THE ANTIKYTHERA MECHANISM

in Mixed Reality spaces

INTRODUCTION

My work on the Antikythera Mechanism presented on my site, concerns its study through its integration in Mixed Reality spaces and Virtual Reality spaces. Although I have read a lot about this unique archaelogical finding, I have decided to limit the material presented here, strictly to Mixed Reality. Therefore, this is not the place to find information about the mechanism itself as well as information about ancient Greek astronomy and history in general. However, I have included a list of basic links where further information, bibliography and more links can be found.

My research deals with the architectural design of Mixed Reality spaces that allow collaborative study, discussion and presentation of certain objects. Archaeological findings of great interest, which however cannot be widely available, like in the case of Antikythera Mechanism, are quite often chosen to be integrated in Mixed Reality spaces. These new types of Collaborative Virtual Environments (CVEs) - Collaborative Mixed Reality Environments - are being developed with a view to facilating access through the Internet for everyone, no matter where he/she is in the physical space, to a common public Mixed Reality space. Unfortunately, development and maintanance of such spaces, proves to be so difficult a work that most of these spaces are experimental and not fully working.

A basic prototype of a Mixed Reality Museum for the Antikythera Mechanism is available on this site, which is going to be modified as time passes by. In this museum virtual and physical elements intermingle [virtual representation of the Antikythera Mechanism, physical representation from New York (streaming video)]. Please see below how to access this space.

The design of Mixed Reality spaces refers to certain architectural principles (see Mixed_Reality_in_Architecture), presupposes the understanding of the various "flavours" of Reality and its context (see Mixed_Reality, Augmented_Reality, Augmented_Virtuality, Virtual_Reality) and makes full use of suitable hardware (see My_MR_Lab). It is therefore clear that the develolment of effective Mixed Reality spaces, is a quite interdisciplinary field of research.

The presentation of my work on the International Conference "Decoding the Antikythera Mechanism - Science and Technology in Ancient Greece" on 30/11 and 1/12 2006, includes 3 posters and 1_hand-out. The abstracts of the conference are available from the site of the Antikythera Mechanism Research Project.

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MIXED REALITY SPACES WITH THE ANTIKYTHERA MECHANISM

that I have developed as examples

Pictures of applications I have developed concerning the Antikythera Mechanism. It becomes clear, that in my work I try to develop applications that span the "Physical Reality - Virtual Reality" spectrum.

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Pictures of the Mixed Reality space I used to present my Diploma Thesis "Mixed Reality Museum for the Antikythera Mechanism" in July 2007. For the presentation to the audience, I used physical elements (physical Antikythera Mechanism reconstruction, posters, architectural models e.t.c) and virtual elements (virtual Antikythera Mechanism, virtual gears e.t.c.). All the elements were dynamically integrated into a physical space - the room depicted on the pictures. Therefore, the presentation took place in a Mixed Reality space. We experienced the Mixed Reality with the use of a video-projector, a web-cam and a pair of Head-Mounted displays.

Virtual and physical reconstruction of the Antikythera Mechanism studied together.	Virtual Antikythera Mechanism in my hands.	Presenting Antikythera Mechanism with the use of a virtual pointer with a view to circumventing occlusion issues.
Integrating three virtual gears to the physical reconstruction of the Antikythera Mechanism	Integrating three virtual gears to the physical reconstruction of the Antikythera Mechanism	Integrating three virtual gears to the physical reconstruction of the Antikythera Mechanism

MIXED REALITY MUSEUM FOR THE ANTIKYTHERA MECHANISM

AN ONLINE PROTOTYPE

A very first prototype of a Mixed Reality Museum for the Antikythera Mechanism is now available, which is going to be modified as time passes by. This is a public place, where all visitors through the Internet can access. Every visitor is being represented as a creature (avatar) he/she chooses, so that collaboration among visitors is feasible - very like a video-game. You can tell your friends about this place and meet them there virtually. Although text-chatting is available, real-time communication with voice chatting can also be used, using free software. To view this Mixed Reality world, please download the free viewer 5,1 M - it may be useful to have the user's guide.. In case, there are connection problems, a single-user version of the Museum is available. In both multi-user and single-user version, users are represented as avatars, so they are virtually present in the Mixed Reality space.

In this museum Virtual Reality and Physical Reality intermingle as virtual representation of the Antikythera Mechanism and a physical video (in digital form) from New York are integrated spatially and functionally in this space. The avatars representating user can as well be totally virtual avatars or mixed-reality avatars, having a streaming video mapped on their face, on a board they hold e.t.c. For this see also "Mixed Reality Presence" at Mixed_Reality.

SUGGESTED BIBLIOGRAPHY

MIXED REALITY AND CULTURAL HERITAGE

1. Hrvoje Benko, Edward W. Ishak, Steven Feiner. "Collaborative Mixed Reality Visualization of an Archaeological Excavation" . Department of Computer Science, Columbia University . Proceedings of the International Symposium on Mixed and Augmented Reality (ISMAR ‘04).
2. P. Allen, S. Feiner, L. Meskell, K. Ross, A. Troccoli, B. Smith, H. Benko, E. Ishak, J. Conlon. "Digitally Modeling, Visualizing and Preserving Archaeological Sites" . Departments of Computer Science† and Anthropology Columbia University . Proceedings of the 2004 Joint ACM/IEEE Conference on Digital Libraries (JCDL'04).
3. P. Allen S. Feiner A. Troccoli H. Benko E. Ishak B. Smith. "Seeing into the Past: Creating a 3D Modeling Pipeline for Archaeological Visualization" . Department of Computer Science, Columbia University , New York , NY. Proceedings of the 2 nd International Symposium on 3D Data Processing, Visualization, and Transmission (3DPVT'04).
4. Hrvoje Benko Edward W. Ishak Steven Feiner. “VITA: Visual Interaction Tool for Archaeology (Demo)” . Department of Computer Science, Columbia University.
5. Yann Laurillau, Fabio Paternò. « Supporting museum co-visits using mobile devices». Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche .
6. “Project Presentation of ARCO”, 2002.
7. Roy C. DAVIES, Birgitta RYDBERG MITCHELL, Elisabeth HORNYANZSKY DALHOM, Sarah NICHOLS . «Are you with us? The role of presence in Mixed Reality for Participatory Design.», Ios Press, 2003.
8. George Papagiannakis, Sebastien Schertenleib, Brian O'Kennedy, Marlene Arevalo-Poizat, Nadia Magnenat-Thalmann, Andrew Stoddart, Daniel Thalmann . " Mixing Virtual and Real scenes in the site of ancient Pompeii ".
9. Nadia Magnenat-Thalmann, George Papagiannakis. " Virtual Worlds and Augmented Reality in Cultural Heritage ".
10. Daniel F. Abawi, Jose Luis Los Arcos, Michael Haller, Werner Hartmann, Kalle Huhtala, Marjaana Träskbäck. "A Mixed Reality Museum Guide: The Challenges and its Realization".
11. F. Liarokapis, S. Sylaiou, A. Basu, N. Mourkoussis, M. White, P.F. Lister. " An Interactive Visualisation Interface for Virtual Museums" . University of Sussex
12. Martin White, Nicholaos Mourkoussis, Joe Darcy, Panos Petridis, Fotis Liarokapis, Paul Lister, Krzysztof Walczak, Rafal Wojciechowski,Wojciech Cellary, Jacek Chmielewski, Miroslaw Stawniak, Wojciech Wiza, Manjula Patel, James Stevenson, John Manley, Fabrizio Giorgini, Patrick Sayd, Francois Gaspard . "ARCO—An Architecture for Digitization, Management and Presentation of Virtual Exhibitions".
13. Martin White, Fotis Liarokapis, Nicholaos Mourkoussis, Anirban Basu, Joe Darcy, Panagiotis Petridis, Maria Sifniotis, Paul Lister. " ARCOLite — an XML based system for building and presenting Virtual Museum Exhibitions using Web3D and Augmented Reality". University of Sussex , Department of Informatics
14. Fotis Liarokapis, Martin Whiteb . "Augmented Reality Techniques for Museum Environments". The Mediterranean Journal of Computers and Networks, Vol. 1, No. 2, 90-96, 2005, ISSN: 1744-2397.
15. M . White, F. Liarokapis, J. Darcy, N. Mourkoussis, P. Petridis, P. F. Lister. "Augmented Reality for Museum Artefact Visualization". Proc. 4th Irish Workshop on Computer Graphics, Eurographics Ireland Chapter, Coleraine, Northern Ireland, 29-30th April, 75-80, (2003). ISBN: 1649-1807.
16. Luigina Ciolfi & Liam J. Bannon. "Learning from Museum Visits: Shaping Design Sensitivities" . Interaction Design Centre Department of Computer Science & Information Systems University of Limerick, Ireland .
17. Marjaana Träskbäck, Mika P. Nieminen . "REQUIREMENTS FOR USING MIXED REALITY IN MUSEUM".

LINKS CONCERNING THE ANTIKYTHERA MECHANISM:

http://www.antikythera-mechanism.gr/ : the Antikythera Mechanism Research Project

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antikythera_mechanism : Antikythera Mechanism in Wikipedia

http://www.math.sunysb.edu/~tony/whatsnew/column/antikytheraI-0400/kyth1.html : American Mathematical Society

http://www3.imperial.ac.uk/historyofscience/aboutthecentre/staff/mr%20michael%20wright/ : Imperial College London, MR Michael Wright

http://www.antikythera-mechanism.com/ : general information

http://www.hpl.hp.com/research/ptm/antikythera_mechanism/index.html : Interactive Relighting of the Antikythera Mechanism

http://www.archimedesclock.gr/ : Archimedes Clock

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