VIRTUALITY and PERFORMATIVITY Recreating Rome's Theatre Of

VIRTUALITY AND PERFORMATIVITY Recreating Rome’s Theatre of Pompey

Hugh Denard

alk through the narrow streets from the ancient temples in Largo Argentina to the open-air market in Campo dei Fiori, enjoying the Wcharacteristic Roman patchwork of architectural gems and mediocrities as you go. At the near end of the Campo, the seventeenth-century façade of the Palazzo Pio juts out (Plate 1), overshadowing a small courtyard to one side. Entering this courtyard you go past Pancrazio’s Restaurant, then follow the dark, covered passageway down a slight incline until you emerge into a sunlit street where the buildings curve around on either side in a wide crescent of faded Renaissance elegance (Plate 2). Taking out your guidebook, you discover that you are standing in the auditorium of the Theatre of Pompey—the largest and one of the most historically important and architecturally inﬂuential theatres ever built.

Pompey the Great, Julius Caesar’s political ally—later mortal enemy—created this grand triumphal edifice in order to celebrate and commemorate his military conquests in three continents. Completed in 55 B.C. and consisting of a number of discrete zones, it served for several centuries as one of the prime playgrounds for the citizens of Rome (Plate 3). Not only was it a site of performance, it was also performative in its own right: adorned with treasures and costly marbles from around the world, it was an unparalleled display of the military, economic, and technological greatness of Rome, and of Pompey’s pre-eminence. A Senate House— or curia—overlooked present-day Largo Argentina. Its portico boasted a massive painting of a warrior by a fifth-century artist, Polygnotus, calculated to remind the viewer of the scope of Pompey’s achievements.1 Pompey would have been even more gratified by his creation had he lived to see Caesar assassinated at the foot of his statue on the Ides of March just eleven years later, in 44 B.C. (Caesar’s adopted heir, Augustus, later pointedly transformed the site into a public latrine.)

A second section of the complex was a vast and splendid enclosed park—or quadriporticus—containing gardens, fountains, leafy walks, trophies commemorat- ing military victory, and sculptural masterpieces from around the Mediterranean world.2 Richard Beacham writes:

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/152028101753401785 by guest on 28 September 2021 Plate 1. Campo dei Fiori looking upwards towards Palazzo Pio and the original location of the Temple of Venus Victrix. Photo: Copyright University of Warwick.

Plate 2. Via di Grotta Pinta showing curve of Renaissance buildings constructed upon the Plate 3. Rome at the time of Constantine, including substructure of the Theatre of Pompey’s cavea. Theatre of Pompey (centre) and Theatre of Marcellus Photo: Copyright University of Warwick. (top left). Relief-model by Italo Gismondi. Photo: Museo della Civiltà Romana, Rome.

Plate 4. Imagined view from stage of Theatre of Pompey up towards Temple of Venus Victrix. Reconstruction by L. Canina. (L. Canina “Cenni storici e ricerche iconograﬁche del Teatro di Pompeo e fabbriche adiacenti.” Dissertazioni della Pontiﬁcia Accademia Romana di Archeologia 6 [1835]: 3–37, one of three plates.)

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Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/152028101753401785 by guest on 28 September 2021 the Porticus Pompeii . . . quickly became one of the most popular places in Rome to stroll (Cicero. De Fat. 8; Catullus 55.6; Ovid Ars. Amat. 1.67; Martial 11.1.11). Within were rows of trees, shaded streams, and numerous fountains. [. . .] Along the north side was the Hecatostylon, the “portico of the hundred pillars.” This great colonnade was festooned with heavy golden curtains from Pergamum and displayed a collection of statues and paint- ings, some hundreds of years old, works of outstanding merit and elegance (Pliny. N.H. 35.59) Adjacent to the colonnade was a grove of plane trees, and . . . along the south side opposite were possibly markets and shops. [. . .] This park was used on the days of performance as a place for the audience to promenade between the entertainments without leaving the theatre complex or causing disruption in the streets, and at other times it provided a splendid recreational site for the Roman citizenry where they could escape from the summer heat or was used for amorous assignation.3 As Vitruvius, noted (5.9), this space could also be used to provide space for preparing the stage sets and machinery.4

Finally, the whole monument culminated in a grand, architecturally unified, theatre- temple (Plate 4)—the first stone theatre in the city of Rome. Although the theatre was built upon the flats of the Campus Martius, its highest point—the temple of Pompey’s patron divinity, Venus Victrix—was second in height only to the capitol (Plate 5). According to our research, the stage of the theatre was almost 290 feet across, and the auditorium—or cavea—may have accommodated some 25,000 spectators.5 Some years later, Nero himself performed upon this stage, 6 much to the disgust of the senatorial class and the delight of the masses. As late as the sixth century A.D., Cassiodorus, Chancellor to the Ostrogoth King Theodoric, described: “caves vaulted with hanging stones, so cleverly joined into beautiful shapes that they resemble more the grottoes of a huge mountain than anything wrought by human hand.” However, the theatre was clearly not untouched by age, and Cassiodorus also lamented that Time could “shatter even this solid structure.”7

But it is not alone size, architectural magnificence, or historical contingency that single out the Theatre of Pompey as one of the most important performance spaces in the history of Western theatre. When Vitruvius wrote his influential treatise, De Architectura, his account of how a theatre should be built was based upon Pompey’s recently-completed edifice; indeed, at the time he wrote, it was probably still the only stone theatre in the city of Rome.8 For centuries to come the Theatre of Pompey thus became the architectural Ur-text for the vast numbers of theatres built throughout the Roman Empire as symbols of romanitas: from Arles to Timgad, Caesarea to Athens. Again in the Renaissance, through the influence of Vitruvius, the Theatre of Pompey left its imprint upon such seminal theatres as the Teatro Olimpico at Vicenza and the Teatro Farnese at Parma. This single theatre, therefore, had a unique role in shaping the characteristics of Western theatrical space—and thereby in conditioning prevailing conceptions of theatre and theatricality—right into the modern period. If we wish to understand the impact that these ideas have

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Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/152028101753401785 by guest on 28 September 2021 had upon theatre architecture, theatrical performance, and indeed theatrical innovation, then the story of this extraordinary theatre cannot be ignored.

The archaeological history of the Theatre of Pompey is a long and curious one. So many other monuments of the imperial age have been “liberated” from obscurity or from the encrustations of post-antique structures over the years, but despite radical plans drawn up in the Fascist period (Plate 6), the Theatre of Pompey has been reluctant to relinquish its acquired architectural clothing. The result is that, today, the Theatre consists of numerous scattered architectural remains in basements of various buildings between the Campo dei Fiori and Largo Argentina (Plate 7). The task of interpreting these remains is made much more difficult by the fact that the ruins do not, themselves, offer a visibly unified object. For this reason, perhaps, the history of scholarship on the theatre has been particularly characterized by attempts either graphically to reconstruct the theatre complex as it might have been in antiquity, or at least to represent the extant ruins as a unified image (Plate 8). Yet it is astonishing to learn that, despite its great historical and architectural importance, there has never been a modern scientific survey of the theatre’s remains. Most studies in this century are based on the limited excavations and site-plans of Victoire Baltard of the Ecole des Beaux Arts, working in the first decades of the nineteenth-century, who himself was partly working from the earlier study by Luigi Canina.

In January of 1999, however, a new chapter opened in the archaeological history of the monument when the UK’s Arts and Humanities Research Board granted Prof. Richard Beacham (University of Warwick) funds to coordinate, together with Prof. James Packer (Northwestern University), a new archaeological study of the monument, and to create a reconstruction of it using digital, 3-D technologies (Plate 9). The Pompey Project will result in a highly sophisticated and integrated electronic resource, spanning the entire history of the site, from antiquity to the present.

The application of Virtual Reality technologies to the Theatre of Pompey is a particularly signiﬁcant development since extensive new excavation of the structure is no longer feasible. Moreover, as this area of Rome becomes increasingly afﬂuent, vital archaeological remains of the theatre not infrequently fall prey to “development.” (In the relatively short period of our own work, we have seen opus reticolatum walls disappear under new plastering, and sections of the theatre structure become obscured by modern “improvements.”) So contemporary analysis of the site is framed by an ever-diminishing window of opportunity.

At the time of writing, the Pompey Project has completed just over half of its work, and is well on the way to achieving its aims. In part, then, this article represents a brief report upon work-in-progress. But its primary objective is to attempt to formulate our current thinking regarding the implications of Virtual Reality for research in theatre history, and to begin to address the unique performativity of “virtual” objects and/in “virtual” space.

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Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/152028101753401785 by guest on 28 September 2021 RECREATING THE THEATRE OF POMPEY: THE PORTICUS POST-SCAENAM AND SCAENAE FRONS

Initially, it may be useful to describe the VR-orientated research process through which James Packer and 3-D researcher John Burge have created their “virtual” reconstruction of the Theatre of Pompey’s scaenae frons as rebuilt after the ﬁre of 80 A.D. One of the key resources of the Project is an Archaeological Register in which Packer has documented every published and unpublished reference to the random discoveries from the Theatre over the past ﬁve centuries. When linked to sources such as Vitruvius and architectural comparanda such as the Theatre of Marcellus at Rome and various provincial theatres, it is possible to put quite a few of the pieces together.

Fortunately, the stage building of the Theatre of Pompey is one of the structures for which we have substantial recorded fragments of the Marble Plan—a detailed and to-scale plan of the city of Rome that was carved onto stone slabs between 203 and 211 A.D. (Plate 10). Whatever new data may emerge from the recent three- dimensional scan of the Plan by a team from Stanford University, it already clearly shows the layout of the scaenae frons and porticus post scaenam of the theatre.9 Together with some minor surviving evidence, reinforced by the documentation of nineteenth-century investigations, Packer and Burge have been able to calculate the size and dimensions of the theatre with considerable accuracy (Plate 13).

According to the Marble Plan, the façade of the porticus that backs onto the stage building is almost identical in layout and size to the façade of the Basilica Ulpia in the Forum of Trajan, dedicated just a few decades later, in 112 A.D. Archaeological ﬁnds on both sites conﬁrm the correspondence. From this comparison, Packer and Burge derived a strong hypothesis as to the appearance of the Theatre of Pompey’s porticus post-scaenam (Plate 14), and from that were able to extrapolate the proportions of the scaenae frons. The calculation of the elevation of the scaenae frons involved comparing Vitruvius’ account of such proportions to “actual” scaenarum frontes in other theatres in the classical world, and then reconciling these calculations with reports of fragments of column shafts, capitals, cornices from the Theatre of Pompey, and an architrave found near the original location of the Theatre’s stage building. Ultimately, by combining this evidence, Packer and Burge have been able to develop a strongly-argued hypothesis regarding the layout, proportions, and distribution of materials within the different orders of the elevation, and to use VR modeling to represent this hypothesis in visual form (Plate 15).

VIRTUALITY AND PERFORMATIVITY

In the above account of this part of the Project’s work, Virtual Reality appears as a tool which can enable, augment, and enhance traditionally-conceived processes of research and dissemination. However, “virtual reality” technologies have been bringing about a quiet, but profound, revolution in the ways in which knowledge is

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Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/152028101753401785 by guest on 28 September 2021 Plate 5. Exterior of Theatre of Pompey cavea showing rear of Temple of Venus Victrix. Watercolor by Victoire Baltard, 1837. Photo: Copyright École des Beaux Arts, Paris.

Plate 6. 1930s plan for the “restoration” of the Theatre of Pompey. (C. Galassi Paluzzi, et al., “Il problema archeologico del Teatro di Pompeo e il Corso del Rinascimento,” Capitolium 12 [1937]: 99–122.)

Plate 7. Existing state of segment of cavea sub-structure. Photo: Copyright University of Warwick, 1999.

Plate 8. “Remains of the Theatre of Pompey.” Reconstruction by G.B. Piranesi. (G.B. Piranesi Campvs Martivs antiqvae urbis [Rome: Antiqvariorvum Regiae Societatis 30 ᭿ PAJ 70 Londonensis Socii, 1762], Pl. 17.)

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/152028101753401785 by guest on 28 September 2021 produced and experienced. What follows is an attempt to understand the epistemological shift produced by “virtual research” in terms of the performativity of the medium.10

One of the most complex phenomena that we have encountered in directing our scholarly research towards the production of objects in virtuality is the degree to which the production of different forms of textuality, whether real or virtual, dictate correspondingly different epistemological imperatives. It is readily accepted, for instance, that the rules of scientific argument do not apply to a piece of literary criticism (although they may be evoked, or applied), any more than the expository structure appropriate to certain forms of academic writing applies to theatrical performance. Each form, as constituted by specific generic conventions, requires knowledge to be structured according to its own rules. In turn, this “paradigmatic agency” inflects not only the dissemination of knowledge but also the methodologies through which knowledge is produced. Anyone active within the “publish-or- perish” culture of contemporary academia, for instance, is well aware how institutional mechanisms of production and dissemination, together with various systems of professional penalties and rewards, naturalize and thereby perpetuate such epistemological paradigms—limiting, even as they define, the kinds of questions that can (or should) be asked, and the types of methodologies that can (or should) be deployed. In the case of our research on the Theatre of Pompey, the target form is a three-dimensional object, produced and disseminated in digital form. What epistemological imperatives accrue to the textuality of this new “form”?

Firstly, institutional factors such as funding (the committee-based structure of which alas ensures that interdisciplinarity and innovation are as often misunderstood as rewarded), project administration, institutional ethos, and professional consider- ations, are probably among the most formative dimensions of this epistemological imperative, but ironically also rule that they fall outside the remit of such publications as this. Most immediately, however, VR-led research is greedy for expertise across a wide range of disciplines and skills. For us, that has meant the creation of a large interdisciplinary research team, linking VR modelers to archaeologists, database experts to theatre historians, archaeological surveyors to urban historians; all joined, however, by the shared need to understand the distinctive performative textuality of Virtual Reality, in which their common efforts meet.

For this reason, theatre historian, Richard Beacham, who has published books on Roman theatre and the spectacle entertainments of early imperial Rome,11 has assembled a highly specialized team of IT-based theatre researchers at the University of Warwick to create a variety of sophisticated, content-rich, digital resources that incorporate three-dimensional computer models of several of the most important theatres in the history of Western theatre.12 They have swiftly acquired a reputation as the foremost IT-based theatre historical researchers in the UK and, with the Pompey Project, are indisputably in the ﬁrst rank of such research worldwide. One of Beacham’s other major contributions to the Project is a range of historically- situated narratives about the theatrical and cultural signiﬁcance of the monument.

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Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/152028101753401785 by guest on 28 September 2021 On the opposite side of the Atlantic, James Packer is the lead archaeologist for the Project, working closely with John Burge. In 1997 the University of California Press published Packer’s sumptuous three-volume work on the Forum of Trajan in Rome.13 Incorporating 114 plates, 414 microfiche, 34 folios, 154 photographs, drawings, diagrams, a catalogue of architectural elements, and no less than 12 appendices, it surely represents the flagship of traditional archaeological publication. In a very short period of time, however, new epistemological paradigms have begun to emerge in response to his deep engagement with VR-led research, promising irreversibly to transform the research and dissemination processes of such archaeological studies. In particular, there are far-reaching implications to the fact that his work is driven by the aim of creating a three-dimensional reconstruction of the theatre. The extrapolation of a complete, three-dimensional form from fragmentary evidence, assorted comparanda, and documentary evidence, is quite different in character to the project of documenting the existing remains of a structure; it profoundly affects the ways in which knowledge about the remains is created, documented, archived, and deployed. Archaeologists and surveyors, for instance, work to exacting standards of evidence to enable their data to be recreated in millimetrically-accurate, three-dimensional form, and continually interpret evidence in the light of their ever-evolving attempt to relate each element to their current understanding of the “ideal” structure. But it is also not difficult to see how the task of translating survey data so exactly into visual form makes the lure of a positivist paradigm of reconstruction perilously attractive. Such tendencies can, quite uncon- sciously, lead to a dangerous occlusion both of the distinctive positionality of methodology and interpretation, and of the provisionality of knowledge—an occlusion that, when embedded in the disseminated text, may be resisted only by the most self-conscious of readers—and even then, only belatedly. The importance can scarcely be overstated, therefore, of the collaborators inducting themselves into the epistemological implications of VR-directed research.

Another member of the interdisciplinary research team is Ann Kuttner (University of Pennsylvania), a leading art historian of the classical world, who is studying the decorative elements of theatre, gardens, and curia. Karina Mitens (University of London) is conducting a survey of Italian theatres both pre- and post-Theatre of Pompey in order to build up a picture of the genealogy and influence of the theatre within the peninsula, while Dario Silenzi, archaeological surveyor, with his team has conducted for the Project the first ever scientific survey of the site as it is today. Also of importance are the various “afterlives” of the complex: how elements of the monument were later incorporated into the buildings that grew up on the site over the centuries, and the socio-spatial “memory” of the monument as it is now configured through commercial, domestic, and architectural interactions with the remains. For this reason, urban historian, Kristan Triff (Trinity College, Hartford, Connecticut) is contributing a study of the post-antique history of the site and its environs.

For the collaborators, the need to understand and respond cooperatively to the working methods of such a range of colleagues has been intellectually and

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Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/152028101753401785 by guest on 28 September 2021 Plate 9. Massing model of the Theatre of Pompey superimposed upon an aerial photograph of the modern city. Photo: Copyright University of Warwick.

Plate 10. Fragments of the Marble Plan. Museo della Civiltà Romana, Rome. (See E. Almeida Forma Urbis Marmorea, Aggiornamento generale [Rome, 1980].)

Plate 11. Existing state of segment of cavea sub-structure, Hotel Teatro di Pompeo. Photo: Copyright University of Warwick. Plate 12. Existing state of segment of cavea sub-structure showing location of proposed excavation. (Note door archway at present-day ﬂoor level.) 3-D model by John Burge. Photo: Copyright University of Warwick. DENARD / Virtuality and Performativity ᭿ 33

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/152028101753401785 by guest on 28 September 2021 imaginatively stimulating, opening up new modes of perception and ways of thinking.14 Only a few years ago, these people would have had little opportunity or reason even to discuss their work with one another, much less engage in a process of intensely creative collaboration. Moreover, as each collaborator’s work is integrated into a single, homogeneous, digital resource, traditional boundaries between data and interpretation, evidence and argument, researcher and technician, are undergo- ing rapid transformations, just as Virtual Reality itself constantly threatens to blur the distinction between reality and unreality.

As a prelude to exploring these transformations, it may be instructive brieﬂy to describe the performative phenomenality of previous, two-dimensional reconstructions of the Theatre of Pompey. These reconstructions are perhaps best understood as attempts to represent a complex combination of archaeological evidence, classical and architectural scholarship, and aesthetic judgement in the form of visual texts. As idealizations of certain artistic, architectural values of ancient Rome, produced within a strong neo-classical tradition, they are also indisputably and self-consciously performative. But for the knowledgeable interpreter, these visual texts are a source as much of anxiety as of information. Complete, beautiful, elegant: in their very persuasiveness, they appear to lay claim to an “authority” which they cannot, in fact, possess, since they neither accurately represent the archaeological evidence upon which they are based, nor make visible crucial (to us) distinctions between known fact, scholarly deduction, and creative—albeit educated—guesswork. As suggestive indices to a possible architectural past they function very well, but unless they can in some way display to us the state of knowledge (and ignorance) that they truly represent, their value as an instrument of scholarly communication is ultimately dubious. For the modern reader, therefore, their performativity has a certain poignancy: while the aesthetic pleasures they offer are largely derived from their claim to record historical fact, the images themselves undermine this pleasure by the manifest unsustainability of these claims.

The advent of VR-technology would thus appear to offer liberation from these difﬁculties. The prime characteristic of virtual reality is that, although typically experienced through the two-dimensional surfaces of computer monitors or projec- tion screens, its three-dimensional information structure, and apparent, and temporal, realism render it legible as a distinct, three-dimensional heterotopia, analogous to real space.15 For this reason, the term “Virtuality” may be used to denote “virtual space”16 and, thereby, a phenomenon which has a unique performativity. The precise “status” of this heterotopic “Virtuality” vis-à-vis “Real- ity” is a vexed question and extends beyond the scope of this article.17 But its particular importance for archaeological research lies in its capacity to enable its “readers” to simulate the experience of perceiving objects that no longer exist, or at least no longer exist in that form. Despite the not-infrequently articulated anxiety that Virtuality may one day assume cultural primacy over reality,18 in the case of the Theatre of Pompey and other such monuments, Virtuality, by default, is the primary reality since it is the only “reality” in which the information structure and appearance of the whole object now exists.

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Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/152028101753401785 by guest on 28 September 2021 Plate 13. Existing state of segment of cavea sub-structure showing location of proposed excavation. (Note door archway at present-day ﬂoor level.) 3-D model by John Burge. Photo: Copyright University of Warwick.

Plate 14. Theatre of Pompey: porticus post-scaenam and Temple of Venus Victrix. 3-D model by John Burge. Photo: Copyright University of Warwick.

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Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/152028101753401785 by guest on 28 September 2021 The characteristic performativity of such three-dimensional, digital texts as our model of the Theatre of Pompey is that, while they are descriptions of a prior structure, they also constitute (virtual) structures in their own right. In other words, as virtual objects, they simultaneously represent information, and are themselves substantially the information that they represent.19 When a reader is able to enter Virtuality and explore one of these three-dimensional texts in “real time,” then this performativity acquires a further dimension—the fourth dimension, in fact: time. The performativity of Virtuality is thus over-determined, arising on the one hand from its formal coincidence with its own information content and information structure, and on the other from its temporal coincidence with that of its reader. (In these key aspects, of course, the performative phenomenality of Virtuality also coincides with that of the performing arts.)

For archaeology and theatre research, therefore, the unique performativity of Virtuality offers unprecedented possibilities. Virtuality can enable the formation of new knowledges: by making knowledge visible (for example, by translating archaeological survey data into three-dimensional form), it offers new ways of knowing; and by making visible the unknown (for example, by enabling researchers to hypoth- esize, in three dimensions, possible reconstructions of lost or hidden areas of a structure), it promises to make knowable things that hitherto were unknowable.

Given the nature of the “problem” against which the performative potential of VR is to be mobilized, it should be a source of anxiety to us that our highly-detailed model of the Theatre of Pompey can, in fact, only be experienced by users in the form of two-dimensional derivatives—that is, in the very form the “false persuasiveness” of which they promised to mitigate. The extraordinarily high detail of these models by John Burge dictate that nothing is merely “painted on”—every contour of every capital and frieze is fully modeled in three-dimensions—with the result that a single Corinthian capital currently occupies some 50 Megabytes. Although Burge uses Silicon Graphics Octane computers with dual Pentium 3 processors running at 850 Mhz, assisted by 2 Gigabytes of RAM, even at these high (in today’s terms) speciﬁcations, it takes about an hour to render one of these images at screen resolution (72 dpi). It will be some time, therefore, before the average desktop computer will be able to navigate these colossal models in real-time. Meanwhile, it is only through rendered images such as those reproduced here (Plates 13, 14, and 16), or non-interactive prepared animations that the model can be viewed. The implications of this are troubling: how can a three-dimensional model, thus circumscribed, avoid reproducing the problematic, persuasive performativity of 2-D reconstructions?

In response to this disturbing trade-off between detail and interactivity, VR- Researcher Drew Baker at the University of Warwick has created a fully-interactive model of the theatre using Virtual Reality Modeling Language, or VRML (Plate 16).20 In contrast to the high-detail model, the entire VRML model occupies just 119K (or 20K when compressed: the size of a small text ﬁle), which enables readers to walk or ﬂy—in real-time—to any position within the structure, and fully to

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Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/152028101753401785 by guest on 28 September 2021 explore its performative dynamics, thus restoring to Pompey’s theatre the full performativity of Virtuality, and saving it from generating an unearned sense of authority.

However, is it not possible that the very performativity of Virtuality—the compelling nature of immersive, real-time experiences—can produce a degree of aesthetic persuasiveness that puts the epistemological problems offered by two-dimensional reconstructions in the shade? Among the central concerns of our various IT-based research projects, therefore, has been simultaneously to tap the extraordinary possibilities offered by the performativity of the virtual realm, and to explore how VR technologies can provide an adequate antidote to the unearned persuasiveness that archaeological reconstructions—whether in two or three dimensions—can appear to claim. Fortunately, it has quickly become apparent that, once these concerns have been identiﬁed, VR technology can be harnessed just as persuasively to address, as to give rise to, such concerns. For instance, the very inclusion of interdisciplinary scholarship within the project implies a heterogeneity of critical perspectives, and this multi-focal approach (if it does not produce a Hydra!), visibly militates against the formation of a methodological or interpretative orthodoxy, thus serving to undermine the apparent claim of any single text within the resource— three-dimensional or otherwise—to the status of “deﬁnitive text.” Not only that, but in including several scholarly voices, the resource both subjects, and demonstrates the necessity of subjecting, its “persuasive” resources to interpretation.

Moreover, although our work to date has, of necessity, concentrated on producing models of the main research hypotheses in order to facilitate the research process, as we bring the Project closer to publication we are increasingly adapting the models so as to represent multiple hypotheses, or varying levels of probability. More impor- tantly, at every stage, from preliminary investigative research, to modeling and integration of images and animations with supportive multimedia data, we use a range of digital technologies to assert interrogative, analytical, and interpretative nature of the work—to demonstrate that every on-screen image is neither more, nor less, than an informed and closely-argued interpretation and/or hypothesis. For this reason, the Pompey Project incorporates comprehensive documentation in which are set out the investigative, methodological, and interpretative processes which led to the creation of each constituent element of each model.

Thinking towards dissemination, a further strategy is to incorporate, at an equal level within the information-hierarchy of the resource, variant reconstructive possibilities of sections or aspects of the complex regarding which the archaeological evidence is insufﬁcient to reach ﬁrm conclusions, and where comparanda suggest a number of equally plausible options. By degrees, each new variant gently divests each other image (and itself) of yet another layer of perceived “authority,” cumulatively modulating, in the mind of the reader, the authority claimed for each image until it accurately echoes the status of knowledge that the images do, in fact, represent.

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Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/152028101753401785 by guest on 28 September 2021 Plate 15. Theatre of Pompey: orchestra and scaenae frons. 3-D model by John Burge. Photo: Copyright University of Warwick.

Plate 16. Theatre of Pompey: cavea and scaenae frons. (Note “avatar” representing user bottom right, and to-scale ﬁgure—1.7m. tall—by center-left stage door.) VRML model by Drew Baker. Photo: Copyright University of Warwick.

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Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/152028101753401785 by guest on 28 September 2021 Furthermore, digital publication enables us strategically to produce a variety of structures through which the resource can be read. Readers can thus vary their engagement with the resource from a near-“passive” experience, in which they simply activate a pre-recorded, guided tour through the resource, to the wholly autonomous, in which they dispense with the interpretative structures put in place by the resource creators and interrogate the resource as a raw database of materials. Somewhere in the middle, a novice reader might prefer to take a semi-guided approach down a number of hypertext paths. But in each case, the technology is used to indicate to the user precisely what knowledge any given text does, and does not, represent. Even an expert reader choosing the “autonomous” route—since the resource will comprise every usable document, image, and datum produced by the Project—will be able to see and evaluate the evidence with precisely the same degree of access that the Project partners had in making their reconstruction-hypotheses, thereby enabling the virtual texts to be comprehensively evaluated on the basis of the existing data.

Incidentally, we have also found that by conjoining both types of model—high- detail and VRML—in a single, digital resource, the intertextual transaction between the two, and between their respective performativities, substantially—if not en- tirely—redeems the high-detail model from the problematic performativity of two- dimensionality. The fact that, unlike prior two-dimensional reconstructions, these images constitute elements within a highly interactive, digital resource that excels at generating intertextual “seepage” from one text to another ensures that the states of knowledge represented by both kinds of model, and their two-dimensional derivatives, remains visible.

Looking even beyond the initial point of dissemination, these models will respond, in time, to post-publication feedback from users and experts, creating graphic representations of alternative interpretations of the data; they may in time even permit users to apply different textures and patterns—perhaps even proportions— depending on their preferred interpretation of the data produced and published by the Project, thus persuasively performing their own provisionality.

Finally, we constantly assert the provisionality of our “virtual” hypotheses by locating them within a history of reconstructions of the site. Not only are we modeling the Theatre of Pompey according to the new knowledges arising from our work, we are also creating three-dimensional models of all previous signiﬁcant attempts to reconstruct the theatre, and digitizing a considerable collection of scholarship about, and documentation of, the site. While such a teleological narrative might, at this proximity, seem to be a strategy designed to aggrandize our work as the ﬁnal culmination of a tradition of scholarship, we trust that scholarly and technological developments will quite quickly enable our work to be read in a longer perspective, namely: as the most recent, detailed, and comprehensive study of the site to date, and a resource for future such research, but also necessarily—and ineluctably—provisional.

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Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/152028101753401785 by guest on 28 September 2021 At this point it may be useful to look again at the research being conducted by the Project by tracing the reconstruction of the cavea—less because it is different in type or quality from the reconstruction of the scaenae frons or porticus post-scaenam, than because the above inquiries into the implications and consequences of VR-oriented work may enable us more fully to apprehend the nature and implications of such research.

RECREATING THE THEATRE OF POMPEY: CAVEA

If the reconstruction of the scaenae frons demonstrates the way in which an apparently very small amount of direct archaeological evidence can be made to yield great returns, in the case of the cavea, the evidence is not so thin on the ground. Diners in the Ristorante Pancrazio, and patrons of various shops, cafés, and galleries in Largo dell Pallaro, Via di Grotta Pinta, and Via dei Chiavari will be familiar with the way in which later structures have redeployed, or encrusted themselves around, the ancient ruins. Here, then, there would seem to be no shortage of archaeological evidence (Plate 11). The Project’s ﬁrst task, therefore, was to establish the precise architectural relationship between the ancient theatre and later structures, which necessitated taking aerial views of their roofs from helicopter. During our interior survey of the post-antique buildings, we discovered that some remains of the theatre extend upwards ﬁve storeys through the Palazzo Pio. Working closely with James Packer, Dario Silenzi then conducted a full survey of every section of the cavea to which we could gain access. This resulted in scaled sections of every ancient wall on the site, in order to establish their precise character and state of preservation. Silenzi also took a full digital photographic record of the interiors of each ancient chamber. This, in turn, has enabled John Burge to recreate an accurate three-dimensional model of the remains of the theatre cavea (Plate 12), providing an unrivaled resource for the analysis of the monument’s existing state, and thereby enabling the collaborators to develop hypothetical reconstructions of the unknown, based upon precise, but also visual, data.

Their work thus far has now brought us to perhaps the most exciting moment in the Project. In one of the basement rooms, accessible through Pancrazio’s Restaurant, the top of an ancient door is exposed (Plate 12). By combining virtual reconstructions of the existing state of the monument (the known) and virtual hypotheses of what may lie beyond (the unknown), Packer’s, Silenzi’s and Burge’s research has enabled them to identify this as the optimum site for a new archaeological excavation and, if we can secure the necessary funding, the Project is now poised to undertake the ﬁrst signiﬁcant excavation on the site in almost 150 years.

The excavation—which has been enthusiastically supported by the authorities in Rome, and by the British Museum—is planned for June and July of 2001 and 2002. It would enable us to ascertain a number of vital facts about the cavea for which the evidence, notwithstanding the extent of the remains, is, at present, unclear. It might even be possible to expose two bays of the Theatre’s actual exterior façade, which we

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Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/152028101753401785 by guest on 28 September 2021 have never seen. It will assist in determining the stratigraphy of the Theatre and Porticus, and that of the entire building complex, from Largo Argentina to Campo dei Fiori. More locally, it should reveal new information about the ground-floor plan of the Theatre under the cavea, with regard to stairways and internal corridors. The significance of this lies at least partly in the fact that this theatre was probably the first example of a system of circulation that was widely imitated later, and continues to be used in the present day in, for instance, modern sports stadia.

CONCLUSION

In conclusion, our engagement with Virtuality has impacted upon every conceivable aspect of the Project’s work. It has demonstrably enhanced the research process in both efficiency and efficacy, and will certainly enhance the dissemination process. It may, perhaps, contribute to the creation of a more “open” conceptualization of publication as feedback from users is incorporated, and as the models migrate from generation to generation. VR technology has also been a hard taskmaster, requiring of the collaborators exacting co-ordination of technical specifications across a diverse group of disciplinary practices, and exhaustive strategic planning and communication to ensure that the dictates and implications of Virtuality-oriented research, and the nature of its performativity, are fully recognized and taken into consideration by each of the partners.

Underpinning all our efforts to understand and investigate theatre and theatre space—whether real or virtual—is the notion of performativity. The Theatre of Pompey was not only a unique, and uniquely signiﬁcant, site of theatrical performance, it was also performative in its own right. Now, as a site within Virtuality, it is again quintessentially performative—embodying what it seeks to describe. Looking to the future, we are now investigating the possibility of making such virtual spaces the sites of virtual performances.21 All of this enables us to reﬂect upon the compelling synergies between the media and methodologies of theatre and Virtuality. How will these performances negotiate between artistic and scholarly endeavour, real and virtual, 2-D and 3-D, persuasiveness and provisionality? That is another question for another article. What is clear, however, is that as more and more scholarship either takes place in, or results in, Virtuality, we must face the challenge of developing ways of both creating and reading such texts with a keen attentiveness to the complexity of their unique performativity.

NOTES

1. Pliny, Natura Historia 35. 59. 2. See Ann Kuttner’s discussion of the program of sculpture, etc. in the Porticus and Theatre in “Culture and History at Pompey’s Museum,” Transactions of the American Philological Association Vol. 129 (1999), pp. 343–373. 3. Ovid, Ars Amatoria 3.387; Martial, 11.47.3.

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Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/152028101753401785 by guest on 28 September 2021 4. Beacham, Richard, Spectacle Entertainments of Early Imperial Rome (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1999), 69–70. 5. Pliny, in fact, claimed it sat 40,000 (N.H. 36.115) but this has long met with critical skepticism. 6. Dio Cassius, 62.29.1; Suetonius, Vitellus 4; Tacitus, Annales 16.4. 7. Cassiodorus, Variae 4.51; 3.39. 8. Vitruvius, De Architectura, 5.9.1. The Theatre Marcellus may have been being built at the time he wrote De Architectura, but it was, in any case, closely modeled upon the Theatre of Pompey. 9. For an account of the Stanford digitization of the Marble Plan, see: http:// graphics.stanford.edu/projects/forma-urbis/forma-urbis.html 10. On performativity in speech-act theory, see J. Hillis Miller, Tropes, Parables, Performatives: Essays in Twentieth-Century Literature (Hemel Hemstead: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1991). 11. The Roman Theatre and Its Audience (Cambridge Mass: Harvard University Press, 1991) and Spectacle Entertainments of Early Imperial Rome (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1999). 12. For a recent overview of this work, see Beacham, Richard, “Eke out our performance with your mind: reconstructing the theatrical past with the aid of computer simulation” in T. Coppock (ed.) Information Technology and Scholarship: Applications in the Humanities and Social Sciences (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), 131–154. Up-to-date information about the team and their work can be found at the Theatron web-site: http:// www.theatron.co.uk. The author of the present article was Research Fellow for the Pompey Project 1999–2000. 13. Packer, James, The Forum of Trajan in Rome: A Study of the Monuments (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997). 14. Or, as John Unsworth has put it: “the exercise of developing technical solutions to humanistic research problems—the need to conceptualize the problems of one discipline in the terms of another—extends the territory of both.” “Not Your Average Fool: The Humanist on the Internet,” Institute for Advanced Technology in the Humanities, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, 1994: http://jefferson.village.virginia.edu/~jmu2m /nih.html. 15. “Virtual reality is a popular metaphor that, like all metaphors, can lead us astray if we are not careful about what we mean. It suggests that we are taking reality and creating a representation of it in a computer, whereas the computer itself may be creating new realities . . . As a result, the term virtuality may be better than virtual reality at representing the discussion of how computer systems affect reality.” Murray Turoff quoted by Rita Lauria in “Virtuality” (http://www.spark-online.com). In “Peirce, Virtuality, and Semiotic,” Peter Skagestad offers a useful discussion of “virtuality,” distinguishing, for instance, between Theodore Nelson’s deﬁnition of virtuality as appearance (“By the virtuality of a thing I mean the seeming of it”) and Paul Levinson’s (here paraphrased) deﬁnition of a “virtual” X as “what you get when the information structure of X is detached from its physical structure.”

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Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/152028101753401785 by guest on 28 September 2021 Skagestad notes: “the two deﬁnitions coincide in the case of virtual reality—the information structure of reality as a whole includes its look and feel.” (20th World Congress of Philosophy, Boston, Massachusetts: August 10–15, 1998: http://www.bu.edu/wcp/Papers /Cogn/CognSkag.htm). Re. Michel Foucault’s notion of heterotopia as applied to Cyberspace, see Jeffrey R. Galin and Joan Latchaw “Heterotopic Spaces Online: A New Paradigm for Academic Scholarship and Publication.” http://english.ttu.edu/kairos/3.1/coverweb/galin /toc.htm. 16. I.e., rather than a technology: the technology that results in the creation of “Virtuality” may be referred to as Virtual Reality (VR). 17. Although see Mark Nunes, “Baudrillard in Cyberspace: Internet, Virtuality, and Postmodernity,” Style 29 (1995), pp. 314–327 for some provocative readings: “From a Baudrillardian perspective, this ﬁguration of Internet as a kind of cybernetic terrain works to undermine the symbolic distance between the metaphoric and the real. It abandons ‘the real’ for the hyperreal by presenting an increasingly real simulation of a comprehensive and comprehendible world. This heading points the way toward Baudrillard’s ‘hypertelia,’ that fated catastrophe when the sophistication of a model outdoes the reality it attempts to comprehend.” 18. See, for instance, Max More, “Virtue and Virtuality: From Enhanced Senses to Experience Machines.” http://www.maxmore.com/virtue.htm. 19. Contrast this, for instance, to the numerical data that produce the models. On the one hand these are simply different (mathematical) expressions of the same information, but they, crucially, lack the performativity of three-dimensional models since they do not, themselves, take the form (even virtually) of that which they express. 20. That this model is based on Victoire Baltard’s two-dimensional reconstruction of the Theatre helps to demonstrate the capacity of a digital resource simultaneously to explore different hypotheses. 21. We are currently developing collaboration with experts in virtual acoustics, e.g., Dept. of Engineering at the University of Ferrara, and in virtual choreography, e.g., the University of Nottingham’s Mixed Reality Laboratory.

HUGH DENARD is on the faculty of the School of Theatre Studies, University of Warwick, England. He is currently co-authoring Performing Cultures: Roman Wall-Painting and the Theatre with Richard Beacham for Yale University Press.

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