In the Italian TV program Superquark, on june 23rd, Piero Angela and Paco Lanciano show digital technologies applied to culture.
After a report about Caravaggio’s techniques, they deal with the reproduction of paintings by digital technologies, and how to digitally interact with them.
Centrica provides technologies for the demo.
The video shows the very high resolution digital photography (51 MegaPixel), as well as the final result of the mosaicing, both with an unknown work of art representing a flowerbowl, and the Sandro Botticelli’s “Birth of Venus”.
In this masterpiece, you can detect the artist’s brushstrokes and the extraordinary technique, such as the gold dust used by Botticelli to give brightness to the painting.
The 5.5 GigaPixel image has been digitized by Centrica-Hitachi-MICC (University of Florence), as a part of the “Excellence Archive of Polo Museale Fiorentino” project.
In the video, Paco Lanciano handles the image by Centrica’s XLimage® software.

Centrica once again establishes itself as a force in designing and developing of culture-related technologies, as shown by the Uffizi Touch® App, available for iPad, iPhone, and iPod Touch with a Euro 4.99 introductory price until july 31st, 2011.

For further information about Centrica’s services and technologies, write to marketing@centrica.it