Augmenting the Archaeological Record with Art: The Time Maps Project

This chapter proposes a new method for evoking the complexity of the Past from the archaeological record, based on a transdisciplinary approach linking science, art and technology. Inspired from the fractal-theory, this method employs different levels of augmentations from general context to detail and uses a combination of Augmented Reality techniques and visual media, with a high artistic quality, to create a Mixed-Reality user experience. The paper presents an experimental Augmented Reality application on mobile devices, and discusses the efficacy of the method for an educational strategy to help communities recover and transmit their immaterial heritage to future generations. The research was based in Vadastra village, southern Romania, in an archaeological complex of a prehistoric settlement.

[1]  Steve Benford,et al.  Performing Mixed Reality , 2011 .

[2]  Daniel Chandler,et al.  Semiotics: The Basics , 2001 .

[3]  Darwin G. Caldwell,et al.  Touching Sharp Virtual Objects Produces a Haptic Illusion , 2011, HCI.

[4]  Randall Shumaker Virtual and Mixed Reality - New Trends , 2011, Lecture Notes in Computer Science.

[5]  Mary E. S. Loomis,et al.  The Basics: , 1990, Is That True?.

[6]  Tony Mullen,et al.  Prototyping Augmented Reality , 2011 .

[7]  Steven Zhiying Zhou,et al.  Mixed Reality on Mobile Devices , 2010 .

[8]  Dragos Gheorghiu,et al.  Experiments with past materialities , 2011 .

[9]  Sandra Delacourt L’Indisciplinaire de l'art , 2013 .

[10]  Lanfranco Aceti,et al.  Not Here Not There , 2013 .

[11]  Dragoş Gheorghiu Experimenting with prehistoric spaces. Performance, Experience, Evocation , 2009 .

[12]  James R. Mathieu Experimental archaeology : replicating past objects, behaviors, and processes , 2002 .

[13]  Dragoş Gheorghiu The Technology of Building in Chalcolithic Southeastern Europe , 2010 .

[14]  Didier Stricker,et al.  Archeoguide: An Augmented Reality Guide for Archaeological Sites , 2002, IEEE Computer Graphics and Applications.

[15]  Clifford T. Brown,et al.  The Broken Past: Fractals in Archaeology , 2005 .

[16]  Dragos Gheorghiu,et al.  eARTh Vision (Art-chaeology and digital mapping) , 2012 .

[17]  Dragos Gheorghiu,et al.  The Ceramics of the Chalcolithic Vãdastra Culture , 2001 .

[18]  Gerald L. Alexanderson,et al.  Mathematical People: Profiles and Interviews , 1985 .

[19]  T. G. Bergin,et al.  The New Science , 1962 .

[20]  Tobias Langlotz,et al.  The History of Mobile Augmented Reality , 2015, ArXiv.

[21]  Ronald Azuma,et al.  A Survey of Augmented Reality , 1997, Presence: Teleoperators & Virtual Environments.

[22]  Ramesh Raskar,et al.  Modern approaches to augmented reality: introduction to current approaches , 2006, SIGGRAPH Courses.

[23]  Richard Bradley,et al.  Image and Audience: Rethinking Prehistoric Art , 2009 .

[24]  Sarah Pink,et al.  The future of visual anthropology , 2006 .

[25]  George Papagiannakis,et al.  Mixing virtual and real scenes in the site of ancient Pompeii , 2005, Comput. Animat. Virtual Worlds.

[26]  P. Milgram,et al.  A Taxonomy of Mixed Reality Visual Displays , 1994 .

[27]  Kirsten Cater,et al.  Parallel worlds: immersion in location-based experiences , 2005, CHI Extended Abstracts.

[28]  Stephen D. Houston,et al.  Re-Presenting the Past: Archaeology Through Text and Image , 2013 .

[29]  Siân Ede Science and the contemporary visual arts , 2002 .

[30]  James Clifford,et al.  On Ethnographic Allegory , 2020, The New Social Theory Reader.