‘A copy – or rather a translation … with numerous sparkling emendations.’ Re-rebuilding the Pompeian Court of the Crystal Palace
‘A copy – or rather a translation … with numerous sparkling emendations.’ Re-rebuilding the Pompeian Court of the Crystal Palace
The cry ‘what to do with the Crystal Palace’ continues to reverberate long after the Palace’s fiery demise. Whilst local heritage groups continue to cherish it, its memory has been jeopardised by authorities, both bureaucratic (who have failed to implement a coherent conservation plan for the site) and academic (who have largely refused to engage with building or exhibition). The result, the mental dismantling of the Sydenham Palace from nineteenth-century histories, has been explained by scholarly aversion to reconstruction/inauthenticity and play/populist entertainment, the very aspects which defined it. This chapter explore a small part of the Palace, the Pompeian Court, through our own digital visualisation, housed in Second Life, a popular multi-user online virtual world. By choosing such a venue, we have favoured the pursuit not of absolute authenticity but of virtual presence, offering a space in which visitors to the model, through their avatars, might circulate the space, interact with each other and the exhibits.
Keywords: Digital reconstruction, Second Life, Visualisation, Pompeian Court, Virtual modelling
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