Gaze across a thousand years

For the Museum project this week, our group took a group of pictures of a tomb camel figure, and then we used the photos to create a 3D model using Autodesk ReCap. The experience was unique. I had never appreciated a cultural relic that closes.
When I entered the photo room, two lights were on each side of the camel, which immediately grabbed my attention to the figure. It was a ceramic tomb figure of a camel. The camel was standing with no load on its back, facing forward as if facing toward the destination. The cameral figure was hollow in the belly. The detailed texture and the color told how meaningful the camel is to the tomb owner. The camel was created in the Tang Dynasty. After more than one thousand years, I met it at Carleton for a digital arts class. I cannot help but think about the stories of it. Who was its master? Why did the master choose to bury a camel with them? How did people find it and unearth it? Who sold it to an American and let it leave its homeland?
When I was taking pictures of the camel, I surprisingly found that the belly of the camel was hollow. I would never have such findings if I were not doing this project. I usually won’t bother appreciating the artifact from multiple angles, neglecting most details. In addition, I did not notice the decorative paintings on the figure until I got close enough to the camel. Although most of the lines had faded in the past one thousand years, the survivor was telling me the beauty it possessed before. Recently I saw people on the internet using artificial intelligence to up the color of old black-and-white film and pictures. I wonder if we can also apply similar technology to our relics.