Pacific Standard
September 2, 2015

Can Technology Fight ISIS's Iconoclasm?
The danger of digitizing art

Kyle Chayka

It took a while for ISIS to destroy the millennia-old Temple of Bel in Palmyra, Syria. The explosion from an initial bomb, which was reported yesterday, was relatively minor. "Any damage done was partial, and the basic structure is still standing," Maamoun  Abdulkarim, head of the Syrian Department of Antiquities and Museums,  told BBC. But by Monday it was clear that the damage had been underreported; the bombings had in fact made good on their promise. Satellite photos of the spot provided by the United Nations reveal a flat, rubble-covered ground in the center of a still-standing  square perimeter wall.

The before and after of Temple of Bel is striking for the completeness of its demolition; what's left looks like the remains of a disused stadium that had collapsed in on itself by dynamite. Nothing is left except the vague outlines of the structure, once  a collection of proud stone walls and perfectly vertical columns that had withstood the test of time, until time suddenly caught up in a hurry. The iconic  Lion of Al-lāt is now gone. The ground is reportedly strewn with mines.

ISIS's campaign is one of historical iconoclasm, the destruction of what they see as false idols offensive to their practice of Islam. It's a brand of vicious dissidence that likely has its most recent precedent in the Byzantine empire. And now, the physical objects -- once cherished by tourists and Syrians alike—are irrevocably gone. But they remain on the Internet, in tourist photographs and archaeological diagrams and virtual tours. As Colleen Morgan put it on Twitter when sharing a photo of the demolished temple, "All my photos of Syria are becoming memento mori."

The digital replica of Palmyra and its central temple is networked, decentralized, and next-to-impossible to erase. Iconoclasm is a very singular method of protest: The shock works, and the tragedy lasts, but you can't do it twice. What makes our era different  from previous outbreaks of iconoclasm is that we have the capability to document and archive, and indeed have passively documented, our cultural heritage for the public to share.  [ ... ]

*Read more at:  http://www.psmag.com/nature-and-technology/can-tech-fight-isis-iconoclasm