Another Keck-related course examined Roman architectural history (taught by Diane Favro, an architectural historian). Based in the Department of Architecture and Urban Design, the class attracted students from such solidly humanistic fields as classics, near eastern languages and cultures, art history and critical studies in architecture, as well as those working to become practicing architects. As a result, the participants displayed not only widely divergent knowledge of history and design, but also widely divergent graphic and spatial literacy. Some students were familiar with historical research, but had no graphic experience; those in architecture had extensive experience with three-dimensional modeling, but none with archaeological analysis; others were experts at dissecting texts, but could not easily read maps. The course adopted a science-based model, emphasizing experimentation based on specific problems. Working in groups, the students selected an issue and developed an experiment to either test a defined hypothesis, or evaluate an alternative solution to architectural challenges relating to the Roman era. As much as possible, the groups were composed of students with different backgrounds and skill sets who worked in concert.
The research was formed and presented collaboratively on the geotemporal HyperCities platform, allowing the exploitation of diverse digital media and strategies while maintaining the scholarly apparatus of a research paper.
The incorporation of new technologies compels instructors to ask new questions and reframe old ones, reinvigorating both traditional and digitally based research and pedagogy. For example, ancient architectural historians frequently use architectural reconstructions, but rarely interrogate their accuracy or discuss the context in which they were created. Lectures using multiple digital as well as pictorial reconstructions resulted in conversations about the role of each in knowledge production and their varied applications by researchers, teachers, and the general public. A discussion centered on reconstructions of the Villa of the Papyri in Pompeii compared a physical “rebuilding” at the Getty Villa in Malibu with two digital simulations, one for digital heritage and one for scholarly analysis. In effect, these architectural representations paralleled the comparison of differing outcomes from the same dataset undertaken in
5. Teaching Digital Humanities through Digital Cultural Mapping 133 the LA cluster. The interrogation of media and sensory experiences also prompted the class to challenge the dominance of vision in traditional architectural history, and argue for more polysensory analysis.
Courses incorporating digital technologies require a rethinking of pedagogical choreography. Lectures remained central to the Roman Architecture course, but included extensive multimedia and presentation types, as well as increased discussion. Several lectures were given in the Visualization Portal (Figure 3), an immersive environment allowing the instructor and students to move in real time through digital reconstruction models of ancient Roman cities and buildings created by the UCLA Experiential Technologies Center (http://www.etc.ucla.edu/). In the Roman Forum model, sound is localized. For example, a speech by Cicero from atop the Rostra becomes louder as the class approached and recedes as it moved away. This multimodal experience provoked a rich discussion on urban acoustics, rhetorical gesturing, view-sheds and other factors.
Another lecture featuring the digital simulation of crowds in the ancient Forum at Pompeii stimulated discussions about variations in urban use by different social groups and the efficacy of procedural modeling.
Figure 3. Students experiencing the Flavian Amphitheater in UCLA’s immersive Visualization Portal.
For this digital humanities course, lectures on Roman architecture were interspersed with exercises and workshops that relied heavily on peer-to-peer learning. Short class activities (dubbed “mind raves”) challenged students to develop a position in relation to an issue covered
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in class lecture and propose an appropriate digital means to convey the argument; the results were peer reviewed. These debates drew upon the students’ rich and varied collective knowledge of digital media and its capabilities for inquiry, analysis and presentation. For example, in one case, urban design students argued for the use of animated programming diagrams to show the sequence through a Roman bath. Those from an art history background felt a three-dimensional model would better convey the immersive experience, while classics students recommended pop-up windows of texts to integrate ancient voices with spaces.
An initial lab-based workshop demonstrated the capabilities of HyperCities, but most learning was through doing. Instructor and peer evaluations were made throughout the term, which greatly helped to hone issue definition and the appropriate implementation of digital strategies. Students drew upon diverse methods. Some exploited the tenets of “experimental archaeology,”
which advocates controllable, imitative experiments to replicate past phenomena. For the most part, early experimental archaeology testing was small in scale, primarily recreating known, portable objects; digital tools now facilitate the creation of large architectural and urban simulations.
One student group studied the construction process for the Pont du Gard aqueduct (Figure 4), testing several different types of scaffolding based on the archaeological remains, ancient images, Roman architectural handbooks, and post-antique examples of formwork.
Figure 4. Screenshot of interactive HyperCities platform showing a student project analyzing alternative structural scaffolding solutions for a
Roman aqueduct.
5. Teaching Digital Humanities through Digital Cultural Mapping 135 The technical sophistication of digital technologies inspired the adoption of scientific models, in particular hypothesis testing. In effect, HyperCities became a laboratory for historical humanistic inquiry. Two creative experiments demonstrated the value of such interdisciplinarity.
One group explored how theater design might have evolved in the Roman world without the influence of Greek models. After identifying and isolating Greek architectural features, students analyzed religious, social, political and construction techniques on the Italian peninsula.
Their final project featured all the supporting materials, written analysis and a hypothetical design for a “born-Roman” theater presented in the three-dimensional model and animation (Figure 5).
Figure 5. Screenshot of interactive HyperCities platform showing a group project which used images, lines of association, text and an animation to explore the hypothetical appearance of a Roman
theater devoid of Greek influences.
Another group explored why the Claudian port at Ostia failed not long after its construction; drawing upon analyses of tidal movement, ship types, use patterns, artistic representations, mole design and available ancient technologies, the students proposed an alternative site and design for the harbor of Rome (Figure 6).
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Figure 6. Screenshot of interactive HyperCities platform showing a group project demonstrating possible redesign solutions to improve the
port of ancient Rome.
The direct confrontation of geography and mapping in HyperCities significantly enriched the work produced by the class. All the student projects were multidimensional in every sense of the word. The platform’s geographic emphasis showcased spatiality and the vertical (Z) dimension in analyses. In addition, the collaborative approach did more than foster interdisciplinarity—it made it a necessity. Every project drew upon materials and methods from numerous academic fields. Examining the motivations for locating a major highway under a temple platform, one group created a three-dimensional model of the site that underscored the site’s logistical advantages; analysis of religious, economic, geographic, and architectural issues demonstrated that the tunnel was utilized to monitor and tax livestock to Rome during the Republic, as well as meet cult needs. Another group examined how extensive rebuilding at Pompeii after the earthquake of 62 CE resulted in municipal adjustments to traffic flow including such creative solutions as a proscribed circular route for vehicles carrying construction materials and debris (Figure 7), a study that combined urban planning, technology, demography, and archaeology.
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Figure 7. Screenshot of interactive HyperCities platform showing a group project analyzing traffic densities and construction routes in
Pompeii.
Certainly, such approaches could have been undertaken before the advent of digital humanities, and without the aid of an externally funded program. Nonetheless, they were never tried. Digital technologies stimulate spatial and chronological thinking and collaborative, multidisciplinary engagement. The geotemporal HyperCities platform obliged students to engage constantly and simultaneously with time and space, text, and multimedia. Students developed and articulated their ideas in written arguments, models, graphs, images, films and other media directly situated within the geo-browser. Non-verbal components thus gained equality with words in the process of argumentation. Overall, the perceived need to justify the new technologies led to the assessment of means as well as results. Students perceptively discussed the enduring predominance of the visual in digital humanities projects and critiqued the challenges of selecting the most appropriate digital tool, platform and software. Most productive of all was the interrogation of humanistic research in general in the last class session; students and instructor together debated the definition of humanistic inquiry and the application of digital tools to facilitate the analytical, critical and speculative methods to study the human condition.
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