Teaching Art History with Interactive Three-Dimensional Computer Graphics
Using the computer screen to show art objects in a spatial environment that
retains the three-dimensional context and relative scale, a research project at
Princeton University has produced interactive computer graphics software for
use on-line in the classroom. With this program, the spectator can navigate
through scanned, full-color images and other information, verbal and visual,
thereby gaining access to visual information that is closer to perceptions of
reality than those offered by slides and photographs.
The Piero Project
Piero della Francesca's Legend of the True Cross, painted between 1452
and 1466, in the church of San Francesco in Arezzo, Italy, has been used in
preparing an experimental pilot project. All the images of the fresco cycle
have been scanned from 8"x10" color transparencies or 2"x2" color slides, then
texture mapped into the computer at a level of resolution that functions for
close study, distant viewing, and above all, during real-time movement.
Interactive movement is accomplished with the mouse or the space-ball, as well
as in chained navigational paths in preconceived order. As a result, this
monumental work of art is now visible as a totality; it can be studied,
observed, and analyzed in a more complete manner than ever before.
Tools
The Piero Project custom software runs on Silicon Graphics IRIS workstation
with texture mapping capability. The program and data for the Arezzo Cycle
occupy approximately 220 megabytes of disk space and use 48 megabytes of RAM
memory. The mouse is used to produce two-dimensional movement over the surface
of the space; the Space Ball is used to drive movement through
three-dimensional space. The software consists of a series of extensions to
the "Iris Inventor" 3D toolkit and is written in C++. The simulation of
three-dimensional architecture was created using AutoCad. Slides and
photographs were scanned with the Nikon LS-351 AF slide scanner and Howtek
Scanmaster 300 dpi flatbed scanner. A database of digitized visual material
provides images for comparisons. Joined to these images, a relational database
provides verbal information, identifying the images and placing them in their
historical, religious, and social ambient.
Classroom Use
This collection of material will be used in an experimental seminar, to be
offered to Princeton University art history students (undergraduate and
graduate). It will combine discussion of the career of Piero della Francesca
(c.1413-1492) and instruction in the use of the interactive computer graphics
technology (scanning, digitization, real-time movement, visual and verbal
database materials). The seminar will be team-taught by Prof. Marilyn Aronberg
Lavin (art historian) and Kirk D. Alexander (manager, Interactive Computer
Graphics Laboratory.) They will be joined by members of the faculty of
Princeton and other nearby institutions. The substance of study will combine
materials of a normal academic course with the format of the new electronic
facilities.
For more information please contact
Kirk Alexander
(kirk@princeton.edu) or
Marilyn Aronberg Lavin (malavin@princeton.edu)
E-430 Engineering Quadrangle
Princeton University
Princeton, N.J. 08544-5263
URL:http://etcweb1.princeton.edu/Piero