Visit Macedonia - Polyapton (subtitles)

Visit Macedonia - Polyapton (subtitles)
Polyapton is part of "Macedonia: from fragments to pixels," a special exhibition of prototypical interactive systems with subjects drawn from ancient Macedonia, the result of a collaboration between the Archaeological Museum of Thessaloniki (AMTh) and the Institute of Computer Science of the Foundation for Research and Technology -- Hellas (ICS-FORTH), hosted by the AMTh.

Polyapton is a very large interactive screen that can be used by several visitors who wish to explore multifaceted information on a subject at the same time.

Polyapton presents one of the best-preserved ancient Greek paintings. It is a wall painting depicting a symposium, from the Macedonian tomb of Agios Athanasios near Thessaloniki. The tomb is not open to visitors, who have here a rare opportunity to enjoy the painting in its full glory.

The system's special multi-touch screen recognizes the touch of many fingers or hands, but also specific objects, at the same time. Visitors can 'scroll' across the painting and focus on points of interest with multimedia information by touching them, zoom in on details with the use of a paper magnifying lens, while an infrared torch displays a modern rendition of the painting.
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Macedonia today is a geographical region of Greece, and the largest of the Greek territory.

It constitutes most of the geographic and historical region of ancient Macedon, a Greek kingdom ruled by the Argeads whose most celebrated members were Alexander the Great and his father Philip II.

In 336 B.C., Alexander the Great became the leader of the Greek kingdom of Macedonia. By the time he died 13 years later, Alexander had built an empire that stretched from Greece all the way to India. That brief but thorough empire-building campaign changed the world: It spread Greek ideas and culture from the Eastern Mediterranean to Asia. Historians call this era the "Hellenistic period."

The name Macedonia was later applied to identify various administrative areas in the Roman and Byzantine Empires with widely differing borders.