Eva Pietroni

Natural interaction in VR environments for Cultural Heritage and its impact inside museums: The Etruscanning project

A basic limit of most Virtual Reality (VR) applications reproducing cultural sites developed by the scientific community is that they often fail to fire up the attention and the involvement of the public. Starting from our experience in this domain, we would like to discuss some of the fundamental concepts about the potentiality of virtual ecosystems and to propose new natural interaction interfaces in VR environments based on body movements. The system we will describe has been derived from the new generation of games, but for the first time, it has been applied to VR environments dedicated to Cultural Heritage (CH) and experimented with inside museums. Interesting research focused on the definition of a new grammar of gestures is in progress, allowing more and more complexity, but with natural interchanges and connections between real and virtual worlds. An important development in this field has been realized in the framework of the Etruscanning project, a European project (Culture 2007) whose aim is to explore the possibilities of new visualization techniques, in order to re-create and restore the original context of the Etruscan graves. In this paper, we will discuss the methodological approach and the VR application dedicated to Regolini Galassi tomb, in the Sorbo necropolis in Cerveteri. Finally, we will present the results of the evaluation of the VR installation presented inside the museums, derived from public feedback. This observation lasted several months and gave us the opportunity to adjust the grammar of gestures and the general infrastructure of the application in order to define and implement the most efficient solution for people.

3D Collaborative Environments in Archaeology: Experiencing the Reconstruction of the Past

This paper presents the outcome of the research project: “Integrated Technologies of Robotics and Virtual Environments in Archaeology”, financed by the Italian Ministry of the University and Scientific Research, FIRB (Funds for the Investments of Basic Research). The aim of the project is to experiment and realize a multi-user domain on the web aimed to a multidisciplinary scientific community: archaeologists, historians, experts in human and social sciences, communication experts. The capacity to load, share and interact with data in the same spatial virtual environment can increase the level of learning and scientific communication. The project is the result of the collaboration between CNR-ITABC of Rome, the University of California, Merced, the Department of Archaeology of the University of Pisa and Scuola S. Anna of Pisa. It focuses on three archaeological sites: the Teban tomb 14 in the necropolis of Gurna, Fayum Medinet Madi, both in Egypt, and Khor Rori, in Oman. The collaborative environment is constructed through a virtual reality system. This allows to create a virtual space where it is possible to share 3D information on the project and to host additional behaviors of the scientific community.

Digital Techniques for Etruscan Graves: the Etruscanning Project

Etruscanning is a project founded by the European Commission and it focuses on the investigation of new digitization and presentation techniques, in order to re-create the original context of the Etruscan graves. Several digital techniques have been applied for the stages of digitization, virtual restoration and reconstruction and communication. The possibility of working on two different tombs allows us to deep two specific approaches and to diversify the final real-time applications. This project represents an interesting opportunity to create a concrete link between research and communication in the field of virtual museums, testing the effective impact in terms of cultural transmission, learning and appreciation both in nonlinear narrative plots conception and in novel metaphors of interaction. From a technological point of view the most innovative result of the project is the implementation of natural interaction interfaces, allowing the public to move and interact with objects inside the virtual environment.

Livia's Villa Reloaded: An example of re-use and update of a pre-existing Virtual Museum, following a novel approach in storytelling inside virtual reality environments

Livias Villa Reloaded is an innovative virtual reality installation dedicated to the Villa Ad Gallinas Albas, which Livia Drusilla took as dowry to the Emperor Augustus when she married him in the first century BC. This archaeological site is located on a great hill at Prima Porta, at the ninth mile of the via Flaminia, a very important Roman consular road built at the end of the third century BC to connect Rome to Ariminum (today Rimini). Starting from digital acquisition on the field, both the archaeological landscape and the actual site have been modeled in 3D, together with the reconstruction of how this context could have been in the past, in particular during the augustan age. The 3D scenarios have been implemented in a Virtual Reality application using mid-air gesture based Interaction. The installation introduces a novel approach in storytelling, combining different media and languages: real time exploration, cinematographic paradigms, use of real actors and virtual set practices. This installation has been created reusing and updating the dataset previously realized for the Virtual Museum of the Ancient via Flaminia, a virtual reality and multiuser environment that was installed in the Roman National Museum-Diocletians Baths in Rome in 2008. The new version of installation, Livias Villa Reloaded, has been presented and opened to the public in February 2014 in the same location, and promoted by the V-Must network as a successful example of trans-media project.