CyArk - Digital Archives of Physical Artifacts

This months National Geographic contains, amongst a rich array of rich data graphics, an introduction to CyArk. CyArk is a project which creates archives of cultural artifacts by recording point clouds.

CyArk is a non-profit entity whose mission is to digitally preserve cultural heritage sites through collecting, archiving and providing open access to data created by laser scanning, digital modeling, and other state-of-the-art technologies.

The resulting data sets are a little like the data found in Photosynths, but the geometry is directly captured rather than infered from imagery. Below is one of their more ambitious projects: Mount Rushmore.