The Digital Restoration of the Sacred cave of Kamukuwaká

The digital restoration of the vandalised sacred cave of Kamukuwaká represents a resolution between two ways of looking at and interpreting the world. The engraved symbols and markings trigger members of the Wauja community to tell the story of Kamukuwaká. But the way in which that narrative exists on the stone is not linear. It is a form of storytelling that is activated through a sense of place, with mythic content intimately associated with the landscape. Therefore, the destruction of the cave and its surroundings is also a destruction of the myth. In Xingu, culture and nature are indivisible. And the petro glyphs at Kamukuwaká are an expression of that harmony. So, in this project we have – in a sense – tried to bring a myth back to life.

During the process of restoration, however, I was completely dissociated from the caves symbolic function – accessing it only through 3D scans and photographs. This meant that I brought an entirely different set of questions to the cave as a subject. I had to treat it as a text, using a thorough and methodical ‘line by line’ approach of identifying then restoring the markings. The first task was to categorise all the documentation I received, separating images of the rock art into their respective areas. The second was to locate the vandalised areas on the scanned data and compare it with all available photographic documentation prior to the attack.  In particular, identifying marks from the perimeter of the chipped sections, then identifying them with shapes and lines from the photographs.

Subsequently, I extracted 3D-meshes from the photographs of the vandalised areas. Images can be converted to topographic surfaces using grey-scale values.  Using dedicated software, I transformed the images from before the attack into depth-maps and then projected the information on to the mapped geometries of the destroyed areas. It was essential to differentiate engravings from rock texture, volumes and cracks. Photogrammetry is a technology that permits viewing the surface of any object without color information.  So, intermittently I would examine the scanned cave with its color information and then without it, to better see the surface topology. Playing with raking light on the engravings allowed for new perspectives on the surface. Adapting the images as bas-reliefs on to the studies made of the cave required sensitive and skilled 3D sculpting on Zbrush.

I think I have probably looked at the surface of the cave for more time even than anyone who comes from Xingu. Over two hundred hours in fact! But I could not even begin to be able to tell the story from the engravings. Therefore, to make up for this lack we sent renders of my initial restoration of the markings back to Xingu, so that the people who the myth belongs to could infuse it back into the surface. This was achieved by creating a high-resolution render of the part of the cave that was digitally restored, divided up into several A3 sheets that were then sent to Xingu for the Wauja community to make suggestions. Their responses allowed me to look at the data in a new way and I assimilated their corrections into the model. 

This project has taught me that restoration is a craft that requires the art of storytell ing as much as painstaking scientific accuracy. There has been a considerable amount of interpreta tion in the process of restoration and absolute perfection is, of course, impossible. But I hope that it will allow Kamukuwaká to live on and tell his story to future generations.

To read or view the full story and know more about the preservation of indigenous cultures in Brazilplease visit
The Sacred Cave of Kamukuwaka on factumfoundation.org

Video by Oscar Parasiego.

Locating petroglyphs on photographic document previous attack on the cave´s surface.
A very important task prior to the digital restoration was to be able to read the engravings and differentiate them from scratches or marks that were from the rock.

Left → 3d scan view of the Kamukuwaká cave.
Right → Photographic documentation from the Wauja community archives.

Milling

Images → Factum Arte workshop
Images © Oak Taylor Smith for Factum Foundation
Milling the restored 3d model of the Sacred Cave of Kamukuwaká scale 1:1

Physical Restored Cave