As part of our effort to support museums and cultural heritage, we learned about the #NEWPALMYRA Project. The project is an online community platform and data repository dedicated to the capture, preservation, sharing, and creative reuse of data about the ancient city of Palmyra, in Syria, which has been under attack from ISIS.
#NEWPALMYRA is based on a 3D virtual reconstruction of Palmyra started by Bassel Khartabil, a Damascus-based technologist and community organizer. (Detained in Syria since March 15, 2012 he has an active petition for his release.)
Their mission is to preserve the memory of the ancient site using 3D scanning and reconstruction technology. To begin, they are organizing a hackathon in Paris this weekend.
The two days will be dedicated to the exploration and reuse of the available digital and scientific and archaeological archives of the archaeological site of Palmyra: mapping, visualization, 3D modeling, etc. All the projects and data will be released under the Creative Commons Zero license, for everyone to visit and use.
If you are in Paris, we highly encourage you to join them! All projects will be made with Open Source tools so others can contribute worldwide.
For more information, follow along with the progress on their Sketchfab gallery.
About the author
Natalia Krasnodebska
Previously Head of Communications at Sketchfab, now Jewelry designer at bynatalia.com
