"Everybody has a specialty and also collaborates on a bigger piece of the puzzle," says Olsen. "Everybody has had to put their fingers in somebody else's pie." The first few weeks of the semester are spent learning the computer programs—Illustrator, Sketch Up, Quick Time, Adobe Photoshop CS2—and the rest of the semester is dedicated to the hands-on work of digital reconstruction. Ultimately, Flaten says, a viewer will be able to walk through the monuments like a video game animation.

While the educational value of Ashes2Art is obvious, it goes beyond that. "There really isn't anything like this anywhere," says Flaten. "UCLA uses hired professional staff or full-time graduate students who are getting their Ph.D.s in architecture to do this type of computer reconstruction. Here, we actually are having students do it all, everything from deciding which monuments to reconstruct, shooting all the pictures, all the Web design. It's exciting for students to be involved in something that's actually taking off and that will be available worldwide. It's also exciting pedagogically."

Student Yaw Odame's preliminary model, altar at Pergamon, Turkey

Professor Paul Olsen works with student Andrea Hendrix on an image.

The National Endowment for the Humanities endorsed the project earlier this year by awarding a $30,000 grant, one of only 16 Digital Humanities Start-Up Grants bestowed on new projects "designed to explore and develop innovative uses of technology in humanities education, scholarship and public programming." The NEH funds will be used for travel to Greece for summer research and photography.

Tholos of Athena Pronaia of Delphi circa 4th century B.C.

Stage 1: wire frame model

Stage 2: partial model with preliminary textures

Stage 3: final stage

Flaten believes Ashes2Art has great potential for student development, for scholarly gain and as a beacon to shine a light on Coastal's a­cademic stature. The program could ultimately draw students who might be interested in video gaming technology, animation, Web and graphic design, art history, architecture or graphic design. "It has the potential to gain attention for Coastal and its faculty and the excellent education that you can get here, not just for the art department, but for the entire university."

On a more personal basis, teaching Ashes2Art has been both exhilarating and exhausting. "It's like grabbing a tiger by the tail and hanging on for dear life. Hopefully, you have some say in which direction that tiger's going to go," says Flaten, who admits to moments of disorganization due to the exploratory nature of the project.

"In humanities, there are not many opportunities to feel like you're on the road to discovery with students and sharing in the excitement of learning; this is frankly not always the standard classroom experience," says Flaten.

The project is attracting attention. Professors Flaten and Gill flew to Germany in the spring to chair sessions on the problems and opportunities intrinsic to digital reconstructions at the Computer Applications and Quantitative Methods in Archaeology in Berlin, the most important conference in this field.

They have been asked to travel to Athens in October to lecture on "virtual Delphi" for the Greek government. They've been invited by the American Archaeological Institute to present at the annual meeting, and they are chairing sessions on digital reconstruction at the up- coming College Art Association. "We're getting busy," Flaten says.

Check out the Ashes2Art interactive Web site at www.coastal.edu/ashes2art.

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