Large-Scale Reality Modeling of a University Campus Using Combined UAV and Terrestrial Photogrammetry for Historical Preservation and Practical Use

Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) enable detailed historical preservation of large-scale infrastructure and contribute to cultural heritage preservation, improved maintenance, public relations, and development planning. Aerial and terrestrial photo data coupled with high accuracy GPS create hyper-realistic mesh and texture models, high resolution point clouds, orthophotos, and digital elevation models (DEMs) that preserve a snapshot of history. A case study is presented of the development of a hyper-realistic 3D model that spans the complex 1.7 km2 area of the Brigham Young University campus in Provo, Utah, USA and includes over 75 significant structures. The model leverages photos obtained during the historic COVID-19 pandemic during a mandatory and rare campus closure and details a large scale modeling workflow and best practice data acquisition and processing techniques. The model utilizes 80,384 images and high accuracy GPS surveying points to create a 1.65 trillion-pixel textured structure-from-motion (SfM) model with an average ground sampling distance (GSD) near structures of 0.5 cm and maximum of 4 cm. Separate model segments (31) taken from data gathered between April and August 2020 are combined into one cohesive final model with an average absolute error of 3.3 cm and a full model absolute error of <1 cm (relative accuracies from 0.25 cm to 1.03 cm). Optimized and automated UAV techniques complement the data acquisition of the large-scale model, and opportunities are explored to archive as-is building and campus information to enable historical building preservation, facility maintenance, campus planning, public outreach, 3D-printed miniatures, and the possibility of education through virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) tours.

Cultural and Historical Preservation through Onomastic Materials: A Case of Toponyms and Anthroponyms in Kinyarwanda

Proper names, also linguistically called toponyms and anthroponyms, embed extensive sociolinguistic, cultural, and historical aspects in the life of any nation. Thus, they have caught the researcher’s attention because of the cultural and historical heritage they preserve in the context of language contact. From one place to another, and one specific period to another, anthroponyms and toponyms offer a wide range of research because of the scientific curiosity researchers have as to know why the name of a person or place exists, where it comes from, who named it, and when it was named so. In other words, the research is carried within spatial and temporal scope. Anthroponymy is the study of proper names of human beings, both individual and collective, while toponymy is the study of proper names of places. This paper aims at showing how place and person names embed cultural and historical features necessary to understand, explain, and preserve a people’s culture and history for a given period. The method used to research this topic is descriptive and it is based on the materials observed from various sources such as street names, hoardings, individual names, just to name a few. Therefore, this study focuses on specific topologies and periods, i.e. names denoting locations where the Rwandan territory has extended in the precolonial, colonial, postcolonial periods, and post-genocide periods.

Historical Preservation in Rust-Belt China: The Life and Death of Jihong Bridge in Harbin

This article examines how China’s rust-belt cities deploy historical preservation for urban revitalization. Drawing upon fieldwork interviews and online debates, it investigates the preservation battle over Jihong Bridge in Harbin in northeast China. Built by Russian settlers in the early 20th century, Jihong Bridge symbolizes the birth of Harbin as a railway city, but a century later, it stood in the way of the local government’s ambitious plan for building high-speed rail. The municipal government elevated the bridge, significantly modifying its structure to allow high-speed trains to pass underneath. The renovation was heavily criticized by local preservationists, who invoked the government’s own preservation regulations to try to save the bridge. The study highlights the dilemma faced by local governments of rust-belt cities, as they are caught between the desire to deploy historical architecture for city branding and competing priorities of infrastructure investment.

Interspecies Blendings and Resurrections: Material Histories of Disability and Race in Taxidermy Art

This paper analyzes the contemporary art practice of rogue taxidermy. Specifically, I look at the rogue taxidermy of Sarina Brewer, an artist who utilizes sensationalist aesthetics and representations found in historical sideshows alongside unconventional forms of taxidermy to critique historical and contemporary forms of body display. I discuss the material histories that informed and shaped the practice of taxidermy and how taxidermy was (and continues to be) bound up with a complex history of human and nonhuman animal exploitation. I analyze the interconnections between nonhuman animal taxidermy display and the historical preservation, study, and exhibition of postmortem human bodies in museums. The ethical implications of using nonhuman animal bodies as objects for political art entangle rogue taxidermy artists within the domination of nonhuman animals (alive and dead). The act of using postmortem nonhuman animal materials in artistic sculpture makes rogue taxidermy artists complicit in the history of modernity that used various bodies to outline “undesirable” racial and physiological variances. Furthermore, I analyze the subversive potential of Brewer’s sculptures to differently reconstruct sculptures of lusus naturae – from past representations – but, also, address the risky complexity of staging “monstrosity” in contemporary rogue taxidermy art. I conclude that the access and permission to place nonhuman animal bodies on display – from the outset – shows a normalization of human domination over nonhuman animal bodies, but argue that Sarina Brewer’s art, in various instances, critiques exploitation through multiple forms of body display.

The 1935 Hsinchu-Taichung Earthquake

The history of natural disasters in Taiwan has frequently been linked to the practice of historical preservation, archival science, oral history, and museum curatorship. All are collectively hallmarks of a broad range of activities that fall under the umbrella of public history. The problem for Taiwan, however, concerns the legitimacy. Taiwan does not have a single national narrative. It has been subjected to waves of colonialism since the seventeenth century and does not presently have a fully post-colonial narrative. The earthquakes discussed in this paper occurred in two different periods of colonisation. In order to situate the history of earthquakes into a public history discourse, the field of earthquake-based research in Taiwan has to incorporate different audiences and integrate into a much broader understanding. By this, I mean that the present regimental academic disciplines in Taiwan need to be cross disciplinary, especially since public history is by its very nature collaborative. It illuminates a shared authority over a much wider area. It needs to. It is my argument that it is in digital humanities that Taiwanese academics work best in collaboration. Efforts have been made to digitise the personal experiences of those involved in typhoon reconstruction efforts. A natural synergy, therefore, for the understanding of earthquakes, as public history, is to emphasise access and broad participation in the creation of knowledge. Digital humanities enables this. Attention to this is particularly important in historical preservation of particular sites on an island that frequently develops and re-develops brownfield sites.

Taming and Reframing Buffalo Bill

This chapter studies Ted Wharton's final film for Essanay: a historical epic, originally titled The Indian Wars (1914) and later released under various other titles. That film, one of the first to be made with historical preservation in mind, would reenact some of the major Indian battles. Few other producers were capable of managing such a massive and challenging project. Ted, however, had already demonstrated his ability to recreate a similar large-scale “splendid Historical Pageant.” The Indian Wars promised to be even more spectacular. The film was largely the creation of the legendary William Cody, a colorful and iconic figure known worldwide by his public persona of “Buffalo Bill.” Recognizing the broad impact of film, Cody determined to use the new medium as a vehicle for writing—or, in some cases, rewriting—his own history and shaping his legacy.