Ioklia and Androniki are two digitized figures of real people, who manage with a brilliant, descriptive reason to transport visitors to the 4th century BC.
THE Ioklia, the daughter of Nikandroswho lived in the year 325 BC. guides young and old visitors in her city: the famous city of Amphipolis. Then the archaeologist Andronikipresents the excavation work in ancient Amphipolis and tumulus of Casta making a description of the multifaceted history of the burial monument that gathered the lights of world interest.
Little Ioklia and Androniki are the central faces of one immersed reality digital productioncreated by Digital Innovations on behalf of the Municipality of Amphipolis in the framework of the Borderless Culture project funded by the cross-border cooperation program Interreg Greece – Bulgaria.
Ioklia and Androniki are two digitized forms of real personswho manage with a brilliant, descriptive reason to transport visitors to the 4th century BC. but also today, presenting a place about which we know so little, although it played an important role in the course of its history.
The creator of the application, Nikos Pakhtas, graduate of the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering of the Polytechnic School of AUTh is the … spiritual father of Ioklia and her biological father 10 year old Ioanna which lent its image and voice for the needs of the application.
Respectively, the role of the archaeologist Androniki, who borrowed her name from the great Greek archaeologist Manolis Andronikos, is embodied by the actress Mara Gavriilidou.
The transformation of the old school
“Our goal was through this digital application to give the opportunity to the young and the old to discover and be informed about one of the most important ancient cities of Macedonia”Nikos Pakhtas emphasizes speaking to APE – MPE and continues: “We created appropriate texts, under the supervision of the head of the Ephorate of Antiquities of Serres, Dimitrias Malamidou, to convey scientific information in a simple and understandable way. The result is really impressive as the user of the application sees, in real dimensions, to project in front of him a girl, Ioklia, who lived in 325 BC. in Amphipolis, that is, around the time when the construction of the tomb of Casta began, and to tell us about its city, its history and the importance it had in the kingdom of Macedonia and in the campaign of Alexander the Great.
“The narration of Ioklia”, underlines the creator of the application, “She begins with the greeting ” rejoice and be healed ” wanting to show from her first sentence that she comes from the distant past”. The costume approach we followed was based to some extent on Myrtida, the girl from ancient Athens in the time of Pericles, whose figure was reshaped by a team of specialists led by the assistant professor of the School of Dentistry, Emmanuel Papagrigorakis. As for Androniki, its role is to guide users in the world of excavations. Using the archeological site of Amphipolis as an example, he explains the difficult and time-consuming process of an excavation, but also how archaeologists, in each layer of the excavation, read the information it reveals to them, as if reading a book from end to beginning. of”.
For the needs of the application, within Borderless Culture project, the building of the old primary school of Amphipolis was remodeled. The abandoned school building for many years was completely renovated and essentially transformed into a small, modern conference space, able to accommodate visitors of all ages who will have the unique opportunity to experience, with the help of multimedia applications, a unique journey in the history of ancient Amphipolis.
How the digital application works
An old one has been created in the old school of Amphipolis immersed reality room – a room whose three walls and floor are large projection screens. The space displays panoramic depictions from the archaeological site of Amphipolis, from the tomb of Casta as well as digital graphics and the forms of digital guides, in physical dimensions. In this way the viewers who are between this space, between the screens, see only the content of the application. The application occupies their entire field of vision, immersing them in a different reality.
The two human figures, Ioklia and Androniki, as digital guides, appear in the video illustrations and guide the visitors to Ancient Amphipolis and its excavation.
The application is interactive. The two digital guides can interact with the public, answering predefined questions that visitors will be able to choose from a touch screen menu, providing, upon request, more specialized information on a topic. The application enables showing subtitles in English or Greek, for people with hearing problems.
The particularly impressive element of immersed reality systems is that they can give small groups of visitors the feeling that they are in another location, since a panoramic view of another place is projected in their entire field of vision. In this way, visitors are given the opportunity to visit the place virtually, not only in its current form, but also as it was in different periods of time.
A journey through space and time
“The application travels visitors in a unique way”, points out Mr. Pakhtas, “Ioklia travels them in time and Androniki travels in space. Our purpose is not only to impress the visitors, but to inform them, to inform them, to make them share in a sense, the glorious history that the city of Amphipolis had. At the same time, our digital archaeologist tells the story of the discovery of ancient Amphipolis, from the 1970s, when for the first time some farmers in the area discover an entrance to the tomb and inform the late archaeologist Dimitrios Lazaridis who began the first research. Thus, we reach today, with the discovery of the burial monument and the secrets it hides “.
The total duration of the digital tour – tour of the archeological site of Amphipolis and the tomb of Kasta is 40 minutes. However, the visitor is given the opportunity to choose to attend the sections of material that interest him most.
With the completion of the works at the burial monument of the Casta mound, the application will be able to expand, giving the possibility of virtual visit and tour to those who can not visit the natural site of the burial monument.
