ORGANIZERS
TOPICS
Remote sensing, archaeology, landscape, environment, ecosystem, image processing, virtual reality, 3D visualization, conservation, geophysics, photogrammetry, open source and Web-GIS.
In October 2004, the International Conference on Remote Sensing Archaeology was organized by the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing and hosted by the Joint Laboratory of Remote Sensing Archaeology (JLRSA). In that context an international team of experts was created in order to promote multidisciplinary activities of remote sensing archaeology in the entire world.
We announce hereby that in 2006, the conference will be organized in Rome at the National Research Council (main building) with particular attention to the study and the conservation of archaeological and ancient landscapes through integrated technologies and virtual reality: 4-7, December, 2006.
One week before the conference (27th December - 2nd November), a Remote Sensing International School for archaeologists, site managers and environmental experts will be organized in Grosseto, with the collaboration of international keynote speakers and scientists.
ARCHAEOLOGICAL LANDSCAPE AND VR
The landscape belongs to the science of complexity and, in this sense, we think that the most adequate method of reconstruction, or the best cybernetic map, is Virtual Reality, intended as an approach to "map" or "remap" the landscape. Today we are facing with serious problems of inadequacy of digital tools, if not supported by a cybernetic and epistemological approach. We aren't dealing any more with a technological lack, but with a need of culturalerethinking process.
The goal of the process we are dealing with is a multi-layered visualisation of the archaeological landscape. With multi-layer we intend the visualisation of different categories of complex data inside the same georeferenced space. With Virtual Reality applications we can manage, in the same metric environment acquired data, such as survey results, geological and geodetic prospections, GPS data, Scanner Laser point clouds, air photography, satellite imagery, archives, meta-data or other textual resources, but also processed data, such as remotely sensed data, or interpreted data, such as thematic layer elaborated with GIS analysis, etc. Another important advantage is that it's possible to integrate even data at different scale of accuracy (metric - GPS, centimetric - DGPS, millimetric - DGPS, scanner laser). The concept that allows this kind of integration is the multiresolution approach, through the realisation of different levels of detail (LOD) in accordance with the distance of the user inside the VR application or with the typology of behaviour active.
A behaviour is an immersive digital action addressed to have a feedback in a 3D space, interconnecting all the data in the same real time visualization. This capacity to integrate different information allows, such as in a bi-dimensional and static GIS, to overlay for instance remotely sensed data processed from different sources: laser scanner, geophysics analysis, Lidar radar data, aerial imagery, etc. and to compare them in the same space. Their interpretation becomes easier and new elements arise unexpectedly. This approach leads us to re-think even the traditional interpretative process of archaeology. In many cases an archaeologist uses his/her mental patterns in order to use a top-down interpretation: e.g. by mental comparison of archaeological models, structures, landscapes, hand made, settlements, etc.. Typically, the entire work of the archaeologist end in a scientific publication often printed many years after an excavation or a survey. Remote sensing approach, in terms of digital observation of the landscape, is different, since it starts from digital and remotely sensed data and end with their digital analysis, in a bottom-up method.
Top-down and bottom-up aspects are rarely integrated, with the result that often some information is lost. The innovative aspect of Virtual Reality applications isn't its technological impact but its use even as a scientific tool, not only as visualisation system. The visual and interactive integration of the bottom-up and top-down approaches in the same space increases the faculty of interpretation in holistic sense: scientific and cognitive impact of the data is very high because of the relations created from the exploration in the VR system.
FROM SPACE TO PLACE
Sense of place is also sense of time, difference between space and place, between 'global' and 'local'. The world process of globalization is removing places and multiplying spaces, reducing the cultural differences. In particular the dissemination of not-places, stations, hypermarkets, hotels, etc. risks to make uniform our perception, reducing what we perceive of the world to a few mental maps. Therefore we want to highlight one the fundamental tasks of remote sensing archaeology, namely, the capacity to use spatial technologies for recovering and identifying places and the sense of place in collaboration with the local communities.
Destruction and obliteration of the collective processes of memory transmission risk to exclude the local communities from the environment they live, rescinding relations/inter-relations or constructing false relations. This shows the importance to re-create virtual and mind landscapes in order to have a collective memory of the past.
Indeed the self-organization, the autopoiesis of the landscape or better, of the environment, can create additional places where the spaces seem out of control, re-creating the 'local' perception. This re-created Local will create unplanned maps and feedback activities on the basis of the anthropological needs of the territory. The theory of mindscape shows that the use of virtual reality is a key factor for the reconstruction of ancient mental maps because it involves the way through which we perceive information in time and space In this scenario, digital technologies, archaeology and anthropology can have a social role, very important in reading the territory and in catalysing the diachronic perception of the landscape. In this direction the remote sensing technologies, if supported from an epistemological analysis of information, can try to reconstruct the mental maps of the past, saving the transparency of data and meta-data used.
The understanding of landscape shall have a social impact on local people, on tourists and visitors that, without 'maps' can't have the mental code of environmental interaction. Finally, each process of sustainable development can't leave apart from a correct perception of the archaeological and ancient landscape. This trend towards spatial anthropology and remote sensing, supported by digital immersive technologies, should help the local communities to re-obtain power and sense of place, and to guarantee a adequate cultural transmissibility.
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