Tamil Nadu police idol wing set up virtual museum to sell idols as NFTs

The Tamil Nadu police idol wing has set up its virtual museum on www.tnidols.com and is planning to propose to the Tamil Nadu government that has the physical ownership of the idols, to sell the digitised versions of the idols at the museum, barring idols of the temples as NFTs ( Non-Fungible Tokens).

Over the last few years, the Tamil Nadu Idol Wing has seized many antiques that were returned as court properties back to the wing after their remand. The Idol Wing has now a total of 374 idols, including 36 metal objects, 265 stone objects, and 73 wooden objects. 

With the intent of safe custody of the idols, the Idol Wing shifted 36 metal objects to the ICON Centre at Thiruvotriyur and 265 idols to the Government Museum in Egmore. Apart from the metal and stone artefacts, the wing shifted 73 wooden case properties also to the Icon Centre in the premises of Thiruvotriyur temple. 

As of now, the Idol Wing with the help of IIT Madras using VR (Virtual Reality) and AR (Augmented Reality) unique cameras has taken 3D pictures of all the idols above and have uploaded them on this website.

'With the object of helping the connoisseurs of art and culture and the general public view to appreciate the ancient cultural treasures available with the Idol Wing, we have created a Virtual Museum to benefit such lovers of art and culture and eventually curate and transform the virtual environment to a Metaverse of tomorrow. The Virtual Museum is a collection of digital images, sound and other data of historical, scientific, cultural interest that viewers can access through electronic media. One of the most significant benefits of virtual museums is that a museum's location does not constrain visitors. Such museums allow visitors to immerse themselves in the collections available with the museum regardless of location and geographical boundaries. We aim to turn the Virtual Museum into a Metaverse where visitors can interact in 3D Cyberspace', said the Idol Wing.

The present Virtual Museum has been created by Idol Wing of Tamil Nadu collaborating with Dr M.Manivannan, Professor, IoE-CoE on Virtual Reality and Haptics, IIT Madras, Mr Shankara Narayanan, PhD Scholar at the Department of Computer Science, IIT, Madras, and Mr Premnath of Invent Softlabs, Chennai. IIT Madras, using Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality unique cameras and a technique called Photogrammetry, 3D-Scanned the idols from different angles and stitched them together using new software.

The photogrammetry created by IIT Madras scholars employs a reverse process of photography that creates 3D models from 2D photos. The outcome is 3D pictures or geometric models for AR and VR. We can use the same for 3D printing also. Further, Invent Softlabs collaborated with the Idol Wing to create a website for the virtual museum in which they uploaded the 3D models from IIT, Madras. They have so far uploaded 374 photos or 3D models.

The Idol wing has proposed to do the uploading of the remaining models in a phased manner and it can access the virtual museum by clicking the link below: www.tnidols.com

The long-term plan for the Idol Wing is to crowdsource images of all the antique idols available throughout the state of Tamil Nadu from volunteers to upload them temple-wise, sub-division wise and district-wise which will enable the devotees and lovers of ancient art and culture to access the 3D images from the comfort of their homes. 

Further, using the collaborative effort of the community, they have intended to welcome experts and students of history and culture from all over the world to contribute information and content regarding the exhibits in the Virtual Museum and turn the website into a Wiki web page called Wiki-idol with a semi-closed editing system. Over time, they have also intended to turn the Virtual Museum into an online encyclopedia on Temples and Cultural treasures of Tamilnadu.

With the help of experts, the purpose and scope of the website for them would be to store information on nearly all idols and cultural artefacts available in Tamilnadu. Like Wikipedia, their technical collaborator 'Invent Softlabs' and a community of volunteers will maintain the free content and exhibits in the Virtual Museum. Further, the crowdsourced information received from the volunteers is to be edited by a team of editors, and after approval, Invent Softlabs will upload the approved content.

But as a general complaint from the public and temple authorities is that several idol smugglers stole many original antique idols by replacing fake idols in their place over the years. And after they recover stolen idols, there is no way for them to identify whether an idol is antique or non-antique. 

For to solve this issue, the Idol Wing is therefore collaborating with IIT Madras and training algorithms in this direction as AI will also help to determine the era and regime to which the idol belongs to. 

'We further wish to propose to the Tamil Nadu government, which has physical ownership of the idols, to sell the digitised versions of the idols of the museum, barring the idols of the temples as NFT's ( Non-Fungible Tokens).' said Idol Wing.

That will go a long way in generating additional revenue for the Government of Tamil Nadu while affording the art collectors the satisfaction of owning the digitised version of cultural artefacts.