Enhancing Archaeological Sites. Interconnecting Physically and Digitally – InterArch

Abstract

InterArch is a research program that is running since September 2020. It involves mutual collaboration between academic and cultural institutions, and the contribution of an IT applications development company. It aims at the design of a site-based digital application, for archaeological visits and guided tours. The proposed application will run as a pilot project for the Archaeological site of Ancient Messene. The applied research program integrates an interactive approach to the natural environment, aiming at a manifold sensory experience. The project also embraces story telling processes, by engaging an interdisciplinary approach, that familiarizes the user to multiple semantic interpretations and free associations with cultural descriptions. Management of huge amount of data -historical, cultural, geospatial and environmental- will be applied. This research integrates scientific fields, such as archaeology, architecture, topography, computer and network engineering in a holistic approach. Featuring the city’s distinct landscapes, all treated as equally important, a directed graph is elaborated to emphasize this approach, illustrating the ways different data are associated with different perspective views of narration, engaging multimodal storytelling.