Francesco GABELLONE1 | Davide TANASI2
(1IBAM-CNR, Lecce | 2Arcadia University, Siracusa, Italy)
Keywords: virtual reconstruction, immersive narrative, Roman archaeology and culture
Abstract:
The archaeological heritage of the ancient city Pompei is certainly the most known and for this reason it has been the subject of many project of knowledge dissemination.
The complexity of the urban layout, the majesty of the monuments and the outcomes of the tragic eruption of the Vesuvius that buried for centuries the city have been exhaustively portrayed in several traditional documentaries and short movies in computer animation. Especially in the virtual productions, the general trend has been that to put an emphasis on the reconstruction of the material culture, neglecting how multitude of human stories were intertwined with it.
Against this scenario, an interdisciplinary team of scholars have produced the stereoscopic ‘docudrama’ in 3D computer animation ‘Pompei – A Buried Story’, a 26 minutes long movie in full HD describing the fictional story of two men who were the protagonist of a human story in the very day of the catastrophe.
A set of original artifacts, truly discovered in some key locations of Pompei, as the Villa dei Misteri, la Casa del Fauno and the Foro, have been placed in a virtual context dominated by the conflict between two characters, Abalo and Ottimo, digitally recreated. The philological reconstruction of those ancient locations has become the virtual stage for the representation of a little drama.
This human centered narrative, where Pompei itself is just the background, provides a full immersive experience where the public emotionally relates with the protagonist, being subliminally educated by the power of images, sounds, soundtrack, special effects and virtual reconstruction.