In collaboration with Monuverse di Reasoned Art, in April 2023 we created an augmented reality experience at the Arco della Pace in the metaverse of OVER la Realtà!! Very interesting use case to enhance our cultural heritage!! Non-invasive restoration and conservation of artifacts and archaeological sites (for example: Herculaneum), or their reconstruction (consider the structures recently destroyed in Syria) is a train that we hope Italy will not miss.
For Italy, it would indeed be an incredible opportunity to reposition the countless artifacts available in the territory in AR. If desired, it is already possible to fully reconstruct entire sites, bringing them back to their ancient splendor and making them accessible to non-destructive tourism that is potentially without borders, accessible to categories that are currently excluded, such as people with disabilities. In this light, it seemed really interesting to us to carry forward a project in collaboration with Reasoned Art on the Arch of Peace in Milan.
On this occasion, we have integrated a playful and educational narrative carried out by 2 avatars NPC, with the possibility of interacting with the monument itself. In the experience, it is indeed possible to click on some digital lenses placed in AR on the monument to "bring down" to the ground the details of some statues and bas-reliefs to admire them up close at eye level. Italy, in this sense, is clearly the country in the world that can most benefit from this technology thanks to its culturally rich heritage, which is notoriously undervalued and difficult to preserve and enjoy.
This experience has also confirmed an intuition we had during the Land made in Darsena the canals in Milan and with the Metaverse Fashion Week: to have media impact, hyperrealism is not important, but the real digital contrast in a meaningful context is. In fact, hyperrealism, in the short attention span granted by social media, blends too well into reality, causing people's attention not to be captured. On the contrary, an element that is evidently digital, but is contextualized and reflects the natural laws that surround us (light, shadows, movements, perspective, etc.), manages to capture the viewer's attention very well.