Smart Heritage

Tar­rag­ona

One re­sponse to this new de­mand can be seen with Tar­rag­ona’s Roman her­itage. Im­ageen Tàrraco is an app that uses aug­mented re­al­ity to show sites as they once were. Launched in 2015 by Andrés Ser­rano and the Di­givisión com­pany, it was the first app of its kind in the world to fully vir­tu­ally re­con­struct an an­cient city: Tar­rag­ona. “A few months later IBM did the same with Pom­pey, but we were the first in the world,” says José An­to­nio Muñiz, the head of this com­pany based in Reus, in Baix Camp, and the com­pany was also one of the first firms to cre­ate com­puter an­i­ma­tions of such a site: “We have al­ways been at the fore­front,” boasts Muñiz.

So, what is Im­ageen Tàrraco? It is an ap­pli­ca­tion – which can be down­loaded for free– avail­able on smart­phones, tablets and 3D glasses – that uses vir­tual re­al­ity tech­niques to pro­vide an im­mer­sive ex­pe­ri­ence of an­cient Tàrraco – the Roman name for Tar­rag­ona – by vir­tu­ally recre­at­ing the am­phithe­atre, the Roman cir­cus, the Colony forum, tem­ples and the Di­a­ble aque­duct.

In the first 14 months since its launch, Im­ageen had clocked up more than 150,000 down­loads, while vis­its to the sites have risen by 25%. Di­givisión and the city coun­cil are now work­ing to­gether to offer other her­itage sites using this tech­nol­ogy, such as the keep of the Roman cir­cus and the Barà arch, both of which have been de­clared World Her­itage Site by Un­esco.

How it works is that the vis­i­tor goes to one of these sites and, with a tablet, smart­phone or 3D glasses, can see what the place looked like more than two thou­sand years ago, thanks to com­puter-gen­er­ated aug­mented re­al­ity im­ages. “And they can­not only see what it was like from the ar­chi­tec­tural point of view, but also the ex­pe­ri­en­tial part. If they go to the Font square in Tar­rag­ona, they will see how the Roman cir­cus fit with the square, but they’ll also be able to see the char­iot races and the cheer­ing spec­ta­tors. And if they go to the am­phithe­atre, they will be able to see fights be­tween glad­i­a­tors... We not only show what was on these sites, but also what hap­pened there,” says Muñiz. The re­mains in Llosa de Cam­brils (Baix Camp), the me­dieval route in Es­pluga de Fran­colí (Conca de Bar­berà) and the re­mains in Empúries (Alt Em­pordà) are other ex­am­ples of her­itage sites that are now prepar­ing to use the ap­pli­ca­tion.

Empúries

Last sum­mer, the Museu d’Ar­que­olo­gia de Catalunya (MAC)-Empúries also launched an ini­tia­tive that al­lows vis­i­tors to im­merse them­selves in an­tiq­uity through vir­tual re­al­ity. The mu­seum has 3D glasses and tablets so that vis­i­tors can see what the an­cient city’s forum looked like. The mu­seum is now prepar­ing to add 3D views of the agora and the stoa. So far, only cer­tain parts of the site have been vir­tu­ally re­con­structed, which Joaquim Tremoleda, con­ser­va­tor and ar­chae­ol­o­gist at Empúries, says will be grad­u­ally added along with other areas. The new itin­er­ary goes along with the site’s ex­ist­ing au­dio­vi­sual guide for the cryp­to­por­ti­cus (cov­ered pas­sage­way) of the domus of mo­saics. Vir­tus Màgic is the com­pany that de­vel­oped an ap­pli­ca­tion for pro­vid­ing ad­di­tional in­for­ma­tion about the site.

Mean­while, the new vis­i­tors’ re­cep­tion cen­tre of­fers a gen­eral pre­sen­ta­tion of the an­cient Greek and Roman city of Empúries “that com­bines in­for­ma­tion and vir­tual re­al­ity, es­pe­cially about the paleo-land­scape.” “This al­lows the vis­i­tor to get a global idea of the whole site, be­cause once you are in­side it you only see a part of it, and it also shows them what the an­cient land­scape was like. This is a great re­source be­cause it al­lows us to show, in a very vi­sual way, things that can often be very dif­fi­cult to ex­plain. It helps make the visit far more en­gag­ing,” says Tremoleda. For next year, the site is look­ing to re­model its per­ma­nent ex­hi­bi­tion room, which will also in­clude 3D vir­tual re­al­ity im­ages. “As the pub­lic, and in par­tic­u­lar young peo­ple, are now used to this medium, we have to use re­sources that speak their lan­guage and that at the same time are of high qual­ity,” says Tremod­ela. “We have to adapt to new tech­nol­ogy in the her­itage sec­tor,” he adds. Mean­while, the same com­pany, Vir­tus Magic, has de­vel­oped a 3D view of an­other site in the Girona area: the Roman villa of Vi­lauba (Camós).

Ul­las­tret

It seems as if the use of tech­nol­ogy to vir­tu­ally recre­ate her­itage sites seems un­stop­pable. The re­mains in Ul­las­tret have a 3D vir­tual recre­ation of the en­tire site. Sum­mer of 2016 saw the in­au­gu­ra­tion of an im­mer­sive room in which an au­dio­vi­sual 3D recre­ation of the Iber city is screened. “Being im­mer­sive, the vis­i­tor feels like they are walk­ing through the site,” says Laura Romero, mem­ber of the MAC tech­ni­cal team in Ul­las­tret. The mul­ti­dis­ci­pli­nary team made up of ar­chae­ol­o­gists and 3D spe­cial­ists gath­ered all of the ar­chae­o­log­i­cal in­for­ma­tion and used it to make a recre­ation. One pe­cu­liar­ity is that “the process was not car­ried out with the usual com­puter tools used in ar­chi­tec­ture or ar­chae­ol­ogy, but with an IT tool used to make video games,” says the site’s man­age­ment. Specif­i­cally, the Un­real En­gine was used, a video game tech­nol­ogy ap­plied to in­ter­pret­ing her­itage. Ul­las­tret has HTC Vive vir­tual re­al­ity gog­gles, which so far have only been demon­strated in con­gresses: “They are not usu­ally pro­vided to vis­i­tors be­cause it would be too dif­fi­cult for them to move around the site while wear­ing the gog­gles,” says Romero. She also says they are cur­rently work­ing on a 3D re­con­struc­tion of an­other part of the site, which will be un­veiled later this year.

So, does this mean the end of audio guides? For her­itage man­agers, this tool still has plenty of life in it. “Im­ageen is a prod­uct that will even­tu­ally re­place audio guides, be­cause it of­fers so much more, not only audio, but also video and aug­mented and vir­tual re­al­ity im­ages. Im­ageen and other sim­i­lar ap­pli­ca­tions will even­tu­ally dis­place audio guides, but that will be a grad­ual process,” says Muñiz.