We want the pupils to acquire a profounder understanding of cultural history.

Despite the increasing interest shown by young people nowadays, virtual reality has not been widely used yet in the educational field. There are many CD-ROMs of museums and art galleries based on virtual reality, whereby a visitor can wander around the rooms and choose the best views in front of a painting exactly as he would do in a real museum by means of the computer. We think it will be interesting, especially from an educational standpoint, to use this technology in order to rebuild completely environments which no longer exist or are severely
damaged. Our activity will be a "virtual restoration".

The examples we chose are no longer accessible or are totally destroyed. What we want to create is a "virtual walk" inside these buildings or environments.

Culture crystallizes at various points. For example, three particular manifestations of European culture are the old roman villages, the Christian cloisters from the Middle Ages until the Baroque and the World Exhibitions in our industrial, scientific, technical modern culture.To visualize these topics for educational purposes, we are convinced that multimedia based on virtual reality would be very effective. In particular we have produced web pages showing also 3D models of three significant environements:
Italica an old roman village near Sevilla,Spain,the San Michele in Bosco Cloister in Bologna, Italy, and the 1937 World Exhibition in Paris. Therefore we will use the VRML format which will contain hyperlinks to concerning sites and texts explaining the historical and artistic context. The examples we choose are no longer accessible or are totally destroyed.

The project is designed to allow the students to work independently and in an international team towards a constructive, tangible goal. Although the three participating groups are geographically far apart and from entirely different backgrounds, the project will bond them together. They will share and exchange ideas, resources and methods daily by e-mail. When the Entry is introduced to the Web,  they will be sharing  it with students in the rest of the world who, in turn, may want to reconstruct a lost art work or building in their country and add it to the collection. We would like our Entry to be the beginning of an expanding reference work where others (art historians, teachers, students, libraries) may also discover and understand art in its historical, cultural and political context. We want the project to be an active academic learning experience for ourselves and others.

DESCRIPTION

The Italian student will work out a virtual restoration of the Cloister frescoes painted by the Carraccis in San Michele in Bosco in Bologna, Italy. The architectonic construction is the octagonal cloister of the former monastery of the Olivetani Friars in San Michele in Bosco, now the seat of Rizzoli Hospital. The cloister is known as the "Carraccis's Cloister" since its walls were originally frescoed in the 17th century by the famous painters from Bologna with scenes from the lives of Santa Cecilia and San Benedetto. The frescoes are no longer visible. However, there is a photographic documentation of some 18th century reproductions in the Photographic Archives at the Monuments and Fine Arts Office in Bologna. The  Italian student wants to create a "virtual walk" inside the cloister exploring it from all points of view.

The German student will work out a reconstruction of the Spanish pavilion at the World Exhibition 1937 in Paris. The state of science, technical science and culture was displayed and demonstrated in various national and common pavillions at the World Exhibition 1937. It was a competition between nations and a competition of political systems. For example, the Russian Pavillion was located directly in front of the Nazi-German pavillion. And there was also the pavillion of democratic, pre-Franco Spain. He will first reconstruct the Spanish pavillion built by the well known architect Sert. Picasso painted his famous painting "Guernica" especially for this building. Other important Spanish artists like Miro contributed work to the pavillion, too. The project will be overseen by the Department of Art Education at the University of Munich.

The selected architectural environment by the Spanish student is the Roman town of Italica, cradle of two great emperors,Traiano and Adrian. Italica was founded in the 205 to C.from Publio Cornelio Scipione, during the second Punica war. Situated in the Baetica province, its ruins are exceptional both from the qualitative point of view and the quantitative one. They are found in a elevated plain, covered with olive trees, which dominate the wide valley of the Guadalquivir, and very close to the town of Hispalis (Seville). The splendor developed in Italica evidence in all the arts: architecture, sculpture and mosaics. Some of these are the best ones in all the Empire, although it was a province so western.

METHODS

In this project we  have reconstructed the three environments utilizing computer graphic 3-D programs (VRML). We have  drawed authentic scale models of the buildings and the rooms and arrange the art works inside. Information about the individual works and artists may be obtained in front of each art work.
Every restoration has been  supplied with an hypermedia explaining the major information and document on the historical context where the environment restored was. We have used  the WWW not only as a platform of collaboration (e-mail, FTP, video-conferencing) but also for presentation of our results (VRML, HTML).

Pupils and teachers of art history and history all over the world will have access to the project and could more restorations. In that case, an international editing staff will be set up to decide on the adoption of such proposed additions.