Authenticity Without Universality

In conceiving our proposed digital reconstruction of the Moche burial site at Sipan, our group grappled with questions about how to maintain the light touch and interpretive restraint that Gries advocates in her chapter while still offering a meaningful experience for the user. As some of the other bloggers have brought up, and as we discussed in class, several of the sample recreations, such as the Rome project and the Crytek off the Map Project, were limited in the use of video which controlled the approach and the movement of the viewer through the reconstructed site. Stephanie, both in class and in her post, discussed this in terms of taking agency away from the viewer, and I agree with her, but I also think perhaps the question is less one of agency and more one of responsibility. We wanted the viewer to feel implicated in and responsible for their decisions as to how they navigate the reconstruction, rather than being led around, as in the Rome or London recreations. Passively watching a video recreation, it might be easy to make assumptions about authenticity and to superimpose the view one is getting as the “correct” or only view. Navigating on one’s own, through a series of choices about where to position the camera, on the other hand, invites users to question their location within the larger recreation and allows the site to retain some of its “alienness.”

Therefore, our use of the Google Earth model of navigation presented a partial solution: the lack of one definitive path to take in the reconstructed landscape suggests that there is no one definitive interpretation of how the Moche burial site is meant to be experienced. Drawing on the work of Bourget and other Moche studies scholars, Gries emphasizes how the tombs were frequently reopened in order to reinforce a standing social order, and belief system; therefore, the experience of opening the tomb would be different for individuals of differing social classes. This is similar to Dr. Graban’s comment in class regarding the experience the majority of people would have had of ancient Rome: many in our position would have seen streets and architecture from the back rather than the front. For this reason, the ability to manipulate camera angles provided by Google Earth became important as we strove to avoid a universally applicable perspective.

Significantly, Gries also notes the differing audiences implied by the system of reopening when she states, “if revisiting and reopening burial chambers was a common practice enacted either to preserve the contents of the graves or for secondary ritual practices, then the funerary rituals were created not only for the immediate audience but also for a future audience” (109). If the tombs themselves were meant to be viewed again and again over time as they aged, then a recreation must account for the dual views of present and past in order to represent the multiple audiences for whom the rituals were created. In allowing our users to toggle back and forth between the modern-day archeological site and the recreation of the site as it originally existed, our recreation attempts to demonstrate both the site itself and the ongoing system of revisiting that reinforced the Moche belief in an immortal ruler.

Giving our users an opportunity to experience the site from the perspective of both past and present audiences helps us avoid the presumption that there is only one way to interpret or visit the burials, or only one purpose for which to do so. However, this is no simple solution, because there are still questions of agency that need to be addressed. While I do think it was important for us to give the user more freedom to explore the site in our recreation, I do have to wonder if doing so jeopardizes the agency of the artifacts themselves. Yes, the increased mobility and preservation of alienness that Google Earth offers helps us to avoid imposing our Orientalist logic on the site. But does it give the user power at the expense of letting the artifacts do all the talking? Choices of interpretation are still being made; it’s just that more of them are being made by the user. Perhaps as the designers, creating a more open world simply allows us to believe we’ve availed ourselves of interpretation. Ultimately, I’m still grappling with this question, and after considering the challenges of representation in this reconstruction, I think I better understand Gries’ own somewhat slippery position on exercising restraint and avoiding interpretation.