Antoinette Westphal College of Media Arts & Design

Angel Chasco

Antoinette Westphal College of Media Arts & Design Game Design & Production

Faculty Mentor: Dr. Glen Muschio

Digital Media

Dr. Nicholas Jushchyshyn

Co-Mentor

Digital Cultural Heritage in Philadelphia: Houses and Dioramas

My STAR research involved work on two Philadelphia digital cultural heritage projects that bridge the late 18th and early 19th centuries: the James Oronoco Dexter House and the Charles Willson Peale Museum. Both projects involved the creation of digital assets, a process which was informed by past research and research which I and other STAR Scholars conducted. For the Dexter House, photorealistic textures of the wooden floors and the walls were needed. The process for creating these involved looking into historical insurance documents as well as traveling to a similar house, the Todd House, to take photos and notes on the house to better understand and replicate what the Dexter House may have looked like. The textures will be applied to the Dexter House model at a later date. For the Peale Museum, I worked on the creation of 3D digital bird dioramas which originally consisted of taxidermy specimens, watercolor backgrounds, physical flora, and some simulated materials, such as rocks and eggs as described in The Selected Papers of Charles Willson Peale. My research and that of other STAR Scholars working on the project contributed to the creation of digital dioramas.

Antoinette Westphal College of Media Arts & Design

Xander Leatherwood

Antoinette Westphal College of Media Arts & Design

Animation and Visual Effects

Faculty Mentor: Dr. Glen Muschio

Digital Media

Digital Restoration of Charles Wilson Peale’s Bird Specimens

In the early 19th century, Charles Willson Peale owned a museum in Philadelphia in which he showcased art, technology and natural specimens, including taxidermy animals and minerals. For a time the Museum was the largest museum in North America and was a prominent tourist attraction. Peale’s Museum is regarded as one of the first museums to make use of dioramas. The Museum closed in 1827 shortly after Peale’s death and unfortunately, his bird dioramas have not survived.However, written descriptions of the dioramas do exist. In addition Alexander Wilson the famed ornithologist is known to have used many of Peale’s dioramas as models for his prints of birds published in his 8 volume ornithology.In order to digitally recreate several of the bird specimens Peale exhibited, I used Wilson’s prints as references for creating models of the taxidermy birds using Autodesk Maya and Mudbox software. These models will be used to digitally recreate Peale’s dioramas which will form part of the virtual recreation of Peale’s Museum, enabling users of the computer program to explore the museum just as it had existed when it was housed in Independence Hall, 1801-1827.

Antoinette Westphal College of Media

Arts & Design

Nicholas Moy

Antoinette Westphal College of Media Arts & Design

Animation and Visual Effects

Faculty Mentor: Dr. Glen Muschio

Digital Media

Dr. Nicholas Juschyshyn Co-Mentor

Digital Restoration of Peale’s Museum

My research focused on the Charles Willson Peale Museum, an early American museum established in 1785 as a “world in miniature.” Peal saw his museum as a national resource and sought government support for most of his adult life. Unfortunately, support was never secured and the museum closed shortly after his death in 1827. He wanted to inform the public about art, technology and the exotic creatures in the world. My work contributes to the ongoing Peale project to create a 3D digital model of his museum to raise awareness of these subjects in the American Federalist period. I modeled and textured objects that were in the museum. We took field trips to places like Independence Hall to gather reference material. I mainly modeled a physiognotrace, a device used to trace the profile and make silhouette portraits of museum visitors. The portraits were made by Moses Williams, an African slave who eventually gained freedom. I also worked on an animated Public Service Announcement (PSA) about Pennsylvania’s Archaeology Month which will run on the PECO building in October. To make the PSA, I consulted with Chief Historian and Archaeologist, Jed Levin at Independence Park and used artifact photos from the Park’s collection.