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Joukowsky Institute for Archaeology & the Ancient World
Brown University
Box 1837 / 60 George Street
Providence, RI 02912
Telephone: (401) 863-3188
Fax: (401) 863-9423
[email protected]
Immersive or Subversive? Experimental Archaeology in the Digital Age
Diane Favro, UCLA
If a picture is worth a thousand words, how much is a sound worth? Or a smell? Or a texture? Or a movement? Or a feeling? Today, the proliferation of profitable immersive digital environments -- from gaming to Second Life to pervasive computing itself -- has focused attention on environmental experiences. As modern designers seek to create ever more realistic artificial, alternative worlds, archaeologists are appropriating their tools and expressing greater interest in experiential research. Explorations of “being in past spaces” rely not only on physical models, drawn reconstructions, and dioramas, but increasingly on immersive virtual reality simulations replete with sounds and movement. The established field of experimental archaeology has been joined by archaeologies of corporality, anthropology of the senses, and other exploratory categories. An analysis of select case studies reveals some of the challenges and paradigm shifts faced by archaeologists, architectural historians, and others interested in historic environments as they transition from dealing with the tangibility of the physical remains to the intangibility of immersive digital realms.