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Lines of sight

Posted on | October 21, 2009 | 191 views |

Interactive virtual exhibit sheds light on ancient wisdom

By Julia Harris

In New Mexico’s desolate Chaco Canyon, a sprawl of crumbling ruins raises more questions than answers about the culture that once thrived there. Questions like, why build such elaborate structures in a harsh and inhospitable climate? How were those towering masonry buildings, honeycombed with dark and tiny rooms, constructed?

In other words, what did they know and how did they know it?

Such questions have occupied archaeologists and historians for decades. Alan Price, on the other hand, has been preoccupied with a rather different question.

“Yes, there’s a lot of amazing information about Chaco, but what I’m interested in is, how does this relate to the rest of us?” said Price, an associate professor of design at Ohio State’s Advanced Computing Center for the Arts and Design.

“It’s hard not to look at all of this and wonder who these people were and maybe dismiss it as some other world, some other time and place. I see this as a wonderful connection for people everywhere.”

For the past 10 years or so, Price has been working hard to make at least part of the Chaco mystery relevant. He is partnering with the Solstice Project, a group founded by researcher and archaeologist Anna Sofaer to study and preserve the Sun Dagger, a cosmological calendar erected atop Fajada Butte by ancient Pueblo Indians.

This ancient observatory, overlooking the ruins of Chaco Canyon, is the subject of an interactive, 3-D multi-media model called “The Sun Dagger Explorer,” which was installed as a permanent exhibit at the New Mexico Museum of Natural History and Science in May as part of its Space Frontiers exhibition.

An unassuming rocky outpost, the Sun Dagger site is home to three huge slabs of sandstone, propped vertically against a knob of rock and sheltering two crude spiral petroglyphs, or drawings, etched into the stone.

Research has shown that this grouping of rock is precisely arranged so that during various astronomical events — solstice, equinox, major and minor lunar standstills — “daggers” of light from the sun and/or moon shine through the slabs in predictable placements across the two spirals.

“On the day of summer solstice, a large dagger pierces the center of the large spiral. At winter solstice, two daggers of light bracket that spiral on both sides. At equinox, the dagger bisects the smaller spiral,” Price explained.

“For anyone who’s skeptical that something so ancient could be so precise, I tell them that the number of turns on the large spiral is 18.5 — the precise number of years in the lunar cycle.”

Leaving skepticism to the critics, Price said the process of creating the model of the Sun Dagger site has been more than rewarding. Incorporating high-quality laser scans of the Fajada Butte monument, as well as photos of the surrounding areas, Price and his team were able to create detailed and highly accurate 3-D imagery.

“We really wanted to give the idea of what it’s like to be up there on the butte and looking out over that ledge,” he said, spinning the on-screen scenery in a dizzying arc.

Visitors to the Sun Dagger Explorer installation in New Mexico get to do the same kind of manipulation of time and space, working with buttons and dials and even a roller ball to watch how the passage of time affects the placement of the light daggers in the ancient stone observatory. Yellow lines arc out from the sun to help viewers track the rays through the slabs; blue lines do the same for the rays of moonlight.

“You can turn the knob slowly or spin it like crazy and watch the years fly by,” said Price, recalling the delight on the faces of youngsters at the exhibit’s opening.

“The stars in their sky are all in the correct constellations, and as the sun rises you can watch the colors shift in the sky.”

The reach of the project continues to expand, Price notes: Students at the Santa Fe Indian School make use of it for their math classes, and it recently received an award from the Mountain-Plains Museums Association.

“Alan’s work with the Solstice Project is a great example of ways in which technology, science and art can be used together to create unique learning experiences that engage all kinds of users through informative interaction and beautiful graphics,” said Maria Palazzi, director of ACCAD.

“His design and vision for the Sun Dagger Interactive project are reflected in the quality of the user’s experience and the careful attention to the presentation of the rich material that is Chaco Canyon.”

Come to the canyon

For everyone who can’t make it out to Chaco Canyon or the New Mexico Museum of Natural History and Science to take a spin on Alan Price’s exhibit, seeaccad.osu.edu/~aprice/works/sundaggerfor images and a short video about the project.

For more information about the ruins at Chaco and the people who lived there, see nps.gov/chcu/index.htm or chaco.com/index.html.

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