 | Virtual Model of Ostia Antica |
Ostia Antica the harbour of ancient Rome (Written by Angelo Coccettini and Marzia Vinci - Edited by Art Recon Inc.- French version by Martha Metelski) The history of Ostia (derived from Latin ostium, here denoting "the mouth of the Tiber") is indissolubly linked to that of Rome, which it served as a river and a sea port, and through which came the essential goods for a population that reached 1 million people. During the Empire the crowd of plebeians was nourished by the State. In the 2nd century AD, the population of Ostia numbered some 50,000 individuals, including ship owners, merchants, craftsmen, civil servants, sailors and stewards. The emperors Claudius and Trajan, upgraded and expanded a vast port complex on the city, with jetties, docks, lighthouses, warehouses and canals. Since then, Ostia was able to receive heavily laden grain ships from Egypt and Africa. To accommodate the inhabitants, Ostia was built up vertically with large city blocks of multi-storey buildings. This brickwork architecture contrasted with that of the richly decorated temples and official buildings. An unusually large number of baths and taverns catered for the relaxation of the citizens and, passing through, travellers. In this cosmopolitan city, many Eastern religions flourished and Christianity rapidly attracted new devotees. Nowadays, the ruins of the town of Ostia and its cemeteries, which are still being excavated and studied, are among the most beautiful and interesting in the Mediterranean. The city museum contains beautiful statues, and mural paintings. Despite its fame, however, Ostia has never been subject of a major exhibition, neither at home, nor abroad. The presentation in Geneva is therefore a world first, thanks to joint efforts of Geneva University and the Musée d'art et d'Histoire, and to the kindness and assistance of the Soprintendenza Archeologica di Ostia. More than four hundred items are on display in the exhibition – many of them recently discovered. They illustrate all aspects of this model Roman city. |
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The Multimedia Project Since the very beginning, the project of the exhibition foresaw the installation of seven Interactive Workstations, one in each major room. The Interactive Workstations are normal computers based on Intel processor with a Touch Screen Monitor, to let visitors to browse the information by their fingers. The software includes information about the ancient harbour, divided into the eight different chapters: Origin and Evolution, Sailing, Commerce, Public Life, Private Life, Pagan Religion, World of a Dead and Late Antiquity. All chapters are then hierarchically divided into paragraphs and then sections. Each section can include images (there are more than 400 high resolution picture of the archaeological site), video clips, text with hyperlinks and pop-ups and images 3D. Marzia Vinci and Angelo Coccettini were in charge to develop the interactive software for the workstations and the images 3D, as well to organize the text, images and video clips in the software. The texts have been written by the scientific committee, composed mostly by persons who work in the Archaeological Department of the University of Geneva. The development of the interactive software, written in Visual Basic 6.0, has been sponsored by the Museum of Art and History of Geneva. |
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The Virtual Model The images 3D have been produced using Newtek Lightwave. We used the Modeller 5.6 for the modelling and Layout 6.5 for the rendering. We recreated about the 75%-80% of the total surface of Ostia, that means 181 different objects. Each object represents a defined unit in the project and it could be an Object Island (a collection of houses, warehouses, and other buildings),a special objects (the Tiber, the sea), a single major monument (like Capitolium or Theater). To speed up modelling, we develop a Lightwave script to make programmatically regular buildings and different types of roofs. We used extensively also the library RECON3D - Classic Objects to create the most important monuments, especially, for the columns and mouldings. The Virtual OSTIA folder takes about 380 Mb of hard disk space. |
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Angelo Coccettini and Marzia Vinci, Geneva, Switzerland, May 2001.
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