Digitising and Augmenting the Panorama of the Battle of Murten (DIAGRAM)
The imaging of this national treasure, a panorama painting of 1,000 m2, will deliver a digital twin which will be one of the largest digital images ever produced. From this state-of-the-art image, a series of innovative interactive museum installations will be designed in the context of the 550 anniversary of the Burgundian wars (2026).
Press release
July 2022: EPFL lab to digitize 1,000m2 ‘Swiss national treasure’
April 2023: The Digitisation of the Panorama of Murten is about to start
The object
The painting depicts the moment that Swiss Confederates gained the upper hand against the Duchy of Burgundy during its 1476 invasion, a turning point for European history. It was commissioned by a Swiss society specialized in public entertainment with this main media of the end of the 19th c. The painter, Louis Braun, was a famous German military history painter. Braun and his team produced this work measuring 10 x 100 m in 1893. It was on display in Zurich, then Geneva (1894-1907), before falling in oblivion behind the new media of the cinema. Rediscovered in 1996, it was restored and put on a brief 4 months display during Expo.02 (2002) in a monolith built by Jean Nouvel on the Murten lac. Since then it remained rolled up in a Swiss Army deposit.
The imaging process (2022-2023)
The imaging will take advantage of an iXH 150-megapixel camera with a 120mm lens, specifically built for high-resolution digitisation projects and provided by camera systems manufacturer Phase One. The process is expected to take four months, and to capture 127,000 images within and beyond the RGB (red, green, and blue) color spectrum thanks to multispectral imaging. The challenges of producing an image of ca. 1,6 terapixel with high colour fidelity at a resolution of 1000 dots per inch are both physical and technical.
Physical challenges include capturing a flawless 2D picture despite irregularities on the canvas’s surface. The original canvas is also hyperboloid in shape, as it was intended to be displayed in a rotunda. The painting will therefore need to be carefully ‘spooled’ across a substrate to ensure smooth image capture.
The challenges posed by the size, quality and high technological aspects of the digital twin on the one hand, and the size and condition of the original object on the other, are the subject of scientific research and experimentation during the imaging phase. They allow for scientific contributions in the fields of data science, conservation, and historic panoramas. It includes the use of block chain technologies, the analysis of hyperspectral images, and digital conservation.
Augmentation of the panorama (2024-2026)
The scanning of the Battle of Murten Panorama canvas can give rise to a range of interpretation projects from ultra-high resolution streaming online to highly significant situated experiences of the panorama akin to what the original experience would have been like but with the aid of spectacular software initiated interactive audio visual effects. The digital twin will be enhanced with additional content of different kinds, including immersive ambisonic soundscape, archival documents delivering data about the original display (production, painting techniques, original display), iconographical sources and preserved objects found in the painting and a range of digital animation. The installation will be tested in a large panoramic visualization system (Panorama+) at the Laboratory for Experimental Museology in order to deliver scalable systems to the project partners.
Impressum
A project of the EPFL CDH-DHI Laboratory for Experimental Museology, in partnership with the Foundation for the Panorama of the Battle of Murten. The first phase of the project is supported by Loterie Romande, Municipality of Murten, Canton of Fribourg, Federal Office for Culture, the Association of the Friends of the Panorama and the Foundation Etrillard. Phase Onetm is a sponsor for this project. A second fundraising campaign is underway to meet the challenges of the second phase of the project.
The project team is composed of Prof. Sarah Kenderdine (lead), Dr. Daniel Jaquet (co-investigator), Paul Bourke (image specialist) and the eM+ collaborators.
Publications about the project
Jaquet, Daniel, et Sarah Kenderdine. « The Murten Panorama, from 2D to 4D ». International Panorama Council Journal 3 (2020): 102‑9.
Jaquet, Daniel. « Le Panorama de la bataille de Morat version 2.0 ». Annales Fribourgeoises 83, no 2 (2021): 49‑53.
Jaquet, Daniel, et Sarah Kenderdine. « Revealing the Panorama of the Battle of Murten: Digitization, Big Data, and Immersive Visualization ». Paper presented at the International Panorama Council Conference. City Museum, Luxembourg, sept. 2022.
About the Foundation for the Panorama of the battle of Murten
Stiftung für das Panorama der Schlacht bei Murten (1476)
Publications focused on panoramic media and theory
Books
Kenderdine, S. (2013). Place-Hampi: Inhabiting the panoramic imaginary of Vijayanagara, Heidelberg: Kehrer Verlag.
Frank, I., Feneley, M., Kenderdine, S. & J. Shaw (2021), The Atlas of Maritime Buddhism. Hong Kong: City University Press.
Chapters
Kenderdine, S. (2021). ‘Experimental museology: Immersive visualization and cultural (big) data’, in (eds) M. Achiam, M. Haldrup and K. Drotner, Experimental Museology Institutions, Representations, Users. Abingdon: Routledge: 15-34.
Kenderdine, S. (2020). ‘Omnidirectional Strategies for Exploring Ancient Cities and Territories’, in M. Forte & H. Murteira (eds.), Digital Cities: Between History and Archaeology. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 185-206.
Kenderdine, S. (2016). ‘Embodiment, entanglement and immersion in digital cultural heritage’ in S. Schreibman, R. Siemens & J. Unsworth (eds.), A New Companion to Digital Humanities. John Wiley & Sons Ltd, 22–41.
Kenderdine, S. & J. Shaw. (2014) ‘A Cultural Heritage Panorama: Trajectories in Embodied Museography’, in H. Din and S. Wu (eds), Digital Heritage and Culture – Strategy and Implementation, Singapore: World Scientic Publishing Co: 197-218.
Kenderdine, S., Shaw, J. & T. Gremmler, T. (2012) ‘Cultural Data Sculpting: Omnidirectional Visualization for Cultural Datasets’, in F.T. Marchese and E/ Banissi (eds), Knowledge Visualization Currents: From Text to Art to Culture. London: Springer-Verlag: 199-221.
Kenderdine, S. (2007) ‘Speaking in Rama: Panoramic Vision in Cultural Heritage Visualisation’, in F. Cameron and S. Kenderdine (eds), Theorizing Digital Cultural Heritage: A Critical Discourse. Cambridge: MIT Press: 301-332.
Kenderdine, S., J. Shaw, D. del Favero & N. Brown. (2007). ‘Place-Hampi: Co-Evolutionary Narrative and Augmented Stereographic Panoramas, Vijayanagara, India’, in (eds) Y. Kalay, T. Kvan and J. Affleck, New Heritage: New Media and Cultural Heritage. Abingdon & Oxford: Routledge: 336-352.
Journals
Kenderdine, S. (2021). ‘Prosthetic architectures of the senses: museums and immersion’, in (eds) M. Beugnet & L. Hibberd, dossier: ‘Absorbed in Experience: new perspectives on immersive media’, Screen 61(4): 635-645. Kenderdine, S. & T. Hart. (2014). ‘mARChive: Sculpting Museum Victoria’s Collections’, Museums and the Web: Proceedings, 2-5 April 2014, Baltimore.
Kenderdine, S. & Lancaster, L. (2014). ‘Cultural Data Sculpting: The Tripitaka Koreana’, in Nhat Tur, Đuc Thien and Lancaster, L (eds), Proceedings of Buddhist Culture and Technology: New Strategies for Study, Ninh Binh: Vietnam Buddhist University.
Kenderdine, S. (2013). ‘Pure Land: Inhabiting the Mogao Caves at Dunhuang’, Curator: The Museum Journal 56(2): 199-118.
Kenderdine, S. & Hart, T. (2011) ‘Cultural Data Sculptin g: Omni-Spatial Visualization for Large Scale Heterogeneous Datasets’, in Museums and the Web 2011: Proceedings, Philadelphia, 6-9 April.
Kenderdine, S., Lancaster, L., Lan, H. & Gremmler, T. (2011). ‘Omnidirectional 3D Visualization for the Analysis of Large-Scale Textural Corpus: Tripitaka Koreana’, in Proceedings of The Second International Conference on Culture and Computing, Kyoto: IEEE, pp. 27-32.
Kenderdine, S. (2010). ‘PLACE-Hampi, Ancient Hampi and Hampi-LIVE: An Entanglement of People- Things’, in M. Forte (ed.), Cyber-Archaeology, British Archaeological Reports, Oxford: Bar Publishing, pp. 47-62.
Kenderdine, S., Shaw, J. & Kocsis, A. (2009). ‘Dramaturgies of PLACE: Evaluation, Embodiment and Performance in PLACE-Hampi’, in Proceedings of the International Conference on Advances in Computer Entertainment Technology, Athens: ACM, pp. 249-56. Kenderdine, S. (2008). ‘An entanglement of people-things: Place-Hampi’, International Journal of Digital Cultural Heritage and E-Tourism (IJDCE): .139-156.
Kenderdine, S. (2007). ‘The Irreducible Ensemble: Place-Hampi’, in Proceedings of Virtual Systems and Multimedia (VSMM) 13th International Conference, Brisbane, in Revised Selected Papers Series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 4820, Berlin: Springer, pp. 58-72.
Kenderdine, S. (2007). ‘Somatic Solidarity, Magical Realism and Animating Popular Gods: Place- Hampi “Where Intensities Are Felt”’, in Proceedings of the 11th European Information Visualisation Conference, Zürich: IEEE, pp. 402-408. Kenderdine, S. (2004). ‘Stereographic Panoramas of Angkor, Cambodia’, in Proceedings: Virtual Systems and Multimedia (VSMM) 10th International Conference, Gifu: IOS Press, pp. 612-621.
Doornbusch, P. & Kenderdine, S. (2004). ‘Presence and Sound: Identifying Sonic Means to “Be There”’, in Proceedings of Consciousness Reframed, Beijing, pp. 67-70.