WEBVTT - How to Make It Last Forever, Part One 0:00:00.160 --> 0:00:07.080 Brought to you by Toyota. Let's go places. Welcome to 0:00:07.280 --> 0:00:14.360 Forward Thinking. Hey there, and welcome to Forward Thinking, the 0:00:14.560 --> 0:00:17.239 podcast that looks at the future and says, if I 0:00:17.280 --> 0:00:21.880 could save time in a bottle. I'm Jonathan Strickland and 0:00:22.000 --> 0:00:25.480 I'm Joe McCormick, and today we're going to do a 0:00:25.480 --> 0:00:28.520 little bit of meta analysis about what it means to 0:00:28.600 --> 0:00:31.880 talk about the future, because on this podcast, a lot 0:00:31.880 --> 0:00:34.239 of times, you know, the theme is the future, but 0:00:34.400 --> 0:00:37.920 really that turns into, well, here's a scientific question that 0:00:37.960 --> 0:00:40.400 will be answered in the future, or that we're currently 0:00:40.440 --> 0:00:42.760 answering now and we'll know the answer in the future. 0:00:43.440 --> 0:00:46.400 Or here's a technology that may become more prevalent or 0:00:46.479 --> 0:00:49.640 change the world in the future. But what about the 0:00:49.680 --> 0:00:52.919 passage of time itself? What about when we turn our 0:00:52.960 --> 0:00:56.120 attention to the changing of the guard from the past 0:00:56.240 --> 0:00:59.320 to the present to the future. And that's at the 0:00:59.360 --> 0:01:01.440 heart of our topic today, which is going to be 0:01:01.640 --> 0:01:07.720 historical preservation. Yeah, and it's going to be a two parter. Guys. 0:01:07.760 --> 0:01:10.479 We we realized that we had really quite a lot 0:01:10.520 --> 0:01:13.360 to say about this, and we've already done a few 0:01:13.360 --> 0:01:16.200 episodes on the future of the history that we are 0:01:16.319 --> 0:01:19.919 creating today, because every day we create a new history 0:01:19.959 --> 0:01:22.800 for ourselves or the new little blipping it. Yeah, isn't 0:01:22.840 --> 0:01:26.039 that a wonderfully depressing thing to think about your life? 0:01:26.440 --> 0:01:29.840 You're just leaving little drops in the ocean of history. 0:01:30.040 --> 0:01:32.040 I think it would be more depressing to think I 0:01:32.080 --> 0:01:38.240 was leaving in history when you're like man today. Today, 0:01:38.280 --> 0:01:43.240 I cataloged my perfume. You're welcome. Future. Is funny that 0:01:43.280 --> 0:01:46.080 we want privacy from the people who are alive today, 0:01:46.120 --> 0:01:47.880 but we want the people of the future to know 0:01:48.000 --> 0:01:51.760 everything about us. Do not notice how many public posts 0:01:52.320 --> 0:01:56.160 on Facebook? I'm like, look at these. Of course I 0:01:56.200 --> 0:01:58.040 want to be in all the and all the history 0:01:58.080 --> 0:02:00.600 books of the future. That's why you never shut your curtains. 0:02:01.480 --> 0:02:04.160 Shut my mouth do weird stuff? Yeah, you know, I 0:02:04.800 --> 0:02:08.000 like to live out there is what I do. Okay, 0:02:08.040 --> 0:02:11.320 So so other than Jonathan's open curtains, we have talked 0:02:11.320 --> 0:02:14.360 on this show about what what the ruins of today's 0:02:14.400 --> 0:02:17.120 society might look like. Sure. Yeah, our friend Christian Sager 0:02:17.240 --> 0:02:18.800 came on the show one time to talk with us 0:02:18.840 --> 0:02:21.799 about that, about what the buildings that are out there 0:02:21.840 --> 0:02:23.880 today are going to look like in a hundred years. 0:02:23.960 --> 0:02:27.280 Or a thousand years. You can find Christian Sager on 0:02:27.639 --> 0:02:31.000 a show called Stuff to Blow Your Mind Now with 0:02:31.000 --> 0:02:33.200 with Joe McCormick, who we are sitting in a studio with, 0:02:33.320 --> 0:02:35.760 So if you want to tune into that podcast, you can, 0:02:36.000 --> 0:02:39.520 uh we We also did a couple episodes on how 0:02:39.560 --> 0:02:43.080 we can preserve the safety of nuclear waste sites in 0:02:43.160 --> 0:02:47.680 the future. The answer is poorly yeah, as it turns out, 0:02:47.680 --> 0:02:54.400 but mostly because of difficult political and cultural issues, not 0:02:54.600 --> 0:02:58.920 just the physical limitations right right, But today we wanted 0:02:58.960 --> 0:03:02.560 to get more in to some of those physical limitations 0:03:02.840 --> 0:03:05.600 of preserving actual objects. We wanted to talk about the 0:03:05.600 --> 0:03:11.000 future of historical preservation, how we can make lovely important 0:03:11.440 --> 0:03:15.360 cultural objects last, you know, books and films and art. Sure, 0:03:15.520 --> 0:03:19.880 so this is a problem because objects on Earth tend 0:03:19.919 --> 0:03:23.320 to deteriorate. We witness it in our own bodies through 0:03:23.320 --> 0:03:26.200 the process of aging. We witness it. If you're a homeowner, 0:03:26.280 --> 0:03:28.840 you know, you see the condition of your house deteriorate. 0:03:28.919 --> 0:03:31.480 Overscience episode is just going to continue to depress Bate, 0:03:32.480 --> 0:03:36.760 both an old person and an homeowner. But Jonathan, yes, 0:03:36.800 --> 0:03:39.160 there is hope because there are steps we can take 0:03:39.200 --> 0:03:43.800 that we've discovered through years of technological development to stay 0:03:43.880 --> 0:03:48.360 the advances of time, to hold back the creep of decay, 0:03:48.880 --> 0:03:51.280 and to make the things that we love last long 0:03:51.320 --> 0:03:54.240 into the future. And to be fair, we also have 0:03:54.360 --> 0:03:58.200 a greater awareness now as our modern sensibility as such 0:03:58.280 --> 0:04:01.640 that we are starting to realize more within our own 0:04:01.720 --> 0:04:04.960 time the importance of things we create. Whereas if you 0:04:05.000 --> 0:04:07.920 look at ages past, often the things that we hold 0:04:08.000 --> 0:04:12.080 up as the artifacts of the past were the utilitarian 0:04:12.240 --> 0:04:14.840 stuff or in some cases the works of art of 0:04:14.840 --> 0:04:19.400 people who weren't necessarily thinking how can we preserve this 0:04:19.480 --> 0:04:22.560 so that future generations will have access to it? Right, 0:04:22.920 --> 0:04:24.920 Sometimes they were, but lots of times it was just 0:04:25.040 --> 0:04:28.400 kind of the ephemera of the day, and you're interested 0:04:28.440 --> 0:04:30.880 in it, But yeah, yeah, how would you have known 0:04:30.880 --> 0:04:35.080 back then, like, who's going to be interested in this? Pot? Sure? 0:04:35.160 --> 0:04:38.480 And so although it is scientific that things fall apart, 0:04:38.640 --> 0:04:41.360 it is also scientific that we can kind of help 0:04:41.400 --> 0:04:43.520 them hold together a little bit here and there. And 0:04:43.720 --> 0:04:46.520 this might be of waited interest to the three of 0:04:46.600 --> 0:04:48.719 us sitting in this room, because we are all writers 0:04:48.720 --> 0:04:52.159 and storytellers, and so we have a especially vested interest. 0:04:52.200 --> 0:04:55.640 I would say in preserving that kind of culture, including 0:04:55.640 --> 0:04:59.200 our own. Uh and and and it's a you know, 0:04:59.440 --> 0:05:03.159 it's a huge field, and it's one that's largely invisible 0:05:03.200 --> 0:05:06.640 to the general public because if a conservationist is doing 0:05:06.680 --> 0:05:09.640 her job really well, you never see it. You just 0:05:09.680 --> 0:05:12.880 get to continue enjoying the lovely objects that she's working with. 0:05:13.120 --> 0:05:15.159 That's a really great point. I've heard a similar thing 0:05:15.279 --> 0:05:18.440 said about like the directors of movies. The movies that 0:05:18.560 --> 0:05:21.440 have really great direction are the ones where you don't say, 0:05:21.480 --> 0:05:26.440 I'm really noticing the direction, but yeah, let's jump right 0:05:26.480 --> 0:05:29.240 into it. If if you guys are ready, I'm curious, Like, 0:05:29.600 --> 0:05:34.039 let's say there is a beautiful oil painting. Okay, there's 0:05:34.040 --> 0:05:36.960 a beautiful oil painting. There's a beautiful oil painting hanging 0:05:37.040 --> 0:05:42.599 up in your house because you stole it from a museum, right, 0:05:42.920 --> 0:05:46.840 And you're like, okay, I know I can love this 0:05:46.920 --> 0:05:52.800 painting better than the museum would. What a long What 0:05:52.880 --> 0:05:55.560 would you do to protect this painting, to make it 0:05:55.640 --> 0:05:58.360 last a thousand years, to make it last as long 0:05:58.400 --> 0:06:00.960 as you possibly could take it into the future. And 0:06:01.040 --> 0:06:04.440 this is something where we've developed the techniques based upon 0:06:05.560 --> 0:06:10.800 years of various collections and museums, learning the best ways 0:06:10.839 --> 0:06:14.760 to take care of these often priceless artifacts. I mean, 0:06:14.800 --> 0:06:17.280 you mean, you could argue you could put a price 0:06:17.279 --> 0:06:21.200 on them, but they they're astronomically priced. So well. Well, Also, 0:06:21.240 --> 0:06:24.120 most of the people who created these things aren't around anymore, 0:06:24.200 --> 0:06:26.400 so you can't just ask them like, hey, can you 0:06:26.400 --> 0:06:28.159 touch this up? Yeah? Are like, hey, could you just 0:06:28.200 --> 0:06:31.640 make another? Do you still have the the exact paints 0:06:31.680 --> 0:06:34.800 that you used to create this masterpiece? Like, hey, get 0:06:34.800 --> 0:06:37.320 to work on this forest? Da Vinci? We were really lacking. 0:06:37.720 --> 0:06:40.200 I mean, I do know the guy, but he's kind 0:06:40.200 --> 0:06:43.800 of busy. So there's certain rules that are going to 0:06:43.920 --> 0:06:46.679 come up again and again as we talk about different 0:06:46.760 --> 0:06:50.200 types of stuff we want to preserve um. And it 0:06:50.279 --> 0:06:53.440 shouldn't come as a surprise because, like Joe was saying, 0:06:54.240 --> 0:06:57.160 the stuff on Earth does degrade over time. There there 0:06:57.160 --> 0:06:59.760 are very few materials that we have that are going 0:06:59.800 --> 0:07:03.800 to withstand the ravages of time, even if you are 0:07:03.839 --> 0:07:08.279 taking the best of care with that object. Ultimately, stuff 0:07:08.400 --> 0:07:12.520 does tend to tend towards intropyte they break down. But 0:07:13.080 --> 0:07:15.480 if you are trying to extend the life of something 0:07:15.520 --> 0:07:17.840 like an oil painting, first keep it out of sunlight 0:07:18.600 --> 0:07:21.640 in particular. Uh, don't expose it to a lot of 0:07:21.720 --> 0:07:24.920 light in general. Yeah. Have you ever seen these scenes 0:07:24.960 --> 0:07:27.400 in a museum where somebody's trying to take a bunch 0:07:27.400 --> 0:07:30.560 of pictures of a painting with a flash camera and 0:07:30.600 --> 0:07:33.000 they say, no, no, no, no, don't do that, right, 0:07:33.120 --> 0:07:36.480 Or even older buildings, like if you go through Europe 0:07:36.600 --> 0:07:39.640 and you are walking through you'll see in castles, You'll 0:07:39.640 --> 0:07:42.560 see in in churches, cathedrals, that sort of stuff, even 0:07:42.600 --> 0:07:45.000 ones that are no longer actively being used. They'll say, 0:07:45.000 --> 0:07:48.640 don't use flash photography. Yeah, and UV light is the 0:07:48.680 --> 0:07:52.160 worst ultra violet light in general. But but any kind 0:07:52.160 --> 0:07:55.120 of light, you know, is going to start deteriorating some 0:07:55.240 --> 0:07:58.360 of the pigments in in those paints and other materials. Right, 0:07:58.480 --> 0:08:01.640 It can cause oxidization and which ends up well, it'll 0:08:01.680 --> 0:08:05.280 make stuff fade or change color. Ultra Violet light in 0:08:05.280 --> 0:08:08.440 particular does this. And when you think of something like 0:08:09.080 --> 0:08:13.600 incandescent lights, which most art preservationists say is the best 0:08:13.760 --> 0:08:16.480 of the choices right now, maybe LEDs, but we still 0:08:16.480 --> 0:08:18.559 have to do a little more research to make sure. 0:08:18.600 --> 0:08:22.360 But incandescence tend to be uh, the safest because they 0:08:22.360 --> 0:08:25.600 emit very little ultra violet. They do emit some, but 0:08:25.680 --> 0:08:29.679 it's not much, uh compared to say, fluorescence um which 0:08:29.800 --> 0:08:32.760 do much more. And so you don't want to have uh, 0:08:32.800 --> 0:08:36.520 those or halogen's necessarily near your paintings. And you definitely 0:08:36.559 --> 0:08:39.960 don't want sunlight hitting those paintings because otherwise you're going 0:08:40.000 --> 0:08:43.040 to get these effects, including things like the paint drying 0:08:43.160 --> 0:08:46.880 up and flaking off or cracking, which you've probably seen 0:08:46.880 --> 0:08:49.200 if you've looked at some older paintings that have been 0:08:49.240 --> 0:08:51.720 around for a really long time. Yeah, somehow, I guess 0:08:51.720 --> 0:08:54.439 it would also be a bad idea to aim an 0:08:54.559 --> 0:08:58.080 X ray machine or something producing gamma rays that you're painting. Well, 0:08:58.120 --> 0:09:00.760 only if you, I mean, obviously, if you want the 0:09:00.840 --> 0:09:03.400 subject within the painting to turn into the incredible Hulk, 0:09:03.480 --> 0:09:07.360 which would be amazing I hope called the Pearl Earring 0:09:07.400 --> 0:09:10.040 would be phenomenal. You know, We've had to make this 0:09:10.080 --> 0:09:12.920 point several times on this podcast, but I'll say it again. 0:09:13.160 --> 0:09:16.280 Gamma rays don't give you special powers. They just killed you. 0:09:16.679 --> 0:09:20.560 It's true, right, unfortunate but true. Yeah, pretty much. Anyway 0:09:20.559 --> 0:09:22.480 you would get a superpower in a comic book would 0:09:22.520 --> 0:09:27.600 be would be to some degree fatal in the real world. 0:09:28.240 --> 0:09:32.080 But I'm sure there are other environmental conditions that matter absolutely. 0:09:32.080 --> 0:09:35.640 Temperature and humidity the two big ones. You want the 0:09:35.679 --> 0:09:40.200 temperature to be cool, so um, probably around the sixty 0:09:40.200 --> 0:09:44.920 five degree fahrenheit range, because anything warmer than that that's 0:09:44.960 --> 0:09:47.760 kicking up my energy bill. Yeah. Yeah, well, I mean, 0:09:48.520 --> 0:09:50.400 I guess I stole a painting. I gotta live with 0:09:50.480 --> 0:09:53.760 the consequences. I mean, if you don't care about how 0:09:53.760 --> 0:09:56.680 long it lasts, go ahead and you know, knock that 0:09:56.720 --> 0:09:59.320 back up to like seventy eight or something. No, sixty 0:09:59.559 --> 0:10:02.120 degrees fair. The reason being that that paintings are made 0:10:02.200 --> 0:10:06.840 up of a multitude of materials, right, It's not just canvas. 0:10:06.880 --> 0:10:09.400 There's the frame, there's all this other stuff, and all 0:10:09.440 --> 0:10:13.240 of those materials will expand at different rates when exposed 0:10:13.280 --> 0:10:18.599 to warmer temperatures. So if it is exposed to fluctuating temperatures, 0:10:18.880 --> 0:10:21.080 so you know, the temperature goes up and down multiple 0:10:21.080 --> 0:10:24.920 times throughout the year, this creates a constant stress on 0:10:24.960 --> 0:10:28.160 the painting and decreases its lifespan. Oh yeah, you're you're 0:10:28.160 --> 0:10:30.599 gonna get more flaking of the paint or more separation 0:10:30.720 --> 0:10:34.319 of the chemicals in the paint or etcetera. And if 0:10:34.360 --> 0:10:36.959 you have a painting that's on linen, for example, lenin 0:10:37.080 --> 0:10:40.000 can expand in heat. So you may have sometimes seen 0:10:40.040 --> 0:10:43.000 a painting that had looked like a fold in it, 0:10:43.040 --> 0:10:45.640 like it was a little the it looked like the 0:10:45.679 --> 0:10:48.720 frame might be too small that you needed to put 0:10:48.720 --> 0:10:50.480 it in a larger frame to stretch it out. But 0:10:50.800 --> 0:10:54.199 you should absolutely not do that because if you were 0:10:54.280 --> 0:10:56.440 to do that with a linen painting, once the temperature 0:10:56.440 --> 0:10:59.520 goes down, then the material would start to try and 0:10:59.559 --> 0:11:02.560 pull away from the frame because it was trying to 0:11:02.600 --> 0:11:04.960 move back to the shape it was before it expanded 0:11:04.960 --> 0:11:07.920 in the heat. So you want a nice, stable, cool, 0:11:08.679 --> 0:11:13.480 relatively dry but not too dry environment. Um if it's 0:11:13.520 --> 0:11:15.680 if it's a human environment, that can mean that you 0:11:15.720 --> 0:11:18.320 could have mold growing on your painting, which is not 0:11:18.440 --> 0:11:21.160 good for the longevity of the painting. If it's too dry, 0:11:21.240 --> 0:11:25.600 it can make it's bad for things rule of thumb, 0:11:26.040 --> 0:11:28.160 and unless you're swamp thing, in which case it just 0:11:28.200 --> 0:11:32.760 adds mass. And then if you if it's too dry, 0:11:32.920 --> 0:11:35.280 can make the material brittle. So you you have to 0:11:35.320 --> 0:11:38.200 have this kind of very delicate balancing act, which is 0:11:38.240 --> 0:11:42.640 why museums and other collection areas like you'll you'll see 0:11:42.679 --> 0:11:46.120 things in case so that they preserve a particular relative 0:11:46.200 --> 0:11:49.240 humidity to keep the material in good shape. Yeah, and 0:11:49.320 --> 0:11:53.079 you can imagine that the invention of digitally controlled HVAC 0:11:53.160 --> 0:11:56.680 systems has greatly assisted in this over the past decade 0:11:56.760 --> 0:11:59.679 or so, everything from the actual control to the sensors 0:12:00.000 --> 0:12:02.480 of that. You you have a very good idea of 0:12:02.520 --> 0:12:05.559 what the temperature and relative humidity are at any given time, 0:12:05.600 --> 0:12:08.880 so you can make those minute adjustments or even have 0:12:09.000 --> 0:12:12.360 it programmed in as an algorithm so that it maintains 0:12:12.360 --> 0:12:15.800 that relative to the environment, so that you know you 0:12:15.880 --> 0:12:20.120 have the ideal conditions to preserve that material. Okay, but 0:12:20.200 --> 0:12:24.000 here's an issue. I would imagine that the conditions in 0:12:24.040 --> 0:12:27.079 which we store our priceless works of art, Like if 0:12:27.120 --> 0:12:29.880 you say there's an oil painting that comes from the Renaissance, 0:12:30.120 --> 0:12:33.800 we're probably better at controlling those conditions and taking care 0:12:33.800 --> 0:12:36.640 of it today than we have ever been before. Yea, 0:12:36.720 --> 0:12:41.120 the Italian Renaissance HVAC systems were crap exactly right. So 0:12:41.240 --> 0:12:44.200 if you had an oil painting from the Renaissance hanging 0:12:44.320 --> 0:12:48.079 up in less than ideal conditions for a long time, 0:12:48.400 --> 0:12:53.560 and it became it deteriorated, it became damaged, degraded over 0:12:53.600 --> 0:12:56.000 that time. Is there anything we can do now to 0:12:56.040 --> 0:12:59.920 try to restore it to its more pristine state? How 0:13:00.120 --> 0:13:04.280 classically we would try to restore paintings physically by either 0:13:04.400 --> 0:13:07.280 applying more paint or trying to remove areas of damage, 0:13:07.360 --> 0:13:09.960 or even just like blueing little flakes of paint back 0:13:10.000 --> 0:13:13.840 on as they kind of fell off, and and and 0:13:13.880 --> 0:13:18.840 as you can imagine, those are very permanent ways of 0:13:18.920 --> 0:13:23.440 dealing with with a with an artwork, because that's you 0:13:23.480 --> 0:13:25.960 can't go back. Once you've added more paint onto something 0:13:26.000 --> 0:13:28.839 that's basically it, you've changed it forever. And so it's 0:13:28.880 --> 0:13:32.360 considered unethical these days generally to do that sort of thing. 0:13:32.800 --> 0:13:40.800 The extreme cases, you can't ka homo exactly. Yeah, yeah, 0:13:40.800 --> 0:13:42.880 that's and if you don't know what that is, that's 0:13:42.880 --> 0:13:49.000 a reference to a failed restoration job. I'm nearly positive 0:13:49.080 --> 0:13:51.080 that if you are on the internet right now, you 0:13:51.160 --> 0:13:55.160 have seen it. Uh so, so you know your your 0:13:55.160 --> 0:13:57.200 options at this point if you have a damaged work 0:13:57.200 --> 0:14:00.600 of art are are either too like live with it 0:14:00.640 --> 0:14:05.839 being damaged, put it in a closet and never displayed again. Uh, 0:14:05.880 --> 0:14:08.240 and I don't like like eat it, like just throw 0:14:08.280 --> 0:14:10.280 it away, But no, I mean, and you know, none 0:14:10.280 --> 0:14:13.600 of those are really the preferred way of dealing with 0:14:13.800 --> 0:14:17.800 something that you want to keep and enjoy. But there 0:14:17.840 --> 0:14:20.360 are some things that people are doing these days to 0:14:21.480 --> 0:14:25.640 more safely and gently restore paintings. There was one collaborative 0:14:25.640 --> 0:14:28.600 project that was presented during the meeting of the American 0:14:28.640 --> 0:14:33.480 Association for the Advancement of Science usually called the A 0:14:33.240 --> 0:14:36.720 A S, which is a lot it's actually it's kind 0:14:36.760 --> 0:14:40.120 of easier to say, I don't know anyway. Uh. This 0:14:40.160 --> 0:14:45.120 project was restoring paintings for display by constructing highly detailed 0:14:45.400 --> 0:14:50.520 color correcting light arrays to be shown on the paintings. So, okay, 0:14:50.560 --> 0:14:53.040 we we've already discussed how light can be bad for 0:14:53.120 --> 0:14:56.520 paint Well, that there were these five paintings, specifically that 0:14:56.520 --> 0:14:59.600 that we're being studied hung in Harvard's Holyoakes Center since 0:14:59.640 --> 0:15:02.720 the ninet in sixties. They were Mark Rothko pieces, which 0:15:02.760 --> 0:15:07.000 are these lovely abstract expressionist kind of things, and he 0:15:07.040 --> 0:15:10.240 had happened to use a very light sensitive red pigment 0:15:10.320 --> 0:15:12.800 in them. In just a few decades of being hung, 0:15:13.240 --> 0:15:17.200 his crimsons had faded or or changed to light blues, 0:15:17.840 --> 0:15:21.840 not not what he originally intended. So this this team 0:15:22.040 --> 0:15:27.040 reconstructed faded photographs of the original pieces and then built 0:15:27.080 --> 0:15:30.960 a compensation image that could be projected onto the paintings 0:15:30.960 --> 0:15:34.000 pixel by pixel to color correct for the areas that 0:15:34.080 --> 0:15:37.000 had been damaged. And and these are huge murals, like 0:15:37.000 --> 0:15:39.760 like nine ft tall by a bunch of feet wide. 0:15:40.000 --> 0:15:42.480 You know, they all depend but so they can be 0:15:42.520 --> 0:15:45.680 displayed again and hopefully out of UV light, and and 0:15:45.760 --> 0:15:49.280 with with these particular arrays being as gentle as possible 0:15:49.600 --> 0:15:52.120 on the remaining paint Yeah, just as long as the 0:15:52.200 --> 0:15:57.520 room raiders don't come in. And isn't that what they do? 0:15:57.600 --> 0:16:01.080 And they've got that UV one over every thing is 0:16:01.120 --> 0:16:05.320 their filth? Here it fingers crossed that no one's doing 0:16:05.360 --> 0:16:07.800 that to too many of our priceless works of art. 0:16:09.600 --> 0:16:12.120 But okay, so in this case, I want to know 0:16:12.160 --> 0:16:15.840 if there's filth, don't you know, if I have a 0:16:15.840 --> 0:16:18.400 priceless work of art hanging up, just let it be filthy. 0:16:18.800 --> 0:16:22.440 There's where you just say like all right, uh this 0:16:22.720 --> 0:16:24.600 I will allow. Yeah, you know, like I'm not going 0:16:24.680 --> 0:16:26.680 to put my eyeballs on it. So I'm not really 0:16:26.720 --> 0:16:30.640 that worried about its particular cleanliness. I apologize, please proceeds. 0:16:30.720 --> 0:16:35.480 It's okay, it's okay. Uh so so we so this 0:16:35.520 --> 0:16:38.400 was this was a great project. But but the restoration 0:16:38.480 --> 0:16:42.560 was done by basically looking at these restored photographs the 0:16:42.720 --> 0:16:46.240 you know, color corrected photographs used to make colored corrected 0:16:46.640 --> 0:16:50.440 light arrays. But we don't have color photographs of every 0:16:50.440 --> 0:16:53.240 original painting on the planet. I mean, rem Brandt was 0:16:53.280 --> 0:16:57.320 a total slacker about photographing his paintings, am I right? Yeah, no, 0:16:57.560 --> 0:17:02.080 none of that camera obscira for him. Uh so so 0:17:02.080 --> 0:17:06.000 so other teams are using scanning technologies to learn about 0:17:06.000 --> 0:17:09.760 the interior composition of paints in classic works and then 0:17:09.920 --> 0:17:14.200 digitally reproduce what they would have looked like. For example, 0:17:14.280 --> 0:17:20.280 electron spectroscopy can reveal the molecular composition of paints and 0:17:20.280 --> 0:17:22.800 and and even the damage that has been done to 0:17:22.880 --> 0:17:26.840 a painting can be used in order to help reconstruct it. 0:17:27.840 --> 0:17:30.840 One researcher by the name of URIs Dick from the 0:17:30.880 --> 0:17:34.240 Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands, was studying the 0:17:34.240 --> 0:17:38.800 oxidation patterns on vincent vengo a k A. Since I 0:17:38.840 --> 0:17:43.480 just said a bunch of Dutch things relatively correctly vincent fungal. 0:17:44.800 --> 0:17:48.560 That's sort of close anyway, that's how you say it. 0:17:49.320 --> 0:17:52.360 I've said it wrong my entire life. Yeah, yeah, yeah, 0:17:52.480 --> 0:17:54.640 with a kind of FV at the beginning of fun, 0:17:56.800 --> 0:18:02.960 like a baby describing a scene on the street. Then oh, 0:18:02.960 --> 0:18:06.720 he was so yours, our good buddy, yours was was 0:18:06.720 --> 0:18:10.480 was studying flowers in a blue vaz and he used 0:18:10.520 --> 0:18:15.000 micro x rays to scan and record the distribution of 0:18:15.000 --> 0:18:18.040 of this gray crust that had formed on the painting 0:18:18.080 --> 0:18:21.600 over time due to one of the yellow pigments that 0:18:21.600 --> 0:18:25.480 that van Go used. And and then he was able 0:18:25.520 --> 0:18:29.760 to three D print a reconstruction of the original surface, 0:18:29.800 --> 0:18:34.760 texture and color of the painting. Wow. Yeah, pretty amazing. 0:18:34.880 --> 0:18:39.880 I love this idea of of of incorporating new technology 0:18:39.920 --> 0:18:42.479 to preserve the old stuff. I mean, the idea of 0:18:42.520 --> 0:18:47.080 the both the lighting of the the former painting and 0:18:47.080 --> 0:18:50.919 then using three D printing to try and replicate something 0:18:50.960 --> 0:18:54.560 that had I would have just assumed had been lost 0:18:54.560 --> 0:19:00.800 to time is really phenomenal, really cool ideas for preservation. Yeah, 0:19:00.840 --> 0:19:03.560 and that makes me think of another area of preservation 0:19:03.640 --> 0:19:06.080 that might not be as obvious as that of the 0:19:06.119 --> 0:19:08.480 oil painting, because when you think about something like an 0:19:08.480 --> 0:19:12.280 oil painting, there you're dealing with at least probably some 0:19:12.480 --> 0:19:17.840 organic ingredients, things that are more likely to just obviously 0:19:17.920 --> 0:19:24.280 deteriorate over time. But what about film synthetic materials. Yeah, well, 0:19:24.320 --> 0:19:26.000 this is an area where I think a lot of 0:19:26.000 --> 0:19:31.200 people would be surprised to learn how perilous the idea 0:19:31.240 --> 0:19:35.640 of film archiving and film storage is because we have 0:19:35.680 --> 0:19:39.080 lost tons of films. Oh yeah, well, and it's been 0:19:39.119 --> 0:19:41.639 beaten into us since childhood, those of us who certainly 0:19:41.680 --> 0:19:43.800 grew up in the seventies and eighties, I would say 0:19:43.800 --> 0:19:49.520 that that, you know, plastic is forever, Plastic doesn't go. Yeah, 0:19:49.680 --> 0:19:52.240 as it turns out, that's not entirely true. The it's 0:19:52.240 --> 0:19:57.119 only true about the garbage that kills ducks. Films, on 0:19:57.160 --> 0:19:59.880 the other hand, films about ducks being killed by garbage 0:20:00.720 --> 0:20:05.160 very ephemeral. As it turns out, now they film is perishable. Plastic. 0:20:05.480 --> 0:20:08.159 Film will degrade over time, it will it will rot, 0:20:08.760 --> 0:20:12.600 and it just eventually dissolves until you no longer have 0:20:12.720 --> 0:20:16.680 something that will hold an image at any you know anymore. Yeah, 0:20:16.720 --> 0:20:20.959 In fact, There are even classic, well loved, well respected 0:20:21.000 --> 0:20:25.600 films that do not exist in any entirely undamaged state. 0:20:26.200 --> 0:20:29.679 They've had to go through restoration projects where people go 0:20:29.760 --> 0:20:31.800 through the film and try to patch it and clean 0:20:31.880 --> 0:20:34.840 it up. And these are for films that people care about. 0:20:35.400 --> 0:20:38.320 There there are movies where there's no longer a master print, 0:20:38.560 --> 0:20:42.840 and the closest we have is a kind of a 0:20:42.880 --> 0:20:46.000 hodgepodge of the copy of a restoration of a copy 0:20:46.200 --> 0:20:48.080 right where you you would end up saying, well, the 0:20:48.400 --> 0:20:51.760 first reel was mostly undamaged on this print, and the 0:20:51.880 --> 0:20:54.240 second reel was mostly undamaged on this print. So we 0:20:54.280 --> 0:20:56.760 started to kind of splice these together to make a 0:20:56.760 --> 0:21:00.240 Frankenstein print, perhaps of the movie Frankenstein, so that you 0:21:00.280 --> 0:21:02.520 would be able to watch the whole thing and as 0:21:02.560 --> 0:21:06.200 good a quality as possible. Here's another thing is that 0:21:06.320 --> 0:21:09.119 we were talking about how in ages passed people weren't 0:21:09.160 --> 0:21:12.600 really aware that the stuff they were creating could one 0:21:12.680 --> 0:21:15.399 day be considered art or important, and therefore there wasn't 0:21:15.440 --> 0:21:19.280 this this need for preservation. The same things true with 0:21:19.320 --> 0:21:22.200 the film industry. Absolutely the case, I think especially in 0:21:22.240 --> 0:21:24.639 the silent film error and a lot of you know, 0:21:24.720 --> 0:21:27.720 like early films. I think a lot of them, the 0:21:27.720 --> 0:21:30.000 people who were taking care of them just didn't have 0:21:30.119 --> 0:21:33.439 an eye towards permanence. Well, yeah, even if you then 0:21:33.600 --> 0:21:36.639 this extends well beyond the early days of film. If 0:21:36.680 --> 0:21:41.600 you watch any documentary about the comedy group Monty Python, 0:21:42.000 --> 0:21:46.280 they talked about how their original tapes were being held 0:21:46.280 --> 0:21:48.399 by the BBC, and I think it was Eric Idle 0:21:48.400 --> 0:21:50.600 who went and purchased them from the BBC because they 0:21:50.600 --> 0:21:53.240 were scheduled to be taped over. The BBC was using 0:21:53.240 --> 0:21:57.400 the same tapes that they had used to shoot they 0:21:57.440 --> 0:21:59.199 and they had done it before, the company had done 0:21:59.240 --> 0:22:02.840 it before, because they had shot stuff before that had 0:22:02.880 --> 0:22:05.960 been That's why we don't have copies of a lot 0:22:06.040 --> 0:22:11.680 of the early doctor who's they were taking. Yeah, that's incredible. Yeah, 0:22:11.840 --> 0:22:13.200 but see, that's the thing is that at the time 0:22:13.200 --> 0:22:15.120 you thought, well, this is something we show, and then 0:22:15.160 --> 0:22:18.119 after we show it, like, there weren't necessarily thoughts of 0:22:18.119 --> 0:22:20.760 syndication or or keeping it around for any reason. There 0:22:20.800 --> 0:22:24.640 was no home home market, so there it was kind 0:22:24.640 --> 0:22:26.960 of the need to reproduce it. We aired it once. 0:22:27.000 --> 0:22:28.720 I guess that's it. It's kind of like kind of 0:22:28.760 --> 0:22:30.960 like going to see a play, You're like, well, it 0:22:31.040 --> 0:22:32.879 was meant to be seen at this one time, and 0:22:32.880 --> 0:22:35.840 then once the play is over, then it's over. Uh, 0:22:36.720 --> 0:22:39.320 move on exactly. So if we look back at the 0:22:39.320 --> 0:22:42.439 earliest films, we have only about twenty percent of the 0:22:42.480 --> 0:22:47.240 movies produced from around nineteen ten to nineteen thirty incomplete form, 0:22:47.280 --> 0:22:50.840 So the movies completed then we either have completely lost 0:22:50.920 --> 0:22:53.760 or we only have partial prints. Um, now do we 0:22:53.800 --> 0:22:56.600 know what percentage of that was? People taping over it? 0:22:56.920 --> 0:22:59.040 Was like I need to make Harry and the Henderson's 0:22:59.040 --> 0:23:04.960 and well, some films that film you can't. It's not 0:23:05.080 --> 0:23:07.959 magnetic tape. It's it's actual film where you've well, you 0:23:08.000 --> 0:23:12.040 can tape over it, but it would produce really interesting 0:23:12.400 --> 0:23:15.679 images once you've developed it. It's done. You would be 0:23:15.680 --> 0:23:18.959 able to do multiple exposures before developing it. But yes, uh, 0:23:19.080 --> 0:23:23.040