What is the purpose of this project?
It was 1987 when I was 13 years old and first heard the album ‘The Joshua Tree” by U2, Mesmerized by the imagery on the sleeve, I spent hours looking at the landscapes while I took in the music.
In 2012, I made my first journey to the site of the tree, and that experience initiated a very inspiring time in my life. A few years later I was saddened by this article telling the grotesque tale of an individual sawing a piece of the tree away for a souvenir.
This year, I revisited the site with preservation in mind.
How can we preserve this site for generations of fans to see?
How can we allow people who may never get the chance to visit “The Joshua Tree” the chance to find what they are looking for?
The digital preservation process.
Capture.
It all begins with capturing images. While on location, I snapped 3,937 photos of the tree and the surrounding area. Every inch of the tree has been photographed with a Sony a7III DSLR with additional aerial shots with a DJI Mavic Pro.
Assemble.
Each photo is processed and touched up in Adobe Lightroom in preparation for the Photogrammetry stage. Photogrammetry is the process of deriving metric information about an object through measurements made on the photograph of the object. With these measurements, the software is able to generate a 3D model of the photographed object.
Model.
After the model is created, additional cleanup is required and textures need to be applied. The 3,937 photos of the tree taken on location are sectioned off into chunks for processing and manually assembled in modelling software.
Future Plans
As the digital reconstruction of the tree and the surrounding area is in process, there are a few plans to push this out into further areas of development.
Public Inventory Database
While on location, I photographed and made inventory of every item in the green gun ammo box, the Joshua Tree Lunchbox, and one of the U2 suitcases. The intention is to create a public record of items visitors have left behind, in the hopes that thejoshuatree.earth can become a database of artifacts placed at the site. Currently, this data is in a private AirTable database until it’s ready to be made public.
AR/VR Development
Once the 3D model is complete, we want to use it to develop an interactive AR/VR experience that can be shared freely with people all around the world.
If you would like to assist in any way in the curation of artifacts left on site, please contact us.
