Omnidirectional Strategies for Exploring Ancient Cities and Territories

By focusing on technologies of virtual reality in conjunction with theories of “place” and “presence,” this chapter outlines the importance of new approaches to the museological experience and exploration of ancient cities and cultural heritage sites. Exploring fresh approaches to telling historic narratives through embodied interaction, this discussion proceeds to explore post-cartographic and “deep mapping” representations of cultural landscapes through omnidirectional virtual reality. Bodily engagements with virtually rendered places as a form of corporeal cartography references not only the changing nature of the concept of place but also the rise of contemporary post-cartographic frameworks for considering how the act of mapping actively engages with place. The “spatial turn” within the humanities demands that we extend our conceptions of mapping and cartography beyond the positive epistemologies of geographic information science and this chapter explores a series of frameworks for new explorations.

Oporto’s Historic Center

In 1996, the World Heritage Committee added the Historic Center of Oporto, Portugal, to the World Heritage List, recognizing its outstanding value, identified by its urban fabric and its many historic buildings. The area’s value is the result of a complex topography, articulated through streets, lanes, alleyways, stairs, and squares, while its architecture (residences and monuments) projects cultural values accumulated over successive eras. In the state of art section, this chapter presents some significant references and visual resources that contribute to the understand city´s urban development and to visualize the city in the past. This chapter presents two case studies of the authors’ attempts at visualization of that historic district. One describes a 3D scale model—Oporto’s Medieval Scale Model - and the other is a virtual reality project—Virtual Porto in the Sixteen Century—both shown as examples of thorough research, careful documentation of processes, and clear and approachable presentation. The authors also consider the potential of expanded development of such presentations, in light of uses in tourism and furthering greater knowledge, with the goals of facilitating the process of heritage conservation and the dissemination of information. As such, the two case studies are viewed in terms of principles of the London Charter regarding the creation of virtual heritage, as well as cite other examples of projects in European cities.

At the Interface: Multimodal Sensing and Intelligent Learning Systems

The contemporary city is quickly changing in line with the quixotic nature of today’s array of computational media. As a result, we need to begin to create new technological methodologies to aid in the study of the cityscape over time. This chapter presents some interesting ideas, given that the physical nature of buildings and material infrastructures change at a different rate from that of contemporary digital media. In terms of the cityscape, the digital media and their presence in differing forms are evermore ubiquitous. The author’s approach is to combine two areas of study—cyber-archaeology and media archaeology—in the service of future research. The notion is to create intelligent new systems for the archiving and perusal of multimodal media. He proposes new computationally intelligent approaches to generative virtual environments and relational databases. Also, he points to the nature of context and the limits of current computing in terms of discerning that context. And he asks: As humans we can quickly size up situations, shifting conceptual contexts without a problem; can we build new polysensing systems to help augment the machinic understanding of context and define a vast compendium of relationalities, as well as develop new multimodal search methodologies? This would help us create contemplative media contexts that lend insights into our ongoing learning in terms of research and cultural understanding of the present, enfolding multiple chosen perspectives.

Virtual Cities as Memoryscapes

The digital re-creation of a past city represents more than a mere depiction of its historical awareness; it also represents its imaginability. In retrospect, the imaginability of the city corresponds to the outcome of various perceptions that we have acquired of it over time, and which currently confers us with a certain degree of accuracy in its readability. The imaginability of the city is therefore a determining factor in virtually re-creating the latter and subsequently converting it into a memoryscape. This theory can be validated by the specific case study of Lisbon, Portugal, which has during the last few years been the subject of at least four projects that sought to virtually re-create the city’s past. Despite presenting themselves distinctively with different technological applications, the four projects held the same starting point; the great Lisbon earthquake of 1755 (a major disruptive event in its history), and were all focused on presenting the cityscape that was lost as a result. Lisbon’s iconography from the sixteenth century to the mid-eighteenth century (drawings, engravings, and paintings) was used as crucial data.

At-Risk World Heritage and Virtual Reality Visualization for Cyber-Archaeology

In this chapter, the issue of at-risk cultural heritage in the Middle East is addressed through the application of cyber-archaeology tools for data capture and dissemination. Working with an economic model to create a Heritage Asset District in the environs of Jerusalem, virtual reality for personal head-mounted devices and immersive CAVE platforms are used to help create high-value cultural heritage attractions designed to attract visitors to the district, thereby generating economic benefits. In the case study presented here, the district focuses on the Kidron Valley, which has its origin near the Temple Mount in the Old City of Jerusalem, and follows the river flowing eastward through the Judean Desert, where it empties into the Dead Sea. The most prominent cultural heritage site along the wadi (riverbed) is the Mar Saba Greek Orthodox monastery, dating to the fifth century CE. A helium-balloon photographic platform with high-definition photography and Structure from Motion (SfM) processing was used to create a 3D model of this impressive site that could be used for VR demonstrations. The demo is then made available over the MedArchNet (http://medarchnet.calit2.net/) online digital atlas to enable public engagement with Middle Eastern cultural heritage. This research is part of a University of California Office of the President Catalyst Grant concerning “At-Risk Cultural Heritage and the Digital Humanities.”

“I dreamt I dwelt in marble halls”

This chapter discusses the houses of the Roman elite as a locus for theatricality within a deliberated “staged environment.” Domestic architecture and decor drew upon complex visual strategies to evoke in visitors a wide range of powerful sensual and emotional and reactions. The mise en scène of such dwellings was calculated and coordinated to create constructed identities that signaled such things as a sense of the power and prestige of the domestic patron; an imaginative access to fantasy realms of mythology or exotic landscapes; and a distortion of space through the painted suggestion of grandiose, often impossible architecture. Computer visualization and representation of such spaces has the potential, particularly when configured in a virtual-world format, to evoke in users a sense not just of the physical structure of such spaces but of their sensory qualities as well. This chapter surveys both the challenges addressed by such applications and their scope and limitations; it is illustrated by a discussion of two major projects undertaken by the King’s College Visualisation Lab.

Unreal Projects

The technology of immersive visualization has progressed to where it can be employed to deliver experiences of environments that are otherwise difficult or impossible to encounter today. The chapter describes the work of an interdisciplinary team that used digital models of places remote in distance and/or time to enable students in core curriculum classes in the history and theory of architecture to enrich their understanding of said sites. Building information modeling (BIM) software enables the quick modeling of 3D architectural and urban spaces, combined with the ability to embed non-graphic metadata to enhance the visualization. The chapter describes a BIM CAVE developed at Texas A&M University and head-mounted 3D displays that enable small groups of students to navigate through the simulated world of visualizations. Titled Unreal Projects, the effort made by the group offers the potential for greater understanding of the spatial and visual qualities of environments than can be experienced through traditional analog and 2D media. These can become high-impact tools for teaching and learning about historical, contemporary, and future environments.

Vulci 3000

Vulci 3000 is a multidisciplinary archaeological research project that applies cutting-edge technologies to produce a diachronic reconstruction of the Etruscan and Roman site of Vulci (tenth century BCE–fifth century CE). Located in the province of Viterbo, Italy, Vulci was one of the largest and most important cities of the Etruscan Dodecapolis—the federation of the most important cities of ancient Etruria, and one of the biggest cities in the first millennium BCE on the Italian peninsula. This project is aimed at the integration of different digital technologies of data capturing, simulation, and visualization for the interpretation and reconstruction of the ancient city.

Introduction

Digital cities, intelligent cities, knowledge-based cities, and smart cities are designations that refer to the permeation of the digital into the daily life of cities and the resulting exponential growth and accessibility of urban resources. This digital/technological component can be summarized in the following categories:...

Simplified Crowd Simulation in Virtual Heritage Sites

For the past two decades, historians and archaeologists have reconstructed heritage sites using computer-generated graphics in three dimensions, a technique known as “virtual archaeology.” Early research focused merely on displaying models of the architecture or of archaeological artifacts, but with the emergence of virtual worlds, researchers and the public can “immerse” themselves in the reconstructed environment and experience the equivalent of a guided tour. User-generated content has allowed historians to now go a step further and modify the models, by formulating hypotheses and testing them interactively, creating a “virtual laboratory of archaeology.” In this chapter, a solution is offered whereby historians are able to manipulate the parameters of a crowd simulation without the need of learning conventional computer programming. This conceptual framework is loosely based on strategy computer games, which also allow players to simulate relatively complex crowds by visually placing markers on the ground. It extends the concept of the virtual laboratory of archaeology beyond the architectural representation of heritage sites by placing the tools of crowd simulation in the hands of historians.