A team of heritage conservators and digital design experts from Historic Scotland and the Digital Design Studio at the Glasgow School of Art are leaving Scotland on Friday, 7th May for the Black Hills of South Dakota to digitally record the international heritage landmark, Mount Rushmore.

The project, expected to last two weeks, is the first international site the team will scan with 3D laser scanners as part of the Scottish 10 - an ambitious five-year project to use cutting edge technology to create exceptionally accurate digital models of Scotland’s five UNESCO designated World Heritage Sites and five international sites.

Minister for Culture and External Affairs, Fiona Hyslop said: “I wish the team the very best of luck in this project. This is a fantastic opportunity for two Scottish organisations to combine expertise and showcase them on a world stage.

“The Scottish 10 provides Historic Scotland and Glasgow School of Art with a platform to show Scottish innovation in digital technology for the historic environment like no other project before, and provides us with 3D imagery of these special sites for preservation, conservation, research and development, tourism, education and interpretation purposes."

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Doug Pritchard, Head of Visualisation at the Glasgow School of Art, who will lead the team during the Mount Rushmore project, said: “We are delighted to be working on such an internationally recognisable and emblematic site. Five specialists from Scotland will be on site to fully document the Mount Rushmore National Memorial – down to the millimetre – over a two-week period. The team will employ highly advanced laser scanning technology to provide the US National Parks Service with the extremely accurate, comprehensive 3-D survey of the Memorial.

"The derived 3-D data will then be used to assess the physical condition of the Memorial as well as provide the foundation for future conservation, site management and archeological understanding. The data will also be used to develop photorealistic 3-D animations to aid in public interpretation and education.”

The Scottish team will be working with conservation and climbing experts from the Mount Rushmore National Memorial as well as the California-based CyArk Foundation – with the mission of "preserving World Heritage Sites through collecting, archiving and providing open access to data created by laser scanning, digital modeling, and other state-of-the-art technologies” and local South Dakota parters.

The Scottish 10 project was announced in July 2009. The five sites in Scotland are Unesco World Heritage Sites and include The Heart of Neolithic Orkney; The Antonine Wall; the Old and New Towns of Edinburgh; St Kilda and New Lanark. New Lanark has just been finished with 3D images of the laser scan data are available.

The team is scheduled to start on site in Orkney in August 2010. The other remaining four overseas sites have still be to selected and will fulfil Scottish Government International objectives in Japan, India and China, with a fifth site to be selected.

(GK)