Pixelated Realities is a public non-profit organization founded in February 2016. Our main goal is to promote digital methods for cultural heritage restoration and reconstruction as well as for urban planning and revitalization. Our plan is to build a community of people who can scan cultural heritage in different cities of Ukraine, and promote the idea of mandatory digital passports for historical facades. We share our expertise in 3d scanning, photogrammetry and virtual reality with architects, students, photographers and other enthusiasts.
Pixelated realities create a platform that connects the community of enthusiasts to 3Dscan real world and VRlise our reality into Metaverse. Using drones and consumer grade cameras we capture reality and generate 3D data with photogrammetry technique.You shoot photos, upload them on our server to create a sparse point cloud and we generate a 3D mesh to create a VR location ready to be explored by youin a cardboard.In prototype, you already can travel using teleport from Duke de Richelieu Square in Odessa up to Kiev Maidan, but in our ongoing plans we will provide much more locations and time traveling functionality by hosting architectural/art contests and reconstructing extinct cultural heritage in virtual reality.
What we do
Pixelated Realities is a public non-profit organization founded in February 2016. Our main goal is to promote digital methods for cultural heritage restoration and reconstruction as well as for urban planning and revitalization.
Our plan is to build a community of people who can scan cultural heritage in different cities of Ukraine, and promote the idea of mandatory digital passports for historical facades. We share our expertise in 3d scanning, photogrammetry and virtual reality with architects, students, photographers and other enthusiasts. As a project, we started operating around two years ago in Odessa, now we have several points of cooperation – in Odessa, Kyiv, Lviv. We work on partnerships in Ivano-Frankivsk, Kharkiv, and other cities. We have several directions in which we are looking for partners, projects, and activists to work with or develop our own projects. The first one is about the past – historical reconstruction of extinct objects in virtual tours. One of the examples here is a Fish restaurant near Duke square in Odessa that was destroyed in 1917. We have already scanned the location near Potemkinskaya Stairs where the restaurant stood and now are collecting photos to build a historically true model. The second direction is about the present. We scan buildings and sculptures from all over Ukraine and produce VR tours for mobile to raise awareness about places we scan, their problems and opportunities. Among the locations are Duke Square, monuments of the founders (Babel, De Ribas, Marazli), abandoned Devolanovsky descent in Odessa; Chernobyl reactor deck for Chornobyl360; student cultural platform Ostriv, central metro stations, Poshtova square archeological research in Kyiv; wooden architecture from the Museum of Folk Architecture and Rural Life Shevchenko Grove. The third direction is about the future. It concerns urban planning and revitalization of abandoned locations.
Together with Podmostovie project that aims to revitalize Devolanovsky descent we are conservating the street as is before it will start changing. Locals will be engaged in photoscanning the location together with our cameramen. The 3D model that we get from scanning will be used for urban planning contest. The contest will gather architects and urbanists from Ukraine and the world to offer their vision of revitalization based on our scanned model. Final projects will be converted into virtual tours for public voting. People will be able to rate projects through site or view them in VR on public events. We hope such a walkthrough, events, and actual scanning will help to engage locals into the revitalisation, show people how to influence on public space around them. Around 10 students of Kyiv National University of Construction and Architecture will be interns and practice photogrammetry and virtual reality this summer. Last year we taught the similar course at Kyiv Polytechnic University at AACIMP international summer school. Previous students successfully scanned the monument of Sikorsky, 3D printed it and issued project research. During last year we held public lectures and seminars at various events: architectural festival Prostoneba in Lviv, Aristocrats.fm public talks on science, Vidkryti Systemy Exhibition at Ostriv Platform, Tustan heritage conference in Lviv, TEDxKharkiv, International discussion Science-society-personality in Kyiv, Lviv digital restoration for museums seminar, Urban Space 100 welcome lecture, Decoded Computer science festival, Urban Workshop festival in Lviv.
