Digital resources for practice-based research : the New Comedy masks project.

The New Comedy Masks project deals with objects—miniature ancient theatre masks—of immense cultural significance, and with texts—the comedies of Menander—that are at the origins of the European comic tradition. By 3D scanning the miniatures and enlarging them to life-size, the project has initiated a programme of practice-based research in the studio, leading to live performances that are the first to use objectively reconstructed ancient masks. The paper describes the considerations that apply at different stages of the process, from the digitization of the artifact to mask-construction and performance experimentation