Francesco GABELLONE / Maria Teresa GIANNOTTA
(CNR IBAM, Lecce, Italy)
Keywords: Virtual, inaccessible, 3D, funerary
Abstract:
As often happens, many monuments are affected, for various reasons, by an inevitable trouble: the artefacts preserved inside them until the discover have been brought into some museum, because (e.g.) the monumental structures had to be restored (in most cases with provisional works) in order to prevent their collapse. One consequence of this moving, is the de-contextualization of the grave goods and the non-valorisation of monumental archaeological contexts. An effective solution for these issues can be achieved from the use of technologies that allow the virtual enjoyment of these monuments and the virtual set-up of the grave goods in their original contexts.
This paper presents the project “Marta Racconta. Storie Virtuali di Tesori Nascosti”, co-financed by the Fondazione Cassa di Risparmio di Puglia, carried out by CNR-IBAM (Lecce, Italy) in order to provide the installation of a Virtual Platform in the National Archaeological Museum of Taranto (MARTA). The main purpose of this project is to make ‘accessible’ ancient monuments from the Greek Taras (the ancient Taranto) currently inaccessible to visitors. These are: the Tomb of the Athlete of Taranto, Tomb of the Festoons, and the Hypogeum of the Gorgons, was discovered some years ago in Via Otranto.
From a technological point of view, we have developed a Real Time 3D platform for a stereoscopic immersive visit, in which a navigation system with ‘natural interface’ was implemented, where the commands are executed with simple hand gestures. Through this technology, the visitor will have the opportunity to follow a path of integrated knowledge starting from heterogeneous contents, which will allow the access to historical and archaeological data, the archaeometric analyses and the spatial navigation within a hyper-realistic environment where it will be possible to interact with the three-dimensional structures, to query the Database and to explore, interactively, the funerary finds.