Digital reconstruction and storytelling: Exploring funerary artifacts from the Han era in immersive virtual reality

This research focuses on the contextualization and digital reconstruction of twelve funerary artifacts from a Han Era archeological site, currently housed at the Asian Art Museum of Turin (MAO). The reconstructed artifacts have played a central role in a virtual exhibition that has integrated and represented the characteristic elements of Han art, emphasizing architecture, painting, and sculptural features, through the incorporation of storytelling. The process was developed through photogrammetric acquisition and 3D modelling of the funerary artifacts, reconstructive modeling and texturing of a Han tomb, along with a Virtual Reality (VR) experience enhanced by a set of informative descriptions. The study involved a multidisciplinary team of experts in Asian art, digital reconstruction, and information processing systems, with the support of MOD Lab Arch and VR@POLITO at the Politecnico di Torino.