Scenario 1: Disappearing or Lost Polychromy
Archaeological museums often own collections of classical statues and architectures originally colored. Unfortunately, only tiny traces of these colors are still visible and what is left needs to be preserved carefully. Although it is complex to reconstruct their original appearance, institutions believe that it is also crucial to offer a correct understanding, training visitors’ eyes to recognise those original colors, also to avoid dangerous misunderstanding supporting ideologies. What matters are the shades of colors, their perception and their semantics. The reliability of digital reconstructions and the authenticity of digital experiences is crucial. Disappearing polychromy is also an amazing occasion to make visitors reflect on the diversity of these shades of colors, developing a new perception on European modern society, through these artworks.
Scenario 2: Change of colors in paintings and works on paper
The reconstruction of how colors would have been originally perceived is crucial, since their appearance strongly influences our perception of the work of art. Guidelines are also needed to preserve them when exhibited (a control of environmental conditions and lighting is fundamental). The semantic of those paintings as originally conceived by artists or as they may evolve overtime would need to be better communicated to the general public, letting them experience in new embodied ways, when at the museum or remotely.
Scenario 3: Fading colors in Textiles (dresses and tapestry)
Textiles colored with natural dyes are very fragile and suffer from a rapid degradation over time. This is particularly true for textiles made of precious metal fibers, such as in the case of embroidery made with silver or gold. These suffer a change in just a decade and therefore the original glamour of dresses and liturgic clothes, cannot be appreciated anymore by a public that often sees pretty drab objects. There is a high need to conserve and communicate these collections, an attempt that has never been attempted.
Scenario 4: Fading colors in Photographic collections
Museums are interested in a way to digitally “fix” the colour and find a way of producing this as a programme or filter which could This scenario is the occasion of reflection around a wider problem that is highly relevant in our society: COLOR BIAS and the non-Neutrality of technologies from photography to photometry.
Scenario 5: Perceiving and Preserving colors in Born Digital Artworks
In this digital era, important artworks are created by artists directly in digital form. They are conceived to be perceived by the public “virtually” (either through AR application and through a screen, such as a smartphone), and in many cases for certain times of the day (night, day, etc.) to make use of real-world blending. This means that their appearance as 2D or 3D objects is conceived to be in combination with the physical environment in which the artworks are placed and made viewable to the public. So, through a clever combination of color pallet and transparency, animated textures, along with other changes in object scaling, translation, or mesh, these artworks take on their meaning through the dialogue between the real and the virtual, pointing out the significance and uniqueness of this new genre, and the importance of preserving such born digital artworks for posterity.