The Exhibit

Revisiting the Roman Forum: from Pen to Pixel, Methods of Documentation in the 20th and 21st Centuries

2 April to 31 October, 2014

Launching in conjunction with the 2014 Digital Future of World Heritage Symposium, Revisiting the Roman Forum: from Pen to Pixel, Methods of Documentation in the 20th and 21st Centuries, the first 3D exhibit on historic preservation in the Roman Forum, is on display from April to Oct 2014 in Rome, Italy. The aim of the exhibition is to provide architects, art historians, academics and the general public with a greater understanding of the development of architectural documentation of excavations at the Roman Forum in the last 100 years from 1905 to 2013.

The primary objectives of the research and culminating exhibition is to advance scholarship and knowledge on the recent developments at the Roman Forum. This Exhibit is the result of research and scholarship by the Digital Historic Architectural Research and Material Analysis (DHARMA) Lab, conducted since summer 2010, in 3D documenting the Roman Forum, Rome, Italy. Though the Roman Forum is a well-known site with over 4 million visitors every year, the Italian cultural ministry notes that few know its real value and historic significance. The goal of our research has been to strengthen the disconnect that exists between scholars of various fields working on this World Heritage Site, the outputs they produce and its relevance to tourists and visitors. To cover this gap of public knowledge and understanding of the Forum, the exhibit will be accompanied by detailed historic text and drawings, materials on Giacomo Boni’s documentation, along with watercolor and 3D high-definition DHARMA documentation, in cooperation with Soprintendenza Speciale per i Beni Archeologici di Roma.

Focus on the documentation of the Roman Forum was developed as the consequence of an existing need in the architectural community to integrate innovative methods of digital documentation and 3D scanning with traditional hand measuring techniques. The resulting highly accurate raw data acquired during this three-year project can be used to produce incredibly precise measured drawings by hand and computer, which provide a basis for generating highly critical and analytical work. The larger objectives of the exhibit are to draw attention to the historic methods of the early scientific documentation at the Roman Forum and the evolution of these methods, providing a basis for new methods of documentation to be developed and utilized in the field today and in the future.

The Exhibit is divided into four distinct sections to provide a greater understanding of the history of documentation, instrumentation, results of historic and present studies at the forum, comparisons of individual temples as based on current data acquisition methods in confrontation with historic studies and 3D views of the Forum to architects, academics and the general public. This layout allows visitors to gain a comprehensive understanding of the Forum as a whole, while being able to gain greater understanding of its individual monuments in a manner that has never been possible before.