What can you see from the doorway? A closer look at Aquileia’s Roman mosaic
Before you scroll to the second image, take a moment with the first. You’re looking into a room in the REEVALUATE virtual visit to a Roman house in Aquileia. The marker reads Pantry. Beyond it, between two low walls, lies a floor mosaic. From here, can you tell what it depicts? Pick out one detail you think you’ll recognise when you see it up close.
Figure 1. The pantry mosaic seen from the doorway.
At this distance, the dark border is easier to make out than the picture inside it. Looking across the floor at an angle, you can see how the mosaic sits within the room and how much of it is visible as you approach. Even the word Pantry makes a difference: before you know what the mosaic depicts, you know something about the space it occupied. A close-up on its own would give you few clues that you were looking at a floor at all.
Now look at the same mosaic in the object viewer.
Figure 2. The central scene and braided border in the object viewer.
Start at the centre this time. There are animals beneath a tree. Follow the branches towards the edge of the central square, then let your eye travel outwards through the diamonds to the braided border. In Figure 1, that border helped you locate the mosaic. In Figure 2, you can follow one strand around a corner and see how it passes over and under the next. The same feature that drew your eye from across the room now gives you a reason to linger.
The viewer lets you zoom, rotate the mosaic and adjust the light. A description sits alongside the image, so you can move between reading and looking without losing your place. But try one more comparison before you read it: return to Figure 1. Can you place the tree now, even though you can barely distinguish its branches? Does your eye still go to the border first?
Just thirteen seconds separate these two frames in the tutorial. For anyone designing a digital exhibition, it’s worth pausing over what happens when you put them side by side. The room view answers Where would I encounter this? The close-up answers What is there to see? Returning to the room gives the visitor a chance to put those answers together. The next time you look through the doorway, you know what to look for.
Watch the REEVALUATE walkthrough from the pantry scene: From Digital Asset to Visitor Experience
REEVALUATE has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon Europe Research and Innovation Programme under Grant Agreement No. 101132389.
