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"Rescue of the Medusa" is a project partially supported by the Arts Initiative at the University of Southern California (Fall 2000). The Arts Initiative Grant Program provides faculty with the opportunity to create a lasting contribution for the University. This project combines the impetus of an ancient Roman mosaic, the spirit of collaboration, scholarly student research, and hands-on methodology to build upon excellence. It has three main objectives:
- to begin the rescue and conservation of a unique, 1800 year-old Roman mosaic owned by the School of Architecture; in so doing, to maximize the educational possibilities and opportunities for creative interaction and involvement. USC's campus becomes the only downtown Los Angeles location where a mosaic can be seen by the public and by students of all levels.
- to create new, original art, and unique research and learning opportunities for USC students by allowing them to participate in independent research projects that ask students to either respond to, interact with, conserve, or investigate and research the Medusa and the mosaic. These activities may also involve Los Angeles area art professionals .
- to document the process and create both a real experience of the mosaic at USC and a virtual exhibit in perpetuity (of the process, the installed mosaic, and the student creations which result from this project). This exhibit itself offers opportunities for artists and museum studies students to further explore and experiment with the notion of the experience of art (ancient and modern) and the definition of display, display space, and the museum.
Please contact the project principle investigators, Karen Kensek and Lynn Swartz if you wish to become part of this project.
Overview
When this project is finished, USC will have harnessed one of its albatrosses, a ruined 2nd century mosaic of Medusa that was donated decades ago. The ancient fractured face which once adorned the floor of a gracious Roman villa will become a centerpiece of education and creativity and a model for conservation and interdisciplinary collaboration in Los Angeles. This project will link students and experts of the ancient world, from Classics, Religion, Art History and Museum Studies with those doing architectural computing and Fine Arts to rescue this wonderful artifact, to create rich, interdisciplinary learning and creative experiences and thereby, to create benefits for the entire USC community, and a focus for celebration.
Throughout time, scholars have sought to recreate and rescue the past from the perils of time, to uncover the stones on which ancient sages walked, to make the past alive in the mind of students. Architecture, its context and contents are especially central in this quest. Homer's poems inhabited an uncertain landscape before the day Heinrich Schliemann dug into the ruins of Troy and found the bard's words a home. Imagine what really was found at Troy: scraps of ancient buildings, broken stubs of walls, broken pots. Who thinks of the Parthenon in Athens as a pile of rubble laying beside an Ottoman mosque? Or of Pompeii's glorious mosaics and murals as a great ash heap? No one. The interpretations and reconstruction of ancient places stand in our modern imagination as icons of what once was. Archaeologists, architects and artists interpret these ruined fragments to communicate some semblance of their former glory. Doing so, they create powerful images which provide students a frame of reference within a reconstructed past, to allow them to visualize it vividly.
This project gives us a chance to use this fact creatively. We have a flat mosaic, ripped from its original home and context. How can we give students a feeling of the experience of this mosaic in its ancient place, in its native environment? How do we communicate the oddity of a Medusa, who turned men to stone with a gaze, looking up impotently (or threateningly?) at all who walked across her?
Digital reconstruction is a powerful way of portraying architecture and environments that no longer exist and allows students to recreate and visualize spaces and environments they can never personally experience otherwise. Decayed structures can be restored to an appearance of their former condition. Artist's visions never built outside their mind can be interpreted in three-dimensions. These types of projects are highly suitable for teaching students. Students in History, Museum Studies, Fine Arts, Art History, Classics, Religion , and Archaeology can have a greatly enhanced spatial experience of the past. Architectural Computing students, especially those in advanced classes, learn computer graphics for modeling, rendering, and animation by creating such reconstructions.
With input from specialists in ancient architecture, USC students can create reconstructions which are visually compelling and academically valuable. Because a virtual building is only as good as the information and research that goes into its creation, academic and pedagogical value is created through collaboration of experts with student researchers. The learning opportunity for students crosses disciplines, providing the best of the resources that are available in different Colleges.
At USC, we are in a unique position to take advantage of the
possibilities inherent in research collaborations between schools
on campus, and between USC and other cultural institutions in
Los Angeles, the result of which will be a lasting contribution
to the arts at USC. The School of Architecture owns a 2nd or
3rd century AD Roman mosaic. It is desperately in need of restoration.
The College has professors skilled in archeology and ancient
art. The School of Architecture has the Clipper Lab (for electronic
teaching and research); the School of Religion has the ARC Lab,
the Archeology Research Collection), the School of Fine Arts
has a Museum Studies Program and experience in artifact preventive
conservation and installation. This project is about the collaboration
of students, faculty, and researchers using both digital and
hand methods to explore the layered meanings of this mosaic from
architectural to artistic to historical, while preserving it
for future generations.