From books to radios to television, humans have always searched for ways to communicate ideas and stories in the most vivid, realistic manner possible. AR and VR simply seems to be the next step in bringing our stories to life.
360 videos make it possible for audience members to see beyond the narrow lens of the video camera, and AR and VR modeling bring far-away places and objects straight to our mobile devices. The methods and tactics for 3D modeling contemporary objects have become more comprehensive, but we have yet to find a way to bring the past into these immersive environments. We began by building off the work that has been done utilizing photogrammetry, we saw a possibility to use current techniques to bring new meaning to historic content.
We explored two different approaches to using historical content.
- **Video to Photogrammetry**: Videos act as source images for a subject allowing us to feed depth information into software, similar to the work done by a previous Studio Project.
- **Stereo Photography to 3D**: The other approach was inspired by the release of Facebook’s newest feature – 3D photos. This feature utilizes stereographic image pairs and use these to create an estimated depth map.
Use Cases
The importance of learning about our history and our past is not lost on us: it is important to examine the actions, mistakes and identities of our ancestors in order to progress and improve as a society. With improving technology and the immersiveness of modern media, the grainy images of history often feel depthless and distant. AR and VR would hopefully revitalize these historic scenes and images to make it easier for everyone from students to museum goers to historians to contextualize and understand the circumstances of our past. Here are some potential scenarios in which 3D models of historic images could be used:
- Creating museum exhibitions of famous figures.
- Helping students picture the scope of destruction in World War II.
- Allowing historians to examine
Ethical Considerations
Of course, there are still a lot of ethical considerations to keep in mind when attempting to revive history with new technology. As we discovered, footage must capture objects in a certain way for it to create a feasible model, and many of the historic events that have been heavily documented through news coverage and pedestrian videos throughout recent history are usually catastrophic events.
For example, the 9/11 terrorist attacks were thoroughly documented through videos taken through pedestrian phones. Naturally, using technology to resurrect traumatic and upsetting events like this does not sit well with any of us – nor do we think these provide enough added benefit to history to outweigh the emotional harms that these models might cause. It is important to be aware of the triggering effects that might come with making certain events more immersive and realistic, and to choose subject matter thoughtfully.
Additionally, since it is near impossible for us to create perfect models from the videos available to us at the moment, there is always the risk of us altering or misrepresenting history. Since we are for the most part only able to reconstruct partial models, it is important to note that we might not be able to give the most complete depiction and context of a historical event.
We recognize that historic accuracy is a crucial responsibility and believe that it is important to keep these considerations in mind to create accurate and socially responsible reconstructions.
