Fighting Crickets and other imperial activities in the virtual Forbidden City

Last week I spent an entire day exploring the virtual Forbidden City that was created as a joint project between IBM and the Palace Museum in Rome. I found the rendered architecture breathtaking and learned a great deal about Chinese history and court life during the Ming and Qing dynasties.

[My avatar dressed as a woman of the Qing dynasty imperial court will help an Imperial Guard with his archery practice]

In addition to the environment itself, there were objects that could be examined like the golden "Dragon Throne" in the Hall of Supreme Harmony and the magnificent bronze guardian lions and xiehi, mythical beasts who understand human language and will impale the evil with their single horn.

I also enjoyed observing scenes of court life like the emperor reviewing petitions (referred to as memorials), eating a 20-course meal with a eunuch taster standing by with a silver spoon, and posing for a portrait that was being rendered by a court artist while the emperor's children played about him.

[Image: Learning to play weiqi from a wise master of the game]

Program developers even included interactive activities like helping an Imperial guardsman practice archery, training and fighting crickets and learning to play weiqi (GO).

The environment could be expanded even further to encompass a wealth of additional history-learning activities. I went up on the accompaying website and posted suggestions for a Chinese cooking module that could be added to the hall where visitors watch the emperor eating a meal. I think it would be fun for visitors to be able to challenge each other to a game of weiqi. I also think it would be interesting to add an application similar to the iPhone's "Brushes" program that would let visitors try their own hand at painting the emperor or scenes or people they see within the virtual palace. A "Brushes" like application could also be used in a caligraphy lesson or writing poetry.

[Image: Imperial Gardens in the virtual Forbidden City]

I also suggested having more animated scenes of other cultural activities like presentations of plays, music recitals or poetry readings or a hall where visitors can go and listen to Chinese philosophers. My editor at Heritage Key asked me if I could suggest a topic for a machinama presentation using the virtual environment and I told him I thought it would be really fascinating for visitors to watch an imperial wedding using the Hall of Supreme Harmony as the backdrop as this is the building where imperial weddings were held during the Ming dynasty.

I would encourage everyone to visit the virtual Forbidden City for yourselves. You will need to download a client that interacts with the server-based virtual environment. The system requirements are 2 Gb of Ram Memory and a Pentium 4 2.4GHz+ or AMD 2400xp+ processor and 2 Gb of free space on your hard drive. It requires a minimum Network Speed of 768 Kbits/sec and is designed for a minimum resolution of 1280x1024, 32-bit True Color. Of course you'll also need a video card capable of 3D.

I actually ran the environment with a workstation with only 1 Gb of Ram and it worked fine. My biggest problem was with my network speed. I live in the country and only have a DSL connection with a maximum of 1.5 Mps. This would appear on the surface to be satisfactory but in reality I must not have been getting the maximum speed as I had problems with my machine freezing for a few seconds while the data was buffered. I read in the troubleshooting guide that there is a way to configure your local client so it only renders surrounding buildings based on your current location but I didn't experiment with that.

I actually wrote a full review of my experience for Heritage Key illustrated with a series of screen shots. If you are particularly interested in Chinese history, I also wrote an article for Heritage Key entitled Conspiring Concubines and Desperate Divas: Women and Power Politics in the Han Dynasty as well. If you enjoyed this post, never miss out on future posts by following me by email!

All the world's an ancient Greek or Roman stage for Whitman Professor Thomas Hines

A scholar after my own heart - Professor Hines is photographing as many Greek and Roman theaters as possible and making an archive of his information available through a website at Whitman. I see he finances his activities with grants from such organizations as the National Institute for the Humanities. I guess I need to learn how to do that as my archive on Flickr is funded by my own vacation leave, equipment, and funds for airline tickets and meals and lodging.


Last year, Associate Professor of Theatre Thomas Hines of Whitman College received a gratifying and fairly astonishing e-mail from an excited Argentine businessman who’d decided to restore an old mas, a traditional house in Provence. He wanted Hines to know that the Whitman College professor’s online archive of ancient theaters had inspired him to build a Roman theater in the backyard of the property.

The man had found Hines’ trove of information on Whitman’s Web site. Since 2001, Hines has visited 43 Greek and Roman theaters in three countries, taken tens of thousands of photographs and compiled The Ancient Theatre Archive: A Virtual Reality Tour of Ancient Greek and Roman Theatre Architecture.

Hines’ Web site receives more than a thousand hits a day from visitors across the globe. "There are people visiting the site to write papers or to travel," he said. "People pick from it what they want, and everyone is taking something different and doing something new."

One recent shopper was an official from the Direcção Geral das Artes, the ministry of arts in Portugal. He wanted to use several of Hines’ photographs, particularly the Hellenistic theater in Epidaurus, in a national campaign to promote the arts. Hines was happy to oblige. "I was struck by the idea that this could inspire some grade school kid in Portugal to do something with theater," he said.

Thomas Hines (right)

Hines’ ongoing Web project grew out of his desire to provide his own students with a more complete picture of ancient theaters. The success of his initial study - the Roman theater in Ostia Antica, Italy - inspired him to pursue others. As the projects accrued, Hines’ international audience grew.

“When I conceived of the project, I used a model in my mind of an exhibit in a museum," he said. "An intuitive, self-guided tour. I used my skills as a teacher as well as my knowledge of theater."

Hines’ site features thorough surveys, including basic fact sheets, detailed studies, travel guides, directions, a glossary of Greek and Roman theater terminology, and Hines’ own hand-drawn maps and panoramic images. Viewers can take virtual tours of the theaters, zooming in to study them in as much detail as they wish.

Hines, whose set designs have complemented several Harper Joy Theatre productions at Whitman, has even included his own travel accounts in the virtual tour mix. "Today I followed in the footsteps of Alexander the Great, but unlike him, I managed to conquer the city of Termessos," reads one entry from June 2003. "I was luckier than Alex - I had a Fiat, a paved road, and the cranky Termessians were all dead."

The Web site, Hines allows, is no substitute for the real thing. "What’s lacking is the travel experience: meeting people, seeing the setting, the food, the way people treat you, the views, the smells. All of that is beyond anything a book or camera could capture."

Nonetheless, Hines’ site links viewers with some immediacy to a distant past. “Theater is an ephemeral art form," he said. "We have no way of attending an ancient Greek or Roman play, but we still have this one, very large, tangible artifact. This will let people know these places are out there, and that it’s OK to go."

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