Two hundred and fifteen years after the Battle of Raszyn, little remains: the church,
the causeway, the palace with a fragment of the park at Falenty, a few uniforms and
sabres in the display cases of several museums, and large battle paintings — the most
famous by Wojciech Kossak, but also by Juliusz, son and father.
The paintings by January Suchodolski hang so high that one cannot see
the faces of the soldiers he painted. The rest — cannonade, the shout of command, the
weight of a knapsack, the mud under a grenadier's boot — exists only in the memoirs
of Sokolnicki and Niemcewicz.
We thought that if history has broken apart into fragments scattered today across half
of Europe, the only place where they can be put back together is the
internet. Not to replace a trip to Falenty — but so that a pupil from
Torzym, an emigrant from Chicago, a descendant of Poles in the Brazilian state of
Paraná, a resident of Raszyn and a teacher from Białystok can all, in one place, for
free, from any phone, see the same battlefield at the same resolution. In Polish and
in English. With a narrator for the blind. With a transcript for the deaf. In compliance
with WCAG 2.2.
We digitally reconstruct what no longer exists in reality.
Using the latest technologies, we produce visual documentation in the process of
digitising both museum collections and reconstructed objects. The vast documentary
potential offered by digital techniques means that faithful documentation provides
the source material for all other activities related to the preservation and
dissemination of the era's cultural heritage.
We scan the church and the causeway in three dimensions. Gigapixel
photography of paintings related to the battle is a technology with a
resolution of the order of billions of pixels, allowing extraordinarily detailed
capture of works of art. It allows visitors to discover microscopic details, brush
strokes or canvas cracks that are invisible to the naked eye during a traditional
gallery visit. It allows one to extract from the painting:
- Hidden details — sharpening elements that in a small photo
were a blurred patch (e.g. individual hairs, pupils in eyes or text in the background).
- Material textures — revealing fabric weaves, wood grain,
brushstrokes on a painting or the structure of leather.
- Deep details — enabling giant enlargements (up to 32,000 ×
32,000 pixels) while maintaining sharpness and appropriate clarity.
We make a 360° panoramic walk. We model with accuracy of
0.5 mm the monument of Duke Józef by Bertel Thorvaldsen.
We animate a portrait with the Duke's voice — as he might today tell the story of
his own battle.
