• P • I • T • O • T • I • is a multimedia digital rock art exhibition in the South Lecture Room of Cambridge University's Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology (MAA), on display until March 23. This is the first time it has been on display in the UK.
It brings some of the earliest human figures in European rock art to life with interactive graphics, 3D printing and video games; exploring the potential links between the world of archaeology and the world of film, digital humanities and computer vision.
The images on display are just a fraction of the 300,000 rock engravings that act as an archive of nearly 10,000 years of human history at the UNESCO World Heritage Site in Valcamonica, detailing how a small clan of hunter-gatherers eventually became part of the Roman Empire.
The engravings were made from as early as 7,000BC and continued to be made right up till the 16th century AD, with the richest activity taking place in the Iron Age (1100BC-200BC, before the Roman Empire).
Now, a host of artists have injected digital life into these rock-art figures, with video projections, an ambient cinema and an interactive touch screen table where multiple visitors can explore and play with a digitised rock face.
Watch a video and read the full story
Image: Still from the PITOTI film
Credit: Prehistoric Picture Unit
Reproduced courtesy of the University of Cambridge
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7,000BC: The dawn of cinema brought to life at Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology
11 March 2013
Some of the world’s oldest engravings of the human form – prehistoric rock art from the Italian Alps – have been brought to life by the latest digital technology at Cambridge Unviersity’s Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology.