It was a chance to travel back in time. Hundreds of rare and original materials—as well as 3D reconstructed buildings—were on display during a special event held on Oct. 27 at the Suraj Israni Center for Cinematic Arts, part of the Turn 1911 Project. Photos by Joelle Fusaro, School of Arts and Humanities.
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Many campus and community members joined the special presentation and reception to celebrate the launch of the next phase of the project: a newly designed website that allows viewers to explore the world’s largest collection of materials dedicated to the 1911 World’s Fair.
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The unique collaboration bridges the humanities and sciences. The project reveals the stories behind hundreds of rare archival objects—from admission tickets and brochures to postcards and postage stamps—giving us an understanding of their original cultural context and the visitor's exposition experience.
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These materials, along with 3-D reconstructions of the Fair’s pavilions, offer a digital window into the past, illustrating how this rich history can be relevant and accessible today.
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Cristina Della Coletta, dean of the School of Arts and Humanities and professor of literature, serves as the principal investigator on the project.
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Though World’s Fairs were among the West’s largest mass-attended events during the 19th and 20th centuries, they were also ephemeral occurrences designed to exhibit, rather that preserve, the changing world of modernity. Turin 1911 was no exception: once the fair was dismantled, its artifacts were scattered among institutional archives and private collectors, making it nearly impossible to be studied in a systematic manner. Until today.
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From left to right, Filiberto Chiabrando, associate professor of geomatics at the Polytechnic University of Turin; Dominique Rissolo, an archaeologist and research scientist who co-leads UC San Diego’s Cultural Heritage Engineering Initiative; Beatrice Tanduo, doctoral student at the Polytechnic University of Turin; and Scott McAvoy, an expert in 3D data processing, reconstruction, and archiving with UC San Diego’s Cultural Heritage Engineering Initiative.
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The project’s 3D models are based on archival materials and represent the closest rendition of the architectural structures that were dismantled soon after the fair closed its doors.
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Alessandra Spreafico, a key project researcher from the Politecnico di Torino, focuses on the documentation of cultural heritage materials, combining historical resources and digital mapping techniques to virtually reconstruct architectural structures that are no longer existing.
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Dominique Rissolo co-leads UC San Diego’s Cultural Heritage Engineering Initiative (located at the Qualcomm Institute), one of three important research partners that also include the School of Arts and Humanities and Italy’s Politecnico di Torino Laboratory of Geomatics for Cultural Heritage.
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Dean Cristina Della Coletta (center) with research colleagues from the Polytechnic University of Turin, including Associate Professor Filiberto Chiabrando (left) and research assistant Alessandra Spreafico (right).
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