From the statuette reconstructed in 3D to the exhibitions to touch and smell: like a traveling project it tries to make archeology accessible to those who cannot see it.
A statuette of Persephone preserved in the archaeological museum of Oria, in the province of Brindisi, has become a hologram. The prototype was built by the students of the fifth CIA of the Fermi Institute in Francavilla Fontana, in a path conceived by Nazarena Savino with professor Roberto Invidia. The technical part was developed by a former student of the school, Pasquale Leo, who reconstructed the find in three dimensions with Blender, the same software used in animation and visual effects.
The passage is less trivial than it seems. An object displayed in a display case is looked at from only one side, often from a distance and under a light that flattens its details. The digital reconstruction frees it from the showcase: the model is rotated, enlarged, printed and then touched. It’s the difference between seeing something and understanding it, and it matters especially for those with a visual or cognitive disability, for whom the exhibition panel is a mediation that doesn’t work very well.
The hologram is just one piece of ARCHEODISABILITY, a traveling project that brings into schools the tools currently used to document cultural heritage: virtual reality viewers, augmented reality, 3D prints of monuments, indoor drones. At the base is the Arditus Method, an educational path built on maps, diagrams, educational games, experiments and digital technologies. A teacher developed it starting from her own disabled daughter, and for her the computer proved to be the decisive lever for learning to read and write.
In the baggage there are also sensorial exhibitions, installations designed to be explored with touch, hearing and, when possible, smell. It is not a reduced version of the visit for those who cannot see, it is another way to get to the same object. Sight restores the shape all together and in an instant, the hand reconstructs it one edge at a time, yet experiments in the psychology of perception show that we recognize most common objects by touch in just a few seconds. Smell takes an even different shortcut: a few synapses separate the nose from the brain areas linked to emotions and memory, and this is the reason why a smell brings back a memory better than a photograph. In Italy the most consolidated experience in this field is the Omero State Tactile Museum in Ancona, where the works are touched by regulation.
The project also works outside the classroom, with museums and archaeological parks.
Among these is the submerged park of Torre Chianca, on the Lecce coast, where accessibility poses an additional obstacle, because the site is underwater. The solutions under study range from small wire-guided vehicles that scan the seabed to floating platforms for assisted diving, up to solar-powered shuttles to reach the area without internal combustion engines.
A question remains open that research has not yet answered: how much immersive technology really helps the learning of students with cognitive disabilities. The literature is divided on the use of viewers with those who are hypersensitive to stimuli, and the results depend a lot on how the experience is designed. Digitized heritage, however, has an advantage that no one disputes: once it exists, it exists for everyone.
