Visual experience in a Pompeian domestic space: analysis using virtual reality-based eye tracking and GIS

Many scholars have examined the ways in which ancient Roman house design emphasized views and viewing within the domestic space; indeed, the role of the vista in the architecture of this period was so important that Roman law codified “the right to an unobstructed view.” Most villas were constructed on the principle of axiality, providing a view through the entire house, but other techniques were utilized, too, often to complement certain domestic rituals or patterns of movement. Parts of the interior that were visible to an outsider walking past the entrance, for instance, often favored “easily legible decorative schemes,” while rooms where a guest was intended to relax on a couch tended to feature more complex ornamentation such as sculptures or fountains.

Yet while many authors have described these elements of ancient Roman design, they have often done so based on work with stationary fragments like sketches or models, which privilege the single perspective frame. A new paper in the American Journal of Archaeology, “Visual Experience in a Pompeian Domestic Space: Analysis Using Virtual Reality-Based Eye Tracking and GIS,” provides a more holistic account of Roman architecture by taking into account factors like body and eye movement, and illumination. The article by authors Danilo Marco Campanaro and Giacomo Landeschi “aims to identify the nuances of social rituals in connection with visibility and proximity and the construction of the self through a study that combines space, movement, and time.” This work was made possible thanks to the Digital Archaeology Laboratory and the Humanities Lab of Lund University, Sweden.

The setting for the authors’ research was the House of the Greek Epigrams in the ruins of Pompeii. A 3D virtual reality reconstruction of the house was created, and the experiences of five participants moving through the reconstruction recorded and uploaded into a geographic information system (GIS). Specifically, the researchers tracked the participants’ position in the space of the house, their gaze, and their fixations, or what their vision focused on when their eyes were stable. Additionally, these recreations were conducted under two different light conditions—that approximating early morning on the winter solstice, and that approximating the summer solstice noon.

The House of the Greek Epigrams is decorated on the inside with many paintings and figural scenes. Through their experiment, the authors were able to observe how long their participants spent with each artwork, and how visible they found each piece. The varying light conditions, the study found, affected the participants’ relationship to each painted vignette, and so did their dynamic movement closer to or further from the scenes. “Indeed,” the authors write, “the different times of day and seasons would have created ever-changing experiences, where endless possibilities for interaction with different painted images could have been realized.” Scrutinizing a painting of Bacchus, for instance, close up in the winter gloom, would have produced a very different effect than seeing it in the glow of the summer sun. “Rather than rooms with a single view or multiple views,” conclude the authors, “the Roman house would have offered a complex visual palimpsest made up of moving views, interconnected journeys, and comings and goings, of successive investigations in search of the unexpected new detail and mnemonic connections, through the skillful play of paintings under the light and in the shadows.”