WOW, The Bartlett School of Architecture Summer Show is a collection of over a
thousand models, installations, prototypes, drawings, photographs,
films, sketches and designs presented across four large exhibition
spaces in the Slade School of Art, UCL each summer. The show lasted for
just seven days but is now completely archived in 3D…  48 hours of color 3D scanning produced 64 scans of the entire
exhibition space using a Faro Photon 120 laser scanner. These have been
compiled to form a complete 3D replica of the temporary show which has
been distilled into a navigable animation, check out the spooky cool video here.

Obviously in the very early stages, this is a really exciting example of how temporary, site specific art installations and events can be documented for prosperity.  Some would say that to take an artwork of impermanence and making it ‘virtually’ permanent may be counter to the temporal nature of the art, but with the ghostly renderings shown in the animation it looks like a perfect fit.  It would be easy to imagine how this same data could be used for an augmented reality exhibition in the same space.  Imagine walking around the empty space, augmented screen in hand/goggles, each person tuned to their exhibition of choice, simultaneously viewing different past exhibits…

Or perhaps we could just 3D print an exact replica?