Omnidirectional Strategies for Exploring Ancient Cities and Territories

By focusing on technologies of virtual reality in conjunction with theories of “place” and “presence,” this chapter outlines the importance of new approaches to the museological experience and exploration of ancient cities and cultural heritage sites. Exploring fresh approaches to telling historic narratives through embodied interaction, this discussion proceeds to explore post-cartographic and “deep mapping” representations of cultural landscapes through omnidirectional virtual reality. Bodily engagements with virtually rendered places as a form of corporeal cartography references not only the changing nature of the concept of place but also the rise of contemporary post-cartographic frameworks for considering how the act of mapping actively engages with place. The “spatial turn” within the humanities demands that we extend our conceptions of mapping and cartography beyond the positive epistemologies of geographic information science and this chapter explores a series of frameworks for new explorations.