|
Posted 05/29/02
Famed Mexican muralist José Clemente Orozco created precious few public frescoes during his career in the United States. His most ambitious mural cycle in this country, titled "The Epic of American Civilization," is at Dartmouth. While photos can duplicate these murals in snapshot form, they are no substitute for first-hand viewing. Dartmouth computer science experts have now produced a virtual tour of Orozco's U.S. murals, which is the next best thing to being there.
Orozco painted a mural cycle of 24 colorful, powerful, massive panels on the walls of the ground floor in Dartmouth's Baker Library between 1932 and 1934. Now recognized as international treasures, Orozco's murals were controversial when they debuted at Dartmouth, mostly for their perceived socialist viewpoint and unfamiliar mythological imagery.
Dartmouth computer science engineers took up the challenge of recreating the mural experience, via a computer-generated tour, as part of a new museum exhibit. Their digital version adds a virtual element to a new traveling Orozco exhibition that will be at the Hood Museum in Hanover this summer and fall. The exhibit features drawings and paintings, and with the digitized murals, it displays a more complete representation of Orozco's work.
"These murals tell a story," says Assistant Professor of Computer Science Hany Farid. "Each panel or wall should not be thought of in isolation. They are each part of a bigger story. To be able to see them all together provides a different and richer experience."
Farid and student Jethro Rothe-Kushel '03 started with digital photographs of sections of the murals. They manipulated the photographs electronically, flattened them out and pasted them back together to create a three-dimensional virtual viewing experience.
"We started with 30 or 40 images from Baker, and digitally removed all geometric distortions," explains Farid. "Because the murals are so big, each photograph typically contains some amount of geometric distortion, due mostly to perspective projection. We needed to digitally remove these distortions so we could seamlessly combine neighboring panels."
Farid developed a mathematical technique that automatically straightened the digital photos, not only of the murals at Dartmouth, but of other Orozco murals in New York and California. The color correction of the artwork was not so technical nor automatic. It had to be done by hand.
"I seamed all the flat images together and went down into the reading room and sat there with my laptop," Farid says. "For many, many hours I looked up at the murals and down at my computer and by eye matched the color with what I saw on the wall." Farid relied on experts at the other mural locations for color-matching those images.
Rothe-Kushel, a native of Los Angeles and a religion major interested in computer science and filmmaking, helped Farid on this project. "I was attracted to this project because as a Chicano, it is very rare to find such a bold, artistic depiction of American history that really tells the story of my ancestors. What a treat it has been to be able to study these murals."
For the project, Rothe-Kushel got the blueprints of Baker Library and of the other U.S. buildings where Orozco murals exist, which are at the New School for Social Research in New York City and at Pomona College in Claremont, Calif. From the blueprint information, he created three-dimensional computer models, where he placed Farid's images. "I'm also helping make digital video clips which fly through the virtual space to look at the murals from all angles."
Farid and Rothe-Kushel's work will complement the traveling exhibition, adding depth by showing a more complete body of Orozco's work.
"I hope the virtual models can reproduce a piece of the immersive experience for people who may never journey to Hanover, New York or Pomona for the first-hand experience," Rothe-Kushel explains.
The new Orozco exhibition, including the digital mural tours, features more than 110 paintings, prints, drawings, watercolors and preparatory studies for murals. Organized by Dartmouth's Hood Museum of Art, the exhibit debuted this spring at the San Diego Museum of Art. It will be on view at the Hood from June 8 to December 15, 2002. After Hanover, it will be shown at the Museo de Arte Carrillo Gil in Mexico City from January 25 to April 13, 2003. The exhibition itinerary allows museum visitors to view nearby Orozco murals, not only at Dartmouth, but also in southern California and Mexico City.
|
