Presentation about the Banquet Scene
I already talked about my ideas for presenting the Banquet Scene online and how to proceed. This Thursday, I gave a presentation about the progress and I want to write about it as well. I even was able to show a little demo of the page during the presentation. I think now, that I am on the right path with this…
The German CAA
There is the international CAA and there are individual national chapters. Last year, I organised the meeting for the German CAA in Cologne. This year, I participated in the German CAA organised by the University of Würzburg. In the CAA things are much more relaxed and it is a friendly atmosphere. I am also proud, because many of my own students came to Würzburg. They talked about their research and master theses, some of which I supervise!
The University of Würzburg is a wonderful location, especially the archaeology department. They reside in the so-called “Residence“, a barock castle of the 18th century within the city. The event was nicely organised with an icebreaker party the day before and a joint dinner in between. In total, the presentations lasted for two days. Because I was one of the first to deliver my abstract, I was the first to present as well.
The presentation
So I wasn’t expecting many people so early in the morning, but as this was at the same time the beginning of the conference, the room was quiet packed. I presented why we want to digitize and publish the Banquet Scene online, how I did the data acquisition in London and finally demoed the webviewer itself. I think I covered everything right on time. The webviewer is still in development, but I am pretty sure a first usable version will be published by the end of this year
Nevertheless, and I have talked about this too, I have further ideas for the project. For now, I will focus on finishing the webviewer and making it responsive, so you can use it with your smartphone, tablet or desktop computer. I am nearly done…
The Webviewer
Finally some words on the webviewer. I can tell you a bit about what it is and will be capable of. First of, you can of course see the 3D model of the Banquet Scene online, albeit in a reduced format, as the high-quality model is simply to big for viewing on the web. You can take measurements and get information about certain areas of the relief. So for example, you can click on the head of the king and get info about him and the meaning of the scene in general.
Additionally, we work on a recolourisation of the Banquet Scene as it is likely, that it was painted at some point. Unfortunately, we could not do any colour analysis and have to rely on other studies of other reliefs to recolour the digital copy. In the final version, you will be able to switch between the scan and the colourful version. Finally, I will also include a form of RTI grid, in which you can also see certain areas with the help of RTI images. These are way more detailed than the 3D model is and add tremendously to making the object more accessible.
