Using Virtual Reality to Explore History with Eiman Elgewely

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Travis

When I think about interior design, I don't often think about unlocking history's mysteries. So when I heard that Virginia Tech's Eiman Elwegly was doing just that and using aspects of virtual and augmented reality to do so, she pretty much immediately got a podcast invitation in her inbox and was kind enough to respond yes.

Eiman is an assistant professor of interior design in Virginia Tech's College of Arts, Architecture, and Design, as well as a faculty affiliate of the Center of Human-Computer Interaction at Virginia Tech. Her research interests are in digital cultural heritage and museum studies, and she currently leads several virtual heritage projects in the visualization and virtual reality lab. Iman and I chatted a little about what these virtual realities entail and how she goes about collecting the information needed to create them. We also talked about how exploring these spaces in virtual reality helps us get a better understanding of history, as well as helps us better understand aspects of life back then that we could apply to our lives today. Eiman also talked with me about the most recent project she is working on with Virginia Tech's Institute of Creativity, Arts and Technology that explores an ancient tomb and also incorporates the use of smell. But if you want to know exactly what types of smells we're talking about, you're going to have to listen to the rest of the podcast. And as always, be sure to rate, follow, and or subscribe to the podcast. I'm Travis Williams, and this is Virginia Techs. Curious Conversations.

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Travis

Well, and know you and I, we've talked quite a bit about your work using virtual reality to create these digital experiences, this digital exploration of history and historical places. And so I guess maybe just to start off with, maybe briefly, what does that virtual reality, that experience, what does that digital experience, what all does it include, what does it entail?

Eiman

Yeah, so in my research, I work on digital cultural heritage in general. It's a general umbrella for multiple applications. It doesn't just include virtual reality. So it includes also 3D documentation of cultural heritage sites, historical buildings, and stuff like that. And then we can create out of that a VR experience, which is a virtual walkthrough experience so that you can have the sense of space, sense of scale, proportions, how people use the spaces. And it can be used for education. It could be used in museums. So it's widely used right now in multiple different platforms as well, such as online museums.

Travis

What does creating virtual reality representations of historical spaces, what does that help us better understand?

Eiman

That's a wonderful question actually. So it helps us actually learn new realities about spaces, environments, how people use the spaces to function on everyday basis. It can reflect cultural and social and environmental needs. So that is really a very important part of it.

Another critical part is that how can we get access to places that are hard to access? So, for example, think about places that have been subject to environmental disasters, such as in Pompeii, for example, due to the eruption of Mount Vesophius. Think about something like the Buddha-Banyan statues and how we lost them because of the...Al-Qaeda, so we can have conflicts, wars, and stuff like that affecting cultural heritage sites. The crisis caused by ISIS for Syria and Iraq, very important cultural heritage sites have been subject to this kind of damage. So how can we use digital technology to revive and to better understand this lost heritage. And that is also another important part of what we are doing actually in this kind of research.

Travis

Yeah, that access piece is really fascinating to me because of all the reasons you mentioned, but also just the cost of traveling to a place like that. I'm probably not a person that's going to be able to hop on a plane tomorrow and go visit any of those spaces. So if I could online, that would be wonderful.

Eiman

Yeah, and that's why there's also a big thing now, it's called the virtual tourism. There was a big question mark about it. Is it going to affect the real tourism positively or negatively? But all research and surveys and everything is showing that that is actually...helping the cultural sites and tourism sites. So for example, when you visit the Coliseum, you can download the VR application or an AR application that can show you how this site used to look like in the past during, and you have to have a timeline to see the different iterations the same thing in the Great Pyramids of Giza, for example. So it's another layer of information that you can provide people with either on-site or off-site. So that is a very important part, of course, how can we use it for tourism.

Travis

Yeah, that's fascinating. Well, when you go about creating these virtual reality sites, where do you go about getting all of the details and the data that goes into that creation? What's your source material?

Eiman

So that is actually a very intensive research process because that requires a lot of compiling of research materials that include architectural drawings, architectural site reports, archaeological reports, historical photographs, sometimes museum collection archives in some cases.

In addition to modern technologies providing laser scans and photogrammetry scans. So for example, if you know about my project, Sheikh Isa in Bahrain, the house of Sheikh Isa, we used 3D documentation that was published in 2017 and that was created by an international research team and led by the Polytechnic de Milano. That was super helpful to create a very accurate model of the house, especially that we were working on a sustainable study. So we wanted to have very accurate results of this kind of simulation of how the building performed during different times of the day and stuff like that. So that was very, very helpful. In some other projects such as in the current Meketri tomb, We are working on drawings that the excavators drew manually, for example, in 1920 when the artifacts were first excavated. And that is really a very interesting process. So looking into those different pieces of information and fragments and putting them together is a very enjoyable part of our work.

Travis

Well, you mentioned the project in Bahram. When you all went into doing that project, I know one of the things you were trying to figure out, or at least try to better understand, how historic buildings in that region better dealt with heat. So I'm curious, as you went and you all did that project and you created this virtual reality, was there anything that you learned from that that surprised you about that house?

Eiman

Absolutely. Yeah. So, in addition to being a wonderful example of Islamic architecture, this house actually functions like a sustainable machine. So everything is really synchronized, like the strategic orientation of openings, the passive cooling systems, like the wind tower, which I like to call it the air conditioner of the past, together with a series of courtyards that are wonderfully connected in order to create the circulation of the air. The very thick mud brick walls that create the insulation to protect people inside the house during different conditions. All that works really wonderfully without any type of mechanical systems or HVAC or electricity at that time. So that was amazing. And the beautiful detail when you look at that is understanding or knowing. The fact that this was created by craftsmen and master masons, they didn't have any formal architecture education in Bahrain until after World War II. So everything related to this knowledge was actually moved from one generation to another verbally and it was practiced by those craftsmen and inherited. So that was really a fascinating detail. Another beautiful thing about this project is that it's allowing us to create comparisons between this house and other houses or other residential buildings in the Arab world, North Africa, and to see the regional differences and the creative diversity of sustainability practices. And that was really fascinating to see the different use of materials, different approaches to the courtyards, wind catchers and different stuff like that. And that is deeply rooted in cultural heritage. So sometimes you just need to look into the past to find some questions, some answers to modern questions or nowadays questions. So that is really was another important part of that project.

Travis

Yeah, was there anything as you've looked at maybe different spaces, especially when it comes to heat and building more sustainable buildings to deal with heat? Is there anything that's been a commonality maybe across differences that you've bumped into?

Eiman

Yeah, I think the commonality was the use of native materials, the idea of the openings like making things structure similar to the wind tower. Sometimes the structure is a little bit different, a nice detail, for example, the difference between the wind tower in Egypt and the wind tower in...Bahrain is that under the openings in the wind tower, the structure is different and you can find something like a fountain just underneath the opening and that is in order to some hydration. So that was really a nice detail. Another thing is that you can find because the weather is very arid in Bahrain, so you don't find lots of vegetation, for example, in the courtyards. However, in Egypt, you can find that the courtyard is planted. So you can find these beautiful differences based on the climate, the environmental differences, however there are still some similarities.

Travis

I know you're also one of your other big projects, which you mentioned was this tomb that you're working on. What could you share with us about that project?

Eiman

Yeah, so this is our most recent project and the exhibition is coming soon, hopefully May 5th and that will be synchronized with ICANN Day. And it's the Meketre Tomb in VR. there were very beautiful miniature models that were discovered in 1920 by American excavator and archaeologist. He was also the curator of the Metropolitan Museum of Art that was in 1920, Herbert Winlock. And these beautiful miniature models were discovered in that tomb in Luxor in Egypt. And the artifacts were divided between Egypt and the Metropolitan, and these beautiful artifacts are now displayed in both the Metropolitan and Cairo Museum. What is significant about these miniature models is that they convey or represent daily life in Middle Kingdom Egypt in a very beautiful way. So you can find models of a garden, a granary, workshop, a weaving shop, a slaughterhouse. So it's like a miniature mini world. So that was really fantastic to me. And then when we look...into how can we use digital technology to bring these miniature models into life. So now we are bringing an experiential exhibition that can bring an ancient Egyptian garden into life. And we did a lot of research on the flora and faena, all the bird, beautiful birds, beautiful flowers, the Egyptian jasmine, everything. And we're trying to create a multi-sensory exhibition. So think about all the... acoustics and the soundscape. So it's very accurate. What type of birds would you hear at that time or at that moment of time, 4,000 years ago. So it's like a time machine. We're also working with smell. We're working with all the different senses in immersing the visitor into this moment of history. And another thing that is very important to me in this project is the idea of digital repatriation. So think about those artifacts that have been taken from the people and the places where they originally belong and how the story is disconnected right now. So how can we make this kind of connection between the original site and the people? So that is really important. And I really...pay a lot of attention to digital repatriation because I don't think that this project is just about Egypt, while of course, ancient Egypt is a very important part of human history and human civilization for sure. But it's also about colonization, about many nations that lost important part of their history and their cultural heritage. And it's now displayed in multiple global institutions like in Africa, in South Asia, and Middle East, and how can we use digital technology maybe to put these stories back together.

Travis

I think I just need to follow up on something. I believe you said you all are gonna also include smell in this experience. How are you including smell and what types of smells can we expect if we experience this?

Eiman

Yeah, so this is really important. We are using diffusers that work with Android and Mac systems so that we are connecting these programmable diffusers to the system that we created so that it will diffuse Jasmine because Jasmine was very common in ancient Egyptian gardens and also blue lotus. So for example, those are the main two smells that you are going to experience in our garden hopefully.

Travis

Yeah, those sound great. Now, if you start to do virtual reality experiences with maybe a different place and a different time, I'm not so sure that you would want to do smell. I guess I'm thinking of like some of the stories I hear about like the Dark Ages or maybe like some of the times when we had plagues and stuff like that. Maybe we avoid the smell portion of it for that. I don't know, but I'm not the researcher. That's up to you.

Travis

And I would like to add here that the beauty of what we are doing is that if you look at our team and you see how diverse and interdisciplinary the team of faculty and students from creative technology to computer science to interior architecture. So it's really fascinating to see all those talents put together and working towards something that is very creative.

Travis

Yeah, that is super, that's super great. And I believe you said that it's in within ICAT.

Eiman

Yes, yes, it's funded by iCat and it's going to be displayed at the queue.

Travis

Well, I'm curious because your background is in interior design, and I know it's in a few other things too, but I'm curious, how does interior design help us better understand history?

Eiman

Actually, it's a lovely question. I don't mind that question at all. I think a very important part of it is that these spatial environments help us to learn about how people lived. And that is really an important part. think about looking at how spaces were laid out, furnished, and used. How can you understand about the social rules, the spiritual practices, the daily life and culture? cultural identity that you can learn from this. Like look in some of the projects that I work on, I have been working on pieces of furniture, trying to understand the use, the proportions. Does it belong to a child or an adult person. Like for example, in my reviving Karanis project, which is a virtual house in a Greek or Roman town in Fayoum in Egypt, we found a big number of reading tables, which give us a significant reference of like a level of literacy in the towns, for example. So looking at these evidences is really important. Understanding the relation between people and places is very important. So using digital storytelling to look back into these spaces and better understand them and convey these new realities about them, I think it's a very interesting and important part of understanding history.

Travis

Was this always the angle that you wanted to study interior design from? Were you always interested in the history side of things?

Eiman

I think it started by being interested in cyberspace design and the virtual environments. And then I have been thinking about how can we use this new environment to present different worlds. And then I started thinking about particularly about Egyptian cultural heritage, especially that I felt like people are not no more very much interested in going to museums. How can we make it a more exciting and more engaging experience? And that is exactly what I'm trying to do through the experiential exhibitions and stuff like that. So using the senses, using this kind of multi-sensory dimension, I think that is what I'm trying to do.

Travis

Yeah, so the more futuristic technology has gotten, the more it's encouraged you to want to use it to maybe step back into the past.

Eiman

Exactly, yes. I think you put it in a very interesting way.

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Travis

And thanks to Iman for helping us better understand how both interior design and virtual reality can help us better understand the past. If you or someone you know would make for a great curious conversation, email me at traviskw at dt.edu. I'm Travis Williams and this has been Virginia Tech's Curious Conversations.

(Eiman)