Professor Nicola Lercari is leading his students on a tour of Palenque, the ancient Mesoamerican city that flourished at the peak of Maya civilization. They’re exploring the altar atop the Temple of the Cross, inspecting it from all angles and scrutinizing every detail.
But they’re not in Mexico. Lercari and his students are on the second floor of the UC Merced Library, standing before a triptych of high-definition monitors, which they view through 3-D glasses. Lercari navigates the first-person, 360-degree panoramic tour using an Xbox controller. Passers-by stop to ask questions.
“It’s a new class,” explains teaching assistant Anais Guillem. “World Heritage 110: 3-D Modeling Cultural Heritage. And this is the LibraryCAVE.”
The LibraryCAVE is a smaller version of UC Merced’s Wide-Area Visualization Environment (WAVE) system, a 20-screen VR multiplex that allows researchers to navigate interactive 3-D renderings of complex structures. The WAVE is a powerful tool that can be used to explore ancient ruins or visualize the inner structure of the brain.
With only three screens, the LibraryCAVE is more compact but no less impressive. It can do much of what the WAVE does, but it serves a different purpose. Whereas the WAVE is primarily a research tool, the LibraryCAVE is meant to serve as a teaching tool. As such, it’s housed in full view of the public, en route to the library’s second floor stacks.
Though it’s only been up and running since last summer, Lercari has already incorporated the LibraryCAVE into World Heritage 110, part of the new World Heritage minor that SSHA instituted just this year. Though the course teaches students standard techniques in archaeological analysis — including methods for finding, reconstructing and interpreting historical sources — thanks to the LibraryCAVE, it also incorporates computer-aided design techniques more commonly associated with architecture and engineering.
