"Non-Invasive!" An Interdisciplinary Conference on the Digital in Restoration

The team first demonstrated this approach using the late Gothic mural cycle on the sciences and arts in the former library of the Brandenburg Cathedral cloister as an example. This painting, which is in part extremely fragmentary and only partially visible to the naked eye, was the subject of an interdisciplinary research project funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG) for several years. Professor Dr Ursula Schädler-Saub from the HAWK led this restoration science project, which was closely linked to an art history project led by Professor Dr Ulrike Heinrichs from the University of Paderborn. In conjunction with other case studies elsewhere, a representative overview of the current state of the art and operative practice in the conservation of historical monuments and archaeology emerged.

"Non-invasive" but finally back in person!

All participants were once again happy about a conference in collaboration with visits, discussions and talks. The joy of meeting colleagues and experts from all over Germany as well as from Austria, Switzerland and the Netherlands was written all over the faces of the almost 130 conference participants. Among them were many young experts and several students of the HAWK, who showed great interest in this topic, which is so explosive for theory and practice. The atmosphere was very stimulating, the mood cheerful. The conference venue in the former St Paul's Monastery in Brandenburg an der Havel, which now houses the State Archaeological Museum, provided a wonderful setting for the event.

Viewings of late medieval wall paintings framed the conference. At the beginning there was a tour of the city of Brandenburg an der Havel and at the end there was an excursion in the Mark Brandenburg, leading to Plaue, Ziesar and Jüterbog. After introductory explanations by the responsible experts from the Brandenburg State Office for the Preservation of Historical Monuments and the State Archaeological Museum (BLDAM), the HAWK team and other experts, there was an opportunity to discuss questions of preservation, presentation and mediation in collaboration in front of the originals.

About the lectures and discussions

Of the two days of lectures, the first day was devoted entirely to the DFG project on the mural painting cycle in the north wing of the Cathedral cloister in Brandenburg. The researchers involved presented the formerly famous library with contributions on the history of the building, its design around 1430 and its complete painting shortly afterwards in the 1440s. Special emphasis was placed on art technology and the material degradation of the surviving painting stock. In order to better understand today's inventory and condition, the researchers presented the history of use and restoration from the 18th to the 20th century, which was fraught with loss. After the north wing was closed due to dilapidation in 1971, the necessary investigations were carried out from the 1980s until 2005, and the restoration was carried out in accordance with the preservation order, combined with the uncovering and consolidation of the mural painting cycle.

The decision to uncover the mural and to present the partly extremely fragmentary condition in an unadorned way led to the DFG research project. The central task of the researchers involved was to record, visualise and interpret the fragments, some of which were barely comprehensible to the naked eye - also with a view to communicating them to a wider public. In interdisciplinary cooperation between conservation sciences, natural sciences and art and cultural history, the participants used and further developed innovative, largely non-invasive radiation diagnostic and imaging methods and techniques. In this way, with bundled expertise and much personal commitment, the paintings praised as "noble paintings" by the humanist Hermann Schedel in the mid-15th century became largely vivid and comprehensible again, despite all the damage and losses. However, the fragment still raises a number of questions, so that all those involved hope that the research will continue and that the visualisation techniques will be further developed.

The second day of lectures was also committed to the leitmotif of the conference "Not invasive!" and to researching and communicating the fragment. Using current case studies from Germany and Central Europe, the speakers presented various radiation-diagnostic and digital methods and techniques for the best possible recording and mediation of fragmentary wall paintings, architectural surfaces and antique sculptures. The critical evaluation of the possibilities and limits of innovative digital techniques and their impact on "classical" principles of conservation and monument preservation as well as on operative practice were repeatedly discussed in close exchange with the auditorium.

In the discussion that followed, there was a partly controversial exchange of views between "traditionalists" and digitally affine experts on the way fragmentary works of art should be presented. There was unanimity that the motto "Non-invasive!" should in future spur us on to reduce material interventions in the historical substance even more thanks to digital techniques and to use them only in a targeted manner on the basis of a comprehensive knowledge of the surviving inventory. But digital is not the only option, neither today nor in the future: refraining from additions and retouching is also an aesthetic decision that materially adds something to the original - even if it is only the "neutral" filling of a defect.

More on the topic

A Résumée on the conference compiled by Ursula Schädler-Saub summarises the contents of the individual contributions and the discussions in more detail. The digital object identifier for this is: 10.5165/hawk-hhg/494 .
To document the new findings about the Brandenburg Cathedral cloister and its mural painting cycle as well as its investigation and visualisation, the final report of the DFG project was published as an accompanying book to the conference in the form of a richly decorated volume entitled "Der Wandmalereizyklus zu den Wissenschaften und Künsten in der Cathedral cloister zu Brandenburg. Interdisciplinary research and visualisation of the fragmentary inventory". The very well illustrated 464-page volume was published by Hendrik Bäßler Verlag in Berlin (hardcover, 46 euros) in the series of publications of the Hornemann Institute and with the kind support of the BLDAM.

Acknowledgements

Many thanks to all speakers, moderators and colleagues of the HAWK and its cooperation partners, the Brandenburg State Office for the Preservation of Historical Monuments and the Brandenburg State Archaeological Museum (BLDAM) and the Brandenburg Cathedral Abbey.

Special thanks go to the director of the Hornemann Institute Dr. Angela Weyer and her team Hannah Emmerich and Nils Radunz as well as Michael Schneider from the Brandenburg State Archaeological Museum, whose dedicated organisational work contributed significantly to the success of this conference. The conference and the accompanying book were financially supported by the Niedersächsisches Vorab as well as by the presidium of the HAWK and the BLDAM.