Graphics and Archaeology: Interpreting the Past
Snowbird, Utah
20-23 May 2000
Presentation:
- Virtual Reality, Real and Surreal Places in the Past
Presenters:
- Ruth Tringham
Presentation Resources:
Summary:
Ruth is an archaeologist. In her presentation, she was interested in exploring "how do we continue to capture reality and what is our aim?" She compared and contrasted four different approaches: photography, artists' reconstructions, realtime re-enactments/realizations, and virtual reality.
- Photography - are we capturing what we're doing (experience) with photography? A photograph is just a memory, not a real thing - it is subject to "selective" viewing. Pictures capture details but they still require interpretation, especially when the entire context (such as people) are not captured.
- Artists' Reconstructions - they are a more complicated idea of why we're doing this. Many paintings are overloaded with detail - there is no space for imagination. They attempt to capture and present too much - are we truly capturing life in the past? Who is our audience? What is the point? Artists such as Alan Sorrell and David Macaulay (Underground and Cathedral: The Story of Its Construction) are interested in leaving more space for the imagination. The audience is invited into their images. We should not be transmitters of data - we are more mediators.
- Realtime re-enactments and realizations - reconstructions are estimations of original architectures. Architectural models give us a notion of what it may have been like, but what is the experience? What are we trying to capture and what do we know of the past from these experiences?
- Virtual reality - examples of this are like the 500 Nations VR experience. Note that there are no humans, just artifacts. How do you introduce people into the whole context simply by the artifacts that they left behind? It is important to capture/reproduced data, but we need to think about why we're doing it.
Her current work is on a site called Çatalhöyük in Turkey. As she showed QuickTime VRs (first silently and then with a soundtrack), she noted "I'm asking why - looking at sites also considers how they reflect human behavior, such as the importance of rituals." How do we enhance these visualizations? We're interested in "Surreality" - the capturing of memory.
Ruth presented the Chimera website. Its focus is on surreal realms with prehistoric actors. "Imagination is knowledge." It is a past that we construct (a constructivist's view of history) - they are playful views that can capture more data/past in memory.
Conclusions / Issues:
- There is a how and a why for capturing images. We should consider their purpose and audience.
- Imagination is an important ingredient in engaging the interpreter. Consider "illusionary reality", where surreality contrasts with reality.
- Many sets of data depend on many sets of questions. We are all conducting an interpretation of information.
- In some cases, it is more important to forego realism to properly convey a perspective. In fact, non-photorealism in rendering can be more appropriate for visualizations - higher ambiguity leaves some space for alternative interpretation and consideration.
- Visualization is fraught with biases - they are conveying their own interpretation. There are no images without agendas - some are simply less aware of their agendas and biases. We must be aware and honest of our science - what we're presenting.