Tuesday 1 February 2011

Digital Pompeii

This is clearly the week for digital reconstructions of Pompeii. Here is another one, which has some interesting reconstructions, despite some obvious errors (the year is AD 65, but there's no earthquake damage, and the Doric temple is standing in all its former glory in the Triangular Forum, to name but two). Still, I liked the volcanic bomb at the beginning, and the roof over the Odeon. One strange thing, however: they seem to have used a few clips from a different reconstruction, one that Jeremy blogged about in January last year (Populating Pompeii, which was made by a Swiss company called Procedural) without crediting it. There's nothing on their website to suggest that the two companies are linked, but maybe I'm missing something. I hope so, I don't like to think that the Populating Pompeii people have been ripped off ...

1 comment:

Drew Baker said...

One of the more interesting things about digital cultural heritage is that different people can put forward different visualisations, i.e. visual hypotheses, about the subject matter.

Obviously bring interested in VIII.7 the “reconstruction” of the Doric temple was interesting if counter to current thinking, likewise the section “Odeon” which opens with an articulated scanae frons (surely some mistake in captioning, as it later becomes flat) and low roof is interesting although presents a number of problems from an architectural and practical point of view (IMHO). As with any digital “reconstruction” I am always interested in the paradata behind it more than the actual visuals derived as part of the visualisation process (over 15 year one becomes cynical about the “show stopping” visual impact of such things and becomes more interested in the theories and process of the construction itself as a research artefact rather than the pretty end product image).

In the spirit of Blogging Pompeii’s “Digital Day” (or week :}) I include a link to our work on the Odeon at Pompeii for comparison. http://www.kvl.cch.kcl.ac.uk/theatres_pompeii.html

D

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