The 3D printing process begins by simply designing a 3D object on a computer or via a 3D scanning apparatus that allows users to scan existing objects, which is then converted to a digital file to be sent to a 3D printing machine. The machine then converts the file into tons of miniscule slices, which begin printing from the bottom up to recreate the object. In an article from the Independent explaining this process, they compare it to “baking each individual slice of bread and then gluing them together into a whole loaf.” As the process goes on, the small layers meld together in order to form the solid object. Typically, objects are printed with plastic filament, though other biodegradable filament options are now being explored, such as recycled plastic waste, recycled concrete, and plant-based materials.

3D printing has primarily been seen used in museums to assist with interactive experiences and to create a more accessible and tactile environment for visually impaired individuals. 3D printed objects, unlike the real thing, can be easily recreated, and thus make them the perfect alternative to the average museum object, as patrons with visual impairments can feel free to touch and feel the objects to their liking. As the use of 3D printing in museums has turned towards conservation and archaeological aspects in the past few years, the subject of repatriation and decolonization of museums has become a hot topic amongst those that see the opportunity to use this technology in order to maintain ethical standards in the museum industry. 

Repatriation and provenance, the written history of ownership and acquisition of antiquities, first legally entered the museum space via the 1970 UNESCO ​​Convention on the Means of Prohibiting and Preventing the Illicit Import, Export and Transfer of Ownership of Cultural Property. This Convention “encourages cooperation among nations to prevent the illicit movement of cultural property across borders,” and while it does require the use of provenance and provides assistance in returning objects to their home countries, these said home countries are required to pay a “just amount” to whatever nation currently holding these objects if they are deemed “innocent purchasers” or hold a valid title to the object. It is important to note that even “innocent purchasers” can, in actuality, be owners of illegally taken antiquities and artifacts. Furthermore, as outlined by the Getty Conservation Institute, “much of the responsibility for controlling the illegal flow of cultural property is placed on the states of origin.” While this Convention written in 1970 certainly helped slow and squander the illegal trade of antiquities between nations and their museums, it does not necessarily ensure that home countries looking to recollect their historical objects and antiquities have that immediate right to own their own past.

Several famous cases of repatriation have arisen since the implementation of the 1970 UNESCO Convention, with the British Museum most often being cited and their collections of Greek, Egyptian, and Roman works. The case against their ownership of a portion of the Greek Parthenon frieze often sees the most debate. More than 200 years ago, the Parthenon marbles were taken under the supervision of Thomas Bruce, Earl of Elgin, who was serving as the British ambassador to the Ottoman Empire (which then ruled over Greece). The British Museum officially bought the marbles from the British ambassador in 1816. Since Greece obtained its national freedom in 1832, they have made several attempts to demand the return of the Parthenon frieze, citing that Lord Elgin had no legal or ethical right to take it in the first place. These attempts have proven to be unsuccessful, with the British Museum now positioning itself as “preservers” of the marbles, despite its proven history of poorly executed preservation and maintenance efforts. While the ownership of non-indigenous antiquities and historical objects might be acceptable if it were being done under the umbrella of a “universal museum of knowledge and cross-cultural sharing,” many of these objects were taken from developing countries and continue to be kept in a perpetuation of colonialist practices. These long-existing and ongoing debates of ownership are a major pillar in the concept that 3D printing can be used effectively within the practice of repatriation and the decolonization of the traditional museum, but how might this work? 

The main idea behind using 3D printing technology to support repatriation is that museums would now be able to “digitally store their collections and reproduce them in physical form, so that they can return the original items to their countries of origin.” The study conducted at the University of Brighton’s Centre for Secure, Intelligent, and Usable Systems points to 3D printing as being an opportunity to “democratize the art of copying so it isn’t limited to big museums with generous budgets or top experts with specialist knowledge…[and that] digital files of artifacts can be shared online and replicas can be printed in other parts of the world.” This latter statement is an interesting point that has not been touched upon in other analyses of this study, and reflects on the idea of this “universal museum of knowledge and cross-cultural sharing” that was touched upon previously. With this latter statement taken into consideration, this practice could prove to have potential in the realm of repatriation, though it does not seem to be being taken seriously by museum professionals.

In a case from 2016, there was an inner leak from the collections department at the Neues Museum in Berlin, Germany, in which a 3D scanned digital file was released via the internet. Prior to this incident, the museum had been adamant that photographs were not allowed of the bust, in order to protect their supposed image rights. While the museum put out a story that the scan had been taken illegally by two artists that had managed to sneak a 3D scanning apparatus into the museum, their cover story was found at fault when the leaked scan showed a digital copyright tag directly related to the museum and their collections department. Since this incident, EU law has been amended in order to no longer allow public artworks to be protected under simple copyright. While the museum still owns the object, they no longer have the rights to the digital scan that they made and was subsequently leaked. Laws like the one established in the European Union support the idea of this universal museal connection, which would more ethically allow the repatriation of objects. While the idea of 3D scans being open to the public, and whomever may want access to it seems like it could have its downfalls, a shared museum connection could introduce a more equitable foundation within the museum industry.

3D printing could offer great benefits to the museum world and the drive for repatriation efforts if used in a way where the image of an antiquity, artifact, or historical objects was still being exploited by some way connected to its colonially acquired context. While the subject is complicated and much still needs to be thought about critically in order to remove ourselves from all past associated colonialist contexts within the museum system, the ever growing present day technologies available to us have the potential to assist in rectifying past exploitation if used thoughtfully.

Bibliography

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Open Heritage is just one of several online-available recreations of cultural heritage sites. It presents 26 different sites as realistic, explorable 3D locations, including locations in “parts of the Roman city of Pompeii, Native American cliff dwellings at Mesa Verde in southern Colorado, and the 1000 year old Temple of Kukulcan in the Mayan city of Chichén Itzá.” These sites, unlike some others, look at how they look now, compared to how they may have looked when they were being actively used. Along with Google’s Open Heritage service, several other institutions have toyed with their own versions of VR recreations, including TIME and National Geographic. TIME’s work, which was actually a preview for a film by British director Christopher Nolan, used VR to transport the user into the Battle of Dunkirk during the second World War. National Geographic’s immersive virtual reality experiment looks into Viking culture, placing the user in the middle of a Viking “fighting pit”. While these two examples are action-packed, VR is also being used by arts and cultural organizations for more observational purposes, such as the aforementioned site recreations. Australian archaeologist, Simon Young, for example, created a VR recreation of several different Roman ruin sites. The VR experience allows visitors at these Roman ruins to look through their VR and see what the site once looked like centuries back. Young’s recreation can be accessed via smartphone and plugged into a portable smartphone VR headset. 

These smartphone VR headsets, and other recently popularized VR headsets, have changed the means of accessibility towards VR, making it much easier for cultural institutions to find and use immersive reality experiences in “educational, explorative, and exhibition enhancement purposes.” Virtual reality is a rapidly changing and growing technology, but the creation of these portable headsets has laid a baseline for museums and other institutions to use and work off of. According to an article by Erik Champion and Mafkereseb Kassahun Bekele, what actually engages the user “is related to the ability of the virtual environment to enable engaging experiences as a result of the combination of immersivity and intuitive interaction with the cultural context in the virtual environment.” The relevant cultural context and immersivity of VR in this application is what enhances the learning experience for the user, and for the most part has been able to be made accessible to museums that otherwise would not have any representation of these sites or their artifacts. 

The use of VR recreations for cultural heritage sites has become crucial in preserving public memory, with many being at risk of destruction. One main concern for preservationists is the destruction of war in countries such as Ukraine, Iraq, and Syria, and the loss being inflicted when it comes to the existence of heritage sites in these regions. In a statement made by Michael Danti of the Syrian Heritage Initiative at the American Schools of Oriental Research, he described the destruction of war as “the worst cultural heritage emergency since World War II…here we see how technologies can be used not only to document the making – and unmaking – of heritage, but also to rebuild it; both materially and in the imagination.” In Syria, specifically, the Islamic State “has sped the pace of looting by encouraging professional looters with heavy machinery and archeological knowledge to dig archeological sites in return for payment to [the Islamic State] of a 20% ‘tax’ on the value of what they find.” Not only does this looting bring them profit, so in turn they encourage the destruction, but it also serves as a violent reminder that there is no alternative in their world. This is where the creation of virtual realities surrounding these heritage sites is growing in importance.

As of 2016, virtual reality and cultural specialists have been working together to recreate these sites to preserve their existence in time after their destruction at the hands of militant groups. The Institute of Digital Archaeology, a joint project between Oxford, Harvard, and the Museum of the Future (Dubai) created a 3D virtual model of a Roman arch destroyed by the Islamic State in Palmyra, Syria. The recreation was based on photos from archaeologists and tourists alike before the site’s destruction, and after it’s initial translation into a VR experience was able to be carved into marble by robots programmed based on the model. Something that is also important to note with this technology, however, as highlighted by artist Morehshin Allahyari in Legal and Ethical Considerations for Digital Recreations of Cultural Heritage by Erin L. Thompson, is that we must consider power structures and “how it’s different when Westerners or tech companies save cultural things compared to someone else who actually comes from the culture.” Sites and antiquities that are recognized within these countries, but perhaps not the greater Western culture are subject to neglect in these projects. This is just one of several ethical considerations when using these technologies to recreate cultural heritage sites. 

In Legal and Ethical Considerations for Digital Recreations of Cultural Heritage, Thompson highlights further considerations similar to Allahyari, including “the political uses of representation and interpretation of cultural heritage; the accessibility or lack thereof of digital representations; the violence to the ‘authentic’ or ‘real’ that the virtual  might  inflict; the correct approach to data transparency and sharing; and the ease both of manipulation and surreptitious capture of digital images.” Concerns also often include political exploitation of the sites, that these VR experiences will be built by engineers that have had little interaction or no real connection with the physical sites themselves, and that they will overall be modeled after Westernized perspectives. These heritage sites, as well as their antiquities, “are not protectable by copyright; at thousands of years old, they are in the public domain many times over,” giving almost anyone that wants permission to form a recreation without the necessary thought to history, detail, and cultural consent. 

Virtual reality recreations, as an artistic response to these cultural heritage destructions, serves as an important tool moving forward for many nations and their unique cultures. These recreations “stand as symbolic representations of a society’s existence and have paid the price over the eons,” with many of these projects being created out of pure necessity of saving public memory of these sites that could soon be lost forever. While the creation of these VR experiences are at risk of numerous ethical considerations, including the perspective, political view, and accessibility, the correct intention and balanced collaboration can complete VR cultural heritage recreation projects that are relevant and non-exploitative. With the use of best practices, such as clearly marking VR experiences based on who made it versus presenting it as a completely neutral representation, and to provide annotations to the viewer within the experience that educated them on conflicting theories or aspects of the representation that may differ. Allowing viewers to make their own informed decisions based on these annotations could certainly be a solution for these experiences when being presented by organizations that are not necessarily deeply connected to these heritage sites. Overall, these uses of the medium with historical preservation as a driving factor are an important aspect of virtual reality creation that should not be overlooked despite the ethical considerations, with many of these concerns being able to be addressed if the works are to go to larger public audiences. With meaningful collaboration around the project, VR professionals and historians alike can build an experience that is adequately true and reflective of its home culture.