Hi-tech heist: Reclaiming stolen art in museums digitally | BBC News

Luti is more than just like an arts collective, we kind of intersect between like arts, tech, activism and history. The whole inspiration for me came from a UNESCO report that said that 90% of all artwork and artifacts based in Africa actually live outside of Africa and that was something that like was deeply unsettling for me but also you know something that I've always wanted to have some sort of hand to like change. Luti described their project as a digital heist. They capture objects on display in the British Museum digitally but say this doesn't break the museum's rules which allow 3D scanning by visitors for non-commercial use. We're using LiDAR technology so making scans, going around you know the different artifacts, scanning them and then taking that like data that we've retrieved and then using those for you know AR experiences, NFTs and different installations as well. Their most recent project involved the Rosetta Stone, an ancient slab used by Egyptians to study hieroglyphics. Using free software from the company Snap they were able to display it virtually in Egypt. The actual position where the Rosetta Stone is from is Citadel in Rashid. Simply you just need a AR enabled device, Snapchat and then you can view that in its position in Rashid. Lens Studio has this technology called custom location AR which is basically where you can like geolocate a digital asset or you know a digital thing in its actual position. So it starts with the story, the Rosetta Stone, known as the Heja Rashid. And this appears before people in scale of what it is. And the cool thing about AR is you can see it as it looks now but also how it will have looked in the past. Exactly, how it originally looked right. And what a lot of people don't know is that it's actually a fracture of the original stone. So part of our journey was to like actually rebuild the Rosetta Stone. What do you hope people get out of using this and experiencing this? With this whole like digitisation of like artefacts I see this more as something that's for the future and for the younger generation and most of the like user base for like Snapchat is you know people that are a lot younger than me like the Gen Z's and things like that. So I saw this as like the best app but then also because of the ease of the use for the technology. Where and how objects are displayed is often debated. The British Museum told us there has been no formal request from the Egyptian government for the Rosetta Stone to be repatriated and they say they work with colleagues there on exhibitions and research. There should be at least alternative methods right for us to engage with culture and history you know like that are commercialised as well not just not just having like the institution of the museum running like the whole show. I guess they would say though they are engaging in that the very fact that you're allowed to go into the museum and take a 3D scan and they would say they're doing this themselves and working with lots of different projects around the world. Yeah it's true I want like because I remember when I saw that in their terms and conditions that you're allowed to make a 3D scan and I was just like why they would put that in the terms and conditions but maybe they never thought of somebody like me going in and doing this and actually thinking about you know a digital repatriation. Maybe they didn't think that was something that's important which even if you think about today is probably not so much important today but for the future I definitely believe that the digital is going to be the future. Thank you.