Making an Animation as a Means of Dissemination and as a Tool for Research into Historical Sites: The Case Study of San Julián de Samos

Abstract

In this article we will examine how and why the animation ‘Creating the monastic site: from its origins to the nineteenth century’ allowed us to expand the digital art and architectural project ‘Digital Samos. A digital approach to the Monastery of San Julián de Samos’. On the one hand, by making the animation, we were able to create an easy-to-read and more effective visual product to disseminate our research results about the evolving nature of the monastic site of San Julián de Samos in north-western Spain, far beyond static computer-aided design reconstructions. On the other hand, we will see that the animation became a research tool that forced us as scholars to tackle the visualization of relational past realms in their entirety and on a short-term time basis, without compromising the rigour with which computer-based visualization methods and outputs should be used in the communication of and research into cultural heritage.