Machines for thinking and bodies to preserve: Exhibition proposal for the Venice National Archaelogical Museum

The essay describes the first results of a two-year research project aimed at the survey, digitisation and restitution of the statuary held by the National Archaeological Museum of Venice. The focus is on Roman copies of Greek originals, which have been extensively restored since the second half of the 16th century, in order to document their transformation in multimedia installations that guide the visitor in understanding and reading the works, with the aim of integrating them in a temporary exhibition and in the new set-up museum planned for 2022. Indirect methodologies, typical of digital photogrammetry, were used to survey the statues, as well as software based on computer vision algorithms implementing Structure from motion, capable of generating a numerical model mapped by an ultra-high-resolution texture from a sequence of photographic images. The results obtained are of a decidedly multidisciplinary nature, involving the practices of virtual restoration, but also specific to survey and representation, and open to the dissemination of knowledge facilitated by video narratives accompanying each work. In addition, the digital clones produced are suitable for different exhibition configurations, for example in a video mapping that virtually repositions them in the "anti-sala" of the Biblioteca Marciana, where the first public Statuary was located, currently unadorned, or in prototypes made with 3D printers that repopulate the cloister, rooms and "tribuna" of Palazzo Grimani. These are just some of the possible scenarios that consider museum spaces as places in which to experiment with digital technologies.