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My brother is in Santiago at the moment, where he teaches architecture. The city has been shaken by the recent disastrous earthquake, but survived.
My brother just finished a survey of how to preserve important structures in Valparaiso, a city more damaged by the disaster. Of course the sorts of preservation that keep urban development from destroying important landmarks rarely covers protection from acts of God… which made me think about how we are preserving our major cultural artefacts in digital form, and through subtle synthesis of the elements that make them so inspiring and memorable.
I can think of few cases in which the exact original of a physical object is needed for most inspiration and transmission of culture and heritage… in an era of 3d printing, cheap fabrication materials, lifelike capture of image and acoustics, and lifelike digital rendering, what does this mean for curation of physical objects and spaces?