Sri Lanka to launch Digital Art Conservation

COLOMBO (News 1st); Sri Lanka has decided to adopt a digital art conservation program to protect the paintings and artworks at historic temples in the country.

Director General of the Central Cultural Fund, Professor Gamini Ranasinghe told News 1st that digital records of paintings and artworks at historic temples that date back centuries will be obtained and kept in a secure location.

He said a pilot project will be launched at the Sudarhanarama Temple in Kiribathgoda.

At its simplest, digital conservation means the creation of a digital record of an object. 

A high-resolution recording provides an authoritative record of the work’s appearance at a given point – a vital document given the extent to which objects change over time. 

Conservators may wish to create a record like this before conducting physical conservation on an object, allowing them, and their successors, to subsequently look back at what the object looked like prior to intervention.