TYUT Held Seminar with University of Chicago about Digital Images Restoration for Tianlong Mountain Grottoes

The seminar about digital images restoration for Tianlong Mountain grottoes was held at TYUT’s College of Art on the afternoon of Dec. 27^th.

Cooperating with Center for East Asian Studies in University of Chicago and Tianlong Mountain Culture Relic Protection Center, TYUT aimed to restore the digital images of statues lost overseas to Tianlong Mountain grottoes. Since 2015, University of Chicago has finished digital images restoration of over 100 oversea statues, and TYUT has completed digital scan and restoration of 10 statues.

The project, listed as a "Chinese civilization going out" project by the publicity department of the CPC central committee, will start its tour around the country in August 2019. The first exhibition will be at Shanxi Museum. The world exhibition is expected to start in 2020.

When the results are about to be made public, the college of art held this academic seminar to discuss the digital restoration in the early stage and digital exhibition in the later stage of Tianlong Mountain grottoes. The meeting was hosted by Zhao Hui, dean of College of Art, and professor Lin Zhengkai from University of Chicago. The meeting was attended by over 30 domestic experts and scholars in the field of digital, art history, sculpture, archaeological including Professor Zheng Yan from Central Academy of Fine Arts, Li Luke from Tsinghua University, professor Qin Zhen from Sichuan Fine Arts Institution, professor Jia Zhaofei from Xi’an Jiaotong University, Zhang Xiaogang from Dunhuang Academy China.

At the beginning of the meeting, the project leader Zhang Xiao, associate professor from the College of Art, reported the progress of the project. Experts spoke highly of the digital restoration results, and put forward various suggestions on the display forms and ways of digital restoration. Professor Lin presented views on the details of the restoration, the overall design, the reconstruction of the historical environment, the restoration results and the exhibition plan. Finally, to summarize the seminar, Zhao Hui, dean of College of Art, put forward opinions on digital restoration and digital display of the grottoes, especially on the multidisciplinary integration of digital research on Tianlong Mountain.

Edited and Translated by Weiwei Wang