Factum Foundation

Factum Foundation for Digital Technology in Preservation is a not-for-profit organisation established to demonstrate the importance of documenting, monitoring, studying, recreating and disseminating the world’s cultural heritage. Through the rigorous development of high-resolution recording and re-materialisation techniques, Factum aims to break down the barriers between traditional and digital arts and apply the outcomes to the preservation and sharing of cultural heritage. Factum Foundation develops new techniques in digital recording and processing to record artworks of many different types, from paintings and manuscripts to monumental sculptures and caves. The Foundation always records at the highest possible resolution and works to ensure that all commercial rights to the data recorded remain with the object. These recordings have many uses. They can be used by curators to monitor condition, by researchers for study, or to allow anyone who cannot travel to see the original object to view it in high-resolution through the internet. They can be used to explore different options for restoring objects in a purely virtual setting, without harming the original. Or they can be used to create facsimiles - copies - which are indistinguishable from the originals to the naked eye. The Foundation also builds digital archives to preserve these records, creates exhibitions, and has set up training courses and centres in locations from Egypt to Daghestan to create local experts in digital preservation who are able to record their own cultural heritage. Factum Foundation is based in Madrid and was founded in 2009 by Adam Lowe. It works together with its sister company, Factum Arte, a multi-disciplinary workshop in Madrid dedicated to digital mediation and physical transformation in contemporary art and the production of facsimiles.