Anna Foka
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- January 2019
- ISBN:
- 9781474412599
- eISBN:
- 9781474449526
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9781474412599.003.0010
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Television
This chapter examines ‘Atlantis: The Evidence’ – a 2010 episode of Timewatch, the BBC2 historical documentary series – as an example of digital ekphrasis. Facilitated by digital techniques that ...
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This chapter examines ‘Atlantis: The Evidence’ – a 2010 episode of Timewatch, the BBC2 historical documentary series – as an example of digital ekphrasis. Facilitated by digital techniques that generate a distinctive aesthetic, the evocative audiovisual representation contributes in significant ways to the programme’s demonstration and interpretation of the ‘evidence’ used to justify the hypothesis that the Platonic myth of the lost city of Atlantis corresponds to the Bronze Age town of Thera. Experimental, interactive and collaborative CGI techniques familiar to drama productions in film and television and to contemporary practices in virtual and cyber-archaeology serve to construct the events and people of the distant past within a distinctive posthuman world. At a moment when digital tools are increasingly central to how the imagined past is rendered and received via the television screen, this analysis demonstrates the validating and authenticating effects of synthetic representation in depicting historical realities.Less
This chapter examines ‘Atlantis: The Evidence’ – a 2010 episode of Timewatch, the BBC2 historical documentary series – as an example of digital ekphrasis. Facilitated by digital techniques that generate a distinctive aesthetic, the evocative audiovisual representation contributes in significant ways to the programme’s demonstration and interpretation of the ‘evidence’ used to justify the hypothesis that the Platonic myth of the lost city of Atlantis corresponds to the Bronze Age town of Thera. Experimental, interactive and collaborative CGI techniques familiar to drama productions in film and television and to contemporary practices in virtual and cyber-archaeology serve to construct the events and people of the distant past within a distinctive posthuman world. At a moment when digital tools are increasingly central to how the imagined past is rendered and received via the television screen, this analysis demonstrates the validating and authenticating effects of synthetic representation in depicting historical realities.
