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01 · Observe
A phone on a stand, a polarising filter, and a single lamp carried to six marked positions. Nothing in frame but the work. No wall, no neighbouring piece, no equipment.
A physical record for every work of art
Art deserves a record as unique as the object itself.
ARcv is developing a digital documentation and provenance platform to help artists, collectors, galleries and cultural institutions document, manage and preserve information about artworks.
Used with the artist’s permission.
Why surface
A photograph remembers an image. A record remembers a work.
A painting is not flat. Oil paint dries in ridges a few hundred microns high. Canvas weave prints through the thin passages. Varnish keeps a history of every knock the panel has taken. A photograph loses all of it.
Two photographs of the same painting, a year apart, can look identical and tell a registrar nothing. The paint itself is harder to copy, and it is the part that belongs to one object rather than to its picture.
We are exploring how photogrammetry, 3D documentation and structured records can bring more precision to the way artworks are identified, measured and documented, and whether that makes a more reliable foundation for collection management, conservation and long‑term stewardship.
How a capture works
Twelve exposures, one lamp, no laboratory.
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02 · Measure
The sequence resolves into surface normals and a height field. Scale comes off a target in the first frame; colour off a checker in the same light as the work.
03 · Document
Numbers are stored separately from anything anyone asserts about them, with the capture conditions attached: which phone, which lamp positions, whether the rig was moved.
Repeatability report · October 2026
We tested whether two captures agree. Here is the honest result.
ARcv has evolved beyond showcasing art. It aims to record a work's own evidence so it can be checked again later, and that only means something if two captures of the same surface agree. So we tested exactly that, on Julius Agbaje’s Virtual Reality: five full captures, compared in ten pairs, with the setup rebuilt between some of them. We publish the limits with the numbers because a measurement without its conditions is not worth much to a conservator.
METHOD
Cross‑polarised photometric stereo on a phone, for flat work. Each capture is solved on a Mac, and two captures are compared as the angle, in degrees, between their solved surface directions at each point.
5 CAPTURES COMPARED
10 pairs
One painting, one phone, one lamp. Some pairs were taken in the same sitting, others after a full teardown and rebuild.
TYPICAL DISAGREEMENT
≈ 7°
Average angle between two captures’ surface directions. In the worst places it reaches about 19°. Over roughly 70% of the painting; the outer edge strip was not scored yet.
AGAINST THE RELIEF
≈ 2×
The paint’s own local relief tilts the surface by only 3–4°, so the captures disagree by about twice the detail they are trying to record.
VERDICT · NOT YET REPEATABLE
Two captures of this painting do not yet agree closely enough for ARcv to call a surface record repeatable. The disagreement is largest on painted edges and texture and where the solver is least sure, and it showed no link to the lamp angle, camera movement or a constant bias. We have not yet recorded the lamp distance and height on each capture, so those are untested. Measured size currently reads about 2–4% high against a tape measure, so we publish no dimensions from the app. No height or micron figures are published either.
Next: recording lamp distance and height every time, four more full rebuilds, and a test with a known, reversible change to learn how small a change we can detect. We will publish those results here, whichever way they go.
The artwork
Julius Agbaje, Virtual Reality (2018)
Winner, Afriuture Art competition. Used with the artist’s permission.
01. The work
A painting is not flat, and a photograph keeps only its image.
Julius Agbaje
Virtual Reality, 2018
Used with the artist’s permission.
Virtual Reality, 2018
Used with the artist’s permission.
02. The surface
Ridges of oil paint, canvas weave and the history of every knock the panel has taken.
03. The capture
Twelve exposures, one lamp, no laboratory. A phone, a polarising filter and six lamp positions.
04. The record
Numbers stored separately from claims, with the capture conditions attached.
About · ARcv, pronounced “archive”
We began with a gallery that had no walls.
In 2016, Adaramati Shogo started Ramati Art Africa in Lagos: Africa’s first online gallery. Virtual exhibitions carried African artists to a world that had rarely seen them. Our Afriuture Art competition put a $2,500 grant behind the next generation, and in 2018 it crowned Julius Agbaje for Virtual Reality, with Chief Nike Okundaye, Oliver Enwonwu and Abiodun Olaku on the judging panel.
Through those years we were privileged to work with masters and rising names alike, among them Oliver Enwonwu, Chief Nike Okundaye, Abiodun Olaku, Julius Agbaje, Nissi Ogulu and Ken Nwadiogbu.
From the day we opened in 2016, our galleries were virtual, with no walls to limit who could walk in. The rooms we reached were real. We hosted and exhibited for world leaders, diplomats and business leaders at international conferences of the Commonwealth Africa Initiative, placing African art in front of the people who shape the continent’s future.
We have evolved beyond showcasing art. The greater value lies in documenting it: the most undocumented body of art in the world, and arguably the most valuable.
What a work was like on the day it was made. Who made it. Where it has been since. Africa holds one of the largest bodies of art that no one has properly documented, and every year work changes hands, travels, ages and is restored, while what we know of it fits in a few photographs and somebody’s memory.
So we are returning with a new purpose. ARcv is a way of keeping that record. One person, a phone and a single lamp moved by hand can capture a work’s surface as it is today. Measure it when it is made, measure it again when it moves, and the difference between the two is the record. It does not replace the conservator, the registrar or the collector’s eye. It gives them firmer ground to stand on. Our testing so far is mostly one painting, captured over and over; the numbers mostly hold, and what they mean stays a human judgement.
A continent’s art cannot be documented by one studio. With you, with the artists, galleries, conservators, handlers, collectors and institutions who know these works best, it can be. Join the journey and help us build the product.
Adaramati Shogo · Founder, Ramati Art Group
Help us build the product
Tell us what ARcv must become.
We are building ARcv with the people who live with these questions every day. Your answers decide what we make first.
We are asking artists, conservators, registrars, handlers, insurers, galleries, estates, collectors and scholars. About eight minutes, no right or wrong answers, and we will send you a summary of what we learn.
- About 8 minutes
- No right or wrong answers
- You get the summary
A private correspondence. One click to stop, at any point.
We use your answers to shape ARcv, and we will not sell them. Ask us to delete them any time at hello@arcv.art.
Noted.Your address has been noted.
Thank you. We’ll be in touch.