Virtual and Mixed Reality for the Enhancement of an Absence: The Case of the Artemis Statue

The essay documents the developments of a research project born from the collaboration with the Regional Directorate for Museums of Veneto, in order to enhance the sculptural heritage preserved in the National Archaeological Museum of Venice. In particular, we focus on a temporary installation due to the absence of a precious find: Artemis on the march. This is a Roman work from the mid-1st century B.C. inspired by an archaic Greek model, whose loan to the Museum of Archaeology and Art of Maremma, in Grosseto, scheduled for late June 2023, is the outcome of an exhibition dedicated to the collection of three other similar statues, found in different contexts and eras. Since it is common practice for several museums to inform visitors of an artifact absence – due, for example, to restoration work or loans – with a synthetic poster or photographic reproduction, the Venetian institution houses an installation, curated by the authors, apt to fill this gap through the presence of a digital twin capable of narrating its history and secular changes. The Artemis statue, in fact, is part of the Cardinal Giovanni Grimani collection, who bought it in acephalous form and, in the 16th century, had it completed with a marble head. But in 1909 Giuseppe Pellegrini replaced it with a plaster cast to restore the archaic style it still possesses today, in line with the image of the models mentioned above. Both artifacts were surveyed with indirect techniques typical of digital photogrammetry, exploiting algorithms for Structure from Motion (SfM) that allowed the generation of numerical mesh models, mapped with ultra-high-resolution textures. These were subsequently subjected to digital anastylosis operations to simulate the interplay of disassembly and reassembly of the parts, documenting their aesthetic and postural transformations, facilitating their understanding. The 3D animation produced dialogue with the physical display of the Renaissance head, but configurations, multimedia and multimodal, for the enjoyment of cultural heritage in immersive environments are also experimenting with. Thus, virtual, and mixed reality viewers, such as the Oculus Rift and HoloLens, are tested to understand their potential and limitations, starting with the systemization of a set of procedures to optimize the resolution and visual quality of 3D models, subjected to segmentation, discretization and retopologization processes.