Peter Ferschin / Iman Kulitz
(Vienna University of Technology, Vienna, Austria)
Keywords: Digital Exhibition, Archaeological Reconstruction, Egypt, Interactive Presentation
Abstract: Celebrating the 100year Anniversary of the Austrian Excavations in Giza, the Kunsthistorisches Museum Wien curated a special exhibition about this event, providing insights into the civilization of Ancient Egypt and documenting Austria’s seminal role in researching the Old Kingdom.
From the early phases of planning for the exhibition, digital presentations were meant to be an integrated part of the display concept and had the goals to create a contextual framework for the exhibited objects, to sketch the development of the necropolis of Giza at three different time-frames – its development in the Old Kingdom, the time of discovery and the present day situation. Additionally our goal was to give an impression of the everyday work of the excavators at that time and compare traditional and modern documentation technologies.
Beside of digitizing of the original documentation from that excavation (sketch books, photographic images) various 3D reconstructions were created – several phases of the development of the cemetery of Giza and a prototype of a Mastaba-tomb. Complementing the historical documentation, plans, maps, photographs, aerial images and terrestrial laser scans were used additionally to achieve the reconstruction. Fruitful discussions with the egyptological curators of the exhibition were aiding the reconstruction process.
This work will present the underlying ideas and concepts from the planning to the realization of the digital presentations of the above mentioned exhibition. As the digital artifacts should be integrated into the permanent collection about Ancient Egypt, it was necessary to consider different display contexts.
On the technical side, state of the art interactive presentation methods allowed to perceive information at different levels, depending on personal interest and on background knowledge.