An Integrated Approach to Archaeology: from the Fieldwork to Virtual Reality Systems
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
An Integrated Approach to Archaeology: From the Fieldwork to Virtual Reality Systems Maurizio Forte, Sofia Pescarin, Eva Pietroni and Nicolò Dell’Unto CNR ITABC Rome, Italy [maurizio.forte],[sofia.pescarin],[eva.pietroni]@itabc.cnr.it Abstract. Since 1999 the CNR ITABC (Institute of Technologies Applied to Cultural Heritage) with its Virtual Heritage Lab (VHLab) is involved in the research of an integrated methodology to acquire, elaborate and visualize archaeological landscape, through virtual reality systems. The paper describes the methodological approach followed by the interdisciplinary team of CNR ITABC and Rome Municipal Superintendence in the case study of the Appia Park project (the archaeological park of the Roman Via Appia). Two different types of survey will be described (topographical and architectonic mapping and “micro-topographical” and “micro-architectonic” mapping) which were used to acquire data in real time and directly on the field. Different techniques of data acquisition will be discussed at the same time: Differential Real Time GPS, Total Laser Station, 3D Scanner Laser, 3D Stereo Photogrammetry, Photo Modeling Techniques. All these techniques were used in an integrated way, while the entire set of data acquired was post-processed, overlaid in a GIS project based on their spatial reference, connected with external multimedia databases. Even 3D information was geo-located and processed in order to be used - together with GIS data, Digital Terrain Models and Geoimages - inside a Desktop Virtual Reality environment. The project, through the Appia Antica case study, is demonstrating that the use of integrated technologies and the combination of different typological data is extremely useful in order to manage archaeological information inside GIS and Virtual Reality Systems, in a 3dimensional, interactive and flexible way. At the same time, the approach described can be easily ‘scaled’ and used even for cultural content dissemination, at different level, without loosing any scientific precision. Thanks to the methodological approach followed, it’s possible to create interdisciplinary teams that can work together sharing information and data. Moreover the project’s goal, stressed by the paper, is the creation of a VR-System that can be used as a permanent spatial archive of digital monumental patrimony acquired, but also as a virtual museum of the landscape in its different diachronic phases. Keywords: virtual heritage, mindscape, landscape reconstruction 1. Introduction and Definitions The protocol is oriented toward the recording of data, their conservation finalised to avoid the loosing of any information, The last decade revolution on digital technologies has pointed and the management of all these data. In this process mapping out mainly the technological opportunities more than the is considered a crucial activity, not only for the classification, informative and communicative ones. In the field of virtual but also for the study, the interpretation and the com - heritage the risk was (and is even now) to consider just the munication of Cultural Heritage. sense of wander and the aesthetical potential, despite the Today, indeed, in many parts of the world the methodological informative and narrative feedback that can be created within approach of archaeological research is digital. The amount of the virtual worlds. The ontology of the Virtual is a crucial information is grown so much, in different phases of pro - issue: how can we communicate it? Who can use it? What is cessing, that the real risk is to lose this information and, most the economical impact of a virtual system? How can we of all, to lose relations, connections and interpretations process this kind of interactive information? between different ontology of data. The risk to lose spatial In our opinion, the real value of virtual reality systems, applied correlations is high even because multiple digital domains are to cultural heritage, is their incredible faculty of changing the considered and treated as totally separated: GIS, remote way to approach contents and to learn/teach cultural in - sensing, intra-site data, excavation maps, 3d models, virtual formation. We can say that the Virtual com muni cates, while reconstructions. Additionally, the comprehension of the the user learns and creates new information. archaeo logical landscape has to consider even ethno- These are the reasons why part of the effort of our team’s anthropo logical factors, mind perceptions, cybernetic maps; work in the last years, was dedicated to the creation of a we define this direction of research “mindscape” (Forte, digital proto col for the Reconstruction of Historical and 2003). According to this view, the landscape becomes a self- Archaeo logical Land scapes. This protocol was elaborated and organized system, interpretable in terms of complexity. For tested, until a satis factory starting-result was undertaken. With this reason we think that we have to consider a wider domain, this protocol we can manage Cultural Heritage (in a wide including Virtual Reality and digital simulation technologies. sense) from the field work to the Virtual Reality environment, Virtual Reality systems, created in transparent ways and within embracing older and newer data in the same 3D spatial inter connected processes, can really help to solve many of the environment of interaction. problems mentioned and to facilitate the transmission of con - 325 Maurizio Forte, Sofia Pescarin, Eva Pietroni and Nicolò Dell'Unto tents. In fact, from a global point of view, we are dealing not 1.1 Digital Protocol for the Reconstruction only with acquisition of data, but most of all with questions of of Historical and Archaeological Landscapes “cultural transmission”, and only secondly with techno logical problems. We are facing today a problem of cultural dif fusion In this phase of Virtual Heritage and computer application to through digital technologies. Even for this reason we should Cultural Heritage we don’t believe that the answer to the think of systems able to create and “to manage differences”. problems above mentioned is standardization. We prefer to According to a cybernetic approach of the Bateson’s thought talk of process and protocol instead, because in this way we we learn through the difference: the difference represents the can deal with the methodological approach to the issue continuous interaction between us and the ecosystem, between “landscape reconstruction”, leaving the researchers groups us and the relations we produce with surrounding environment free to follow new and different roads. We need to pay (Bateson, 1972). Receiving and processing information means attention to common or exchange file formats if we want to let to acquire always new differences. The Bateson’s theory of our applications evolving with times and teams. knowledge explains the mechanism of information processing: What we would like to propose here is a protocol that explain data are neutral objects, the knowledge of a spatial system is which is the process that allow to work from the fieldworks by interaction, by the difference between components and directly to virtual reality applications, through the integration inter-connected events. The more the difference is increased in and mutual exchange of methods, techniques, technologies a virtual interaction, the more the learning grows up. and skills (see fig1a and Fig 1b). In the process all the In a virtual reality system, learning activities follow information is kept, processed, elaborated, interpreted (and informative geometries of reticular types, namely the user is not just in one way) and communicated. Different data and immersed within networks of information and visual data sources (commonly used data, such as aerial photos, satellite (Forte et alii, 2001). Inside a VR system we learn through images, historical maps, excavation plans or stratigraphies, feedbacks received by the digital ecosystem itself and but also digital data acquired with DGPS, Total Station, through actions, inter-actions and reactions. To understand contents in a more immediate ways, we need to “be involved”, to perceive thanks to the interaction or, better, to an exchange of behaviours between action and reception; in this field one can identifies multiple levels of interaction in real time (Forte, 2000). For these reasons we think that an ecological approach to virtual reality represents a possible challenge for the future of culture (and content) transmission. Virtual represents a complex of relations, the virtual translation of heritage is explainable ac- cording to a connectivity of information creating a system. Epi- stemo logical discussion would seem apparently a theoretical speculation but, on the contrary, is fundamental for projecting and communicating the virtual and for understanding the relations between digital ecosystems and cultural heritage. The real challenge will be the increasing of interactions, behaviours and interactivity in new evolved and open systems (VR Systems). What we are observing even today is a gradual change in the way culture is transmitted. In the next future we can easily imaging how every kind of traditional (linear) transmission of cultural information will be completely integrated by different systems (non linear). Interactivity is already changing the approach, even in our everyday life (see digital TV, for instance). These kinds of systems are extremely complex because they manage complex information and Fig. 1a–1b.