Neues Licht aus Pompeji – New Light from Pompeii. VR in the “Antikensammlung am Königsplatz”

Last spring I visited Munich to use the university library and to visit an old friend, the Antikensammlung am Königsplatz. It is a large collection of ancient artifacts, from which many are considered key objects of our studies. Like for example the Augustus portrait in the Glyptotek or the famous Exekias cup in their vase collection. A trip to Munich is always worth it for a classical archaeologist (and of course for others). This time I had the great opportunity to not only visit the permanent exhibition, but also the special exhibition called “Neues Licht aus Pompeji (New Light from Pompeii)” which was about the use of lamps and lights in the ancient city of Pompeii.

This exhibition offered a fascinating insight into everyday life in ancient Pompeii and its culture. And, most importantly, perception and ambience in the Roman house. Roman houses showed colorful walls with various paintings. Some imitate architectural structures, others create fantastic, dreamy spaces to get lost in. Different lighting conditions make for very different experiences and impact those paintings may have had. It is interesting to think about how ancient people experienced their living spaces.

And the light itself was an important part of this experience: It could have been distributed through pretty common, simply decorated terracotta oil lamps, or through more figurative lamps, oftentimes made of bronze. Or, and this is my personal favorite, there could be “silent servants” standing in a room. They are large bronze statues, offering a light placed on decorative vines that they hold in their hands. The exhibition showed all kinds of light sources and has gathered a delightful crowd of youthful lamp-bearers, as I have never seen before.

The topic of this exhibition is focused on a medium (light) that influences our perception greatly. So what better way to make a point about it, than to make the light in an ancient Roman house experience-able? This is what the team from the Institute of Classical Archaeology and the Antikensammlung achieved with VR technology: They reconstructed a room from a Roman House. The triclinium (= room with three kline, a piece of roman furniture for sitting / lying down) from the Casa di Giulio Polibio. In this room the excavators not only found wall paintings, but also a bronze youth, which is known to be a lamp bearer. Rooms such as this are thought to be rooms for get-together, in this case enlightened by a charming youth.

The team built a digital reconstruction of the room and simulated a lighting scenario. In the exhibition the visitors were able to enter a real room, furnished and in the same size as the reconstruction. Then they put VR glasses on and get the full immersion: They can move freely through the digital reconstruction, touch the real furniture and light different oil lamps, one after one. Actively changing the light and interacting with the room was a unique experience and demonstrated how much different lighting conditions change the perception of a room, its paintings and the whole situation. I am glad I was able to experience this exhibition before it ended in April. It showed again how Virtual Reality can be used to (1) make an exhibition interesting and engaging, (2) make research approachable for a wide audience and (3) to create new insights in fascinating research areas using the technology to create different scenarios and to see in detail how things played out. Exciting!

Further reading: S. Bosche, L. Grobe, N. Hunizer, E. Mayer, V. Trubina, J. Eber, R. Bielfeldt, Das “Virtuelle Triklinium”. Ein interaktives Virtual-Reality-Szenario des Trikliniums EE, in: R. Bielfeldt, J. Eber, S. Bosche, A. Lutz, F. Knauß, Neues Licht aus Pompeji (Munich 2022), 148-155; https://www.klass-archaeologie.uni-muenchen.de/forschung/d-projekte-laufend/neapel1/index.html.

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