reason for capture and additional context 
  • What type of device was used
  • What software was used
  • Copyright holder information i.e. person who has made the decisions in the scanning process, as well as the objects that are included in the scans
  • Image of the equipment setup and colour capture
  • Accurate measurements of the space/object
  • Location where scan taken 
  • Number of points of capture
  • Capture date 
  • How many scans within the model
  • How the files are structured and arranged

Day 3: Audiences and Access

With such innovative potential for 3D data, we discussed our audiences and how we could make the 3D data accessible to them.

Currently the TC is introducing the digital preservation platform, Preservica, but due to early development and lack of demand for a 3D viewer on the platform, its viewer remains fairly rudimentary at the moment.  We therefore discussed the need to use a temporary platform to access the 3D models in the meantime.  However, in using these platforms such as Sketchfab and 3DHOP, there are of course cost implications, as well as considerations with ownership and licensing in addition to the increased amount of time and resources required for the processing to produce accessible 3D models.  Using these platforms could potentially drive more traffic to our catalogue, but in using multiple platforms to making our digital models accessible this way we would need to ensure that the relationship with the catalogue is maintained.  As always with archives, we are thinking about the future and whether these platforms will exist or be usable in the long term, reinforcing the archival reasons for preserving the raw data.

These discussions that took place over the book sprint event have fed into our guidance document for the TC.  We will use this document as a reference point as we start to build our procedures and workflows for dealing with 3D data.  Just as Ian’s studio encouraged us to start exploring 3D data, we hope our guidance document may be a useful starting point for any non-specialised archive service looking to explore 3D data capture and preservation.