MAGELANG, INDONESIA—Artnet News reports that Satoshi Tanaka of Ritsumeikan University, Jiao Pan of the University of Science and Technology Beijing, and their colleagues developed a neural network that they used to create a detailed, digital 3-D model of an eighth- to ninth-century relief at Indonesia’s Borobudur Temple. The study is part of an international collaboration between Ritsumeikan University, the National Research and Innovation Agency (BRIN) in Indonesia, and the Borobudur Conservation Office. Located on the temple’s ground level, the sculptural panel was photographed 134 years ago before it was covered with reinforcement walls. The nineteenth-century black-and-white photograph shows a group of people set against a backdrop of trees and buildings. Artificial intelligence was able to identify “soft edges” in the photograph and thereby recreate the sculpture’s curves and textures. “Through computer visualization and virtual reality, our research now allows virtual exploration of these unseen treasures,” Tanaka said. Read the original scholarly article about this research in MM '24: Proceedings of the 32nd ACM International Conference on Multimedia. To read about ancient stone monuments across the Indonesian archipelago, go to "Java's Megalithic Mountain."
