“3D·CoD”: A New Methodology for the Design of Virtual Reality-Mediated Experiences in Digital Archeology

Abstract

Despite the capacity of virtual reality (VR) to recreate and enhance real and virtual worlds, many applications in Archeology aim at the photorealistic depiction of architectural spaces. On the other hand, little is known about their real communicational effectiveness. In this context, the EU-funded project {LEAP] proposed the concept of Cultural Presence as the theoretical and methodological foundation for a new kind of VR-mediated experience, and the UNESCO World Heritage Neolithic site of Çatalhöyük (Turkey) was chosen as case of application. During this process, a survey of design pipelines in Digital Archeology indicated that, to build such experiences, a new design and evaluation method may need to be adopted. This paper presents the process of building and testing "3D⋅CoD," a new methodology for the design of VR-mediated experiences. Initially, different archeologists working at Çatalhöyük were engaged in a first workshop, aimed at establishing a specific instantiation of Cultural Presence and how to depict it by means of VR. To that end, observation, questionnaires, multimodal, and statistical analyses were used. The results of this field work were translated into a codesign hands-on methodology ("3D⋅CoD"), which was tested in a second workshop, with a different group of archeologists. In this case, observation and debriefing were used. The results of this evaluation suggest that codesign strategies are suitable for the creation of VR-mediated experiences, but that equally important is (1) to consider the codesigners' concept of Archeology and (2) to think in terms, not of 3D models, but of Cultural Heritage goals and human experiences.

Digital humanities as a cross‐disciplinary battleground: An examination of inscriptions in journal publications

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Exploring Historic Buildings Using Virtual Reality

“…Virtual Heritage was initially utilized during the 1990s and mid-2000s, with archeologists being the essential clients [4]. Computer generated reality innovation is progressively being utilized in galleries and other social legacy settings to advance government funded training [11]. Lately, the capability of perception innovations in the Cultural Heritage region has started to be figured it out [12].…”

Avatars, Monsters, and Machines: A Cyborg Archaeology

“…Even fewer 3D models allow persistent dwelling, though archaeologists are increasingly exploring virtual embodiment (Champion, 2008), some through the phenomenological exploration of video games (Reinhard, 2017, 2018). Yet the impulse remains; as Pujol-Tost notes, there is a clear desire amongst archaeologists to create ‘immersive, populated, fully interactive environments that reproduce the multisensory dimension of the world’ (Pujol-Tost, 2017: 2).…”