Interacting with virtual reconstructions in museums: The etruscanning project

Starting from our experience in this domain, we discuss some fundamental concepts about the potentialities of the virtual reconstructions of cultural sites inside museums, with a specific focus on the communication needs, the design, the combination of media, the interaction interfaces, and the embodiment. We conceive a virtual reconstruction as a digital ecosystem, whose main peculiarities are (1) 3D reconstruction, (2) inclusivity, and (3) interactivity. A virtual reconstruction, in a wide sense, should integrate different levels of visualization, both realistic and symbolic; 3D models; metadata; storytelling; behaviors; and tools of visualization and interaction, in order to "reconstruct" and communicate a cultural context, an ecosystem where all the information is integrated. Despite the great advancements of the last years in the digitization process, computer graphics techniques, and archiving strategies, a basic limit of most of virtual museums is that they do not fire up the attention and the involvement of the public: they lack stimulating activities for visitors, narratives metaphors, and emotional impact. The interaction interfaces are not always simple to understand and to control in a few minutes, and they can generate a sense of frustration that causes users to abandon the application after a short and superficial approach. No gap should exist between knowledge and communication. But how can we translate the complexity of the knowledge in appealing to users and into simple applications that fit with the public's need? This article focuses on some communication rules and criteria that are often considered of minor importance by the researchers working in the field of digital cultural heritage but that are really essential to cultural transmission, especially inside museums. We believe that a stronger collaboration between research institutions and museums and among different disciplines would be recommended. Given this premise, we present the Etruscanning EU project, developed in 2011- 2013, focused on the virtual reconstruction of two important Etruscan tombs of the Orientalizing period: the Regolini-Galassi tomb in Cerveteri and the tomb n.5 of Monte Michele in Veii. © 2014 ACM

Analysis of Visualisation and Interaction Tools Authors

This document provides an in-depth analysis of visualization and interaction tools employed in the context of Virtual Museum. This analysis is required to identify and design the tools and the different components that will be part of the Common Implementation Framework (CIF). The CIF will be the base of the web-based services and tools to support the development of Virtual Museums with particular attention to online Virtual Museum.The main goal is to provide to the stakeholders and developers an useful platform to support and help them in the development of their projects, despite the nature of the project itself. The design of the Common Implementation Framework (CIF) is based on an analysis of the typical workflow ofthe V-MUST partners and their perceived limitations of current technologies. This document is based also on the results of the V-MUST technical questionnaire (presented in the Deliverable 4.1). Based on these two source of information, we have selected some important tools (mainly visualization tools) and services and we elaborate some first guidelines and ideas for the design and development of the CIF, that shall provide a technological foundation for the V-MUST Platform, together with the V-MUST repository/repositories and the additional services defined in the WP4. Two state of the art reports, one about user interface design and another one about visualization technologies have been also provided in this document

A Walk through the Past: Toward the Study of Archaeological Museums in Italy, Greece, and Israel

Archaeological museums and museum displays help to broadcast ideological statements, particularly concerning the formation of national identities, yet the ways in which the messages being transmitted have been articulated within the actual spaces devoted to the display of artifacts are still far from being thoroughly studied. More specifically, little attention has been dedicated to some of the most immediate means through which a museum interprets the past for the modern-day visitor, such as its plan, the arrangement of its collections in the galleries, and its visiting paths. The dissertation examines the physical features a group of archaeological museums in Italy, Greece, and Israel, three countries which became independent less than two centuries ago, and discusses how they shape the visitor\u27s perception of the artifacts and encourage him or her to see them as elements of a meaningful narrative. The research embraces institutions of different scope and size (national, regional, local), and considers the history of each display, not just its present appearance. The following museums are analyzed: in Italy, the branch of the Roman National Museum installed in the Palazzo Altemps, the City Archaeological Museum in Bologna, and the Archaeological Environmental Museum in San Giovanni in Persiceto, near Bologna: in Greece, the National Archaeological Museum in Athens and the archaeological museums in Nafplio and Atalanti; in Israel, the Bible Lands Museum in Jerusalem and the Archaeological Museum Beit Miriam, Kibbutz Palmachim. Reviewing the individual museums and establishing comparisons among them allows to address several important questions: the function of archaeology and its display in national states, especially when they have to incorporate an ancient and distinguished past in their process of self-definition; the sometimes tense cohabitation of artifacts entering museums as part of collections and objects discovered in excavations; the different ways of dealing with visitors, as expressed for example in rules and regulations concerning visits, and the behavior expected from them, sometimes not too different from the conduct associated with places of worship; the practical issues and challenges faced by museums, such as availability of space, distribution of weight, lighting, and climatic conditions

Illumination matters. Revisiting the Roman house in a new light

Interpreting the social complexity of the Roman house requires a careful evaluation of existing evidence. With this in mind, recent work in the field has proposed a variety of different approaches, focusing each time on a specific type of source (architecture and décor, ancient texts, material evidence from excavated houses), each in turn recursively deemed more adequate for the purpose or more fruitful and less biased. This opposition of approaches and critiques between scholars has yielded an extraordinarily rich picture that, however, leaves some of the social dynamics of domestic space out of our reach. This dissertation, focusing on the case study of the House of the Greek Epigrams in the northern part of Insula V 1 in Pompeii, suggests a further level of understanding that combines the aforementioned types of sources with simulations and digital analyses to support archaeological interpretation. Everything visible in the house, including its architecture and its decorations, actively participated in the construction of the social identity of the owner of the house and the Romanitas of his family. However, everything visible is so by virtue of light, which is not a mere medium, but actively partakes in social dynamics and can be manipulated to meet certain demands. In this dissertation, light is considered in its dual aspect as a physical and as a visual and sensory phenomenon. Starting from the assumption that light is a powerful social agent, the study investigates, through historically grounded and physically accurate lighting simulations and analyses, the intertwined spatial and social circulation patterns in order to derive new insights into the social dynamics of the Roman house. In particular, this study argues that the social space of the Roman house was characterized by a greater complexity than that conveyed by ancient sources. It suggests a more nuanced picture, one of light and shadow but also of activity at different times of the day and year, and richer in people both in the foreground and in the background

Natural Sciences in Archaeology and Cultural Heritage

A Special Issue of the international journal Sustainability under the section Sustainability of Culture & Heritage has been made, entitled Natural Sciences in Archaeology and Cultural Heritage. The bridge between science/technology and the humanities (archaeology, anthropology, history of art, and cultural heritage) has formed a well-established interdisciplinary subject with several sub-disciplines; it is growing exponentially, spurred by the fast development of technology in other fields (space exploration, medical, military, and industrial applications). On the other hand, art and culture struggle to survive due to neglect, lack of funding, or the dangers of events such as natural disasters and war. This volume strengthens and exerts the documentation of the sustainability of the issue that arises from the outcome of resulting research and the application of such a duality link. The sustainable dimension emerges from society, education, and economics through the impact of cultural growth, all of which produce a balanced society, in which prosperity, harmony, and development are merged at a sustainable local/regional/national/social level. A wide range of subjects linking the applied natural sciences with archaeology and the cultural heritage of innovative research and applications are presented in this volume

Heritage Recording and 3D Modeling with Photogrammetry and 3D Scanning

The importance of landscape and heritage recording and documentation with optical remote sensing sensors is well recognized at international level. The continuous development of new sensors, data capture methodologies and multi-resolution 3D representations, contributes significantly to the digital 3D documentation, mapping, conservation and representation of landscapes and heritages and to the growth of research in this field. This article reviews the actual optical 3D measurement sensors and 3D modeling techniques, with their limitations and potentialities, requirements and specifications. Examples of 3D surveying and modeling of heritage sites and objects are also shown throughout the paper

The Changing Landscapes of Rome’s Northern Hinterland

The Changing Landscapes of Rome’s Northern Hinterland presents a new regional history of the middle Tiber valley as a lens through which to view the emergence and transformation of the city of Rome from 1000 BC to AD 1000. Setting the ancient city within the context of its immediate territory, the authors reveal the diverse and enduring links between the metropolis and its hinterland. At the heart of the volume is a detailed consideration of the results of a complete restudy of the pioneering South Etruria Survey (c. 1955–1970), one of the earliest and most influential Mediterranean landscape projects. Between 1998 and 2002, an international team based at the British School at Rome conducted a comprehensive restudy of the material and documentary archive generated by the South Etruria Survey. The results were supplemented with a number of other published and unpublished sources of archaeological evidence to create a database of around 5000 sites across southern Etruria and the Sabina Tiberina, extending in date from the Bronze Age, through the Etruscan/Sabine, Republican and imperial periods, to the middle ages. Analysis and discussion of these data have appeared in a series of interim articles published over the past two decades; the present volume offers a final synthesis of the project results. The chapters include the first detailed assessment of the field methods of the South Etruria Survey, an extended discussion of the use of archaeological legacy data, and new insights into the social and economic connectivities between Rome and the communities of its northern hinterland across two millennia. The volume as a whole demonstrates how the archaeological evidence generated by landscape surveys can be used to rewrite narrative histories, even those based on cities as familiar as ancient Rome. Includes contributions by Martin Millett, Simon Keay and Christopher Smith, and a preface by Andrew Wallace-Hadrill