The Digitale Kunst-Pforte: an interdisciplinary online platform for art technological source research and experimental reconstruction. The 8th Interim Meeting of the ICOM-CC Art Technological Source Research Working Group on 26 / 27 September 2019 in the CICS Cologne

Reconstruction as a means of furthering knowledge, based on the practical application of historical materials, techniques, and tools, has recently gained great importance in a range of subjects. In music, experimental archaeology, and medieval research the relevance of this method has also become apparent to the broader public.Art technological research has been practicing reconstructions based on art technological sources since the 19th century. General ideas on reconstructions, based on philosophy and the philosophy of science, are presented, linked to reconstruction as a signifcant empirical research method in art technology. A recently established database called the Digitale Kunst-Pforte is described. It brings together art technological sources and delivers information about historical manufacturing processes, predominantly derived from published books and images, as a tool for practical reconstructions. It supports reconstructions within teaching and research, illustrated by the example of students reconstructing “paste paper” after a historical recipe.
Historic sources (written, oral, but also images or instruments) provide important information on artists’ materials, techniques and methods of work. At least since the Comte de Caylus‘s 18th century attempt to understand a lost artistic technique – encaustic painting – by practical experiments on the basis of Pliny’s description of that Roman art, “reconstruction” has been a
valuable companion in historical and philological research of art technological sources. It was not by accident that the first symposium of the Art Technological Source Research working group held in 2004 was devoted to Sources and Reconstructions. In recent years there have been interesting developments in the methodology of reconstruction and re-enactment. New
questions have been posed, new disciplines have become involved. Therefore it seems only right to focus again on this topic and the state of the art, fifteen years after the establishment of the Art Technological Source Research group.