Abstract

At a time when both our relationships with the real and the interactions between art and technology are rapidly changing, this article explores new avenues to address the bond between the original and the copy. The development of technologies that allow for the digital relocation of cultural heritage invites complex epistemological and hermeneutical questions. Exact replicas of works of art installed in the same spaces that once contained the original have the potential to destabilize the assumptions that have guided our appreciation of art for centuries. By focusing on the itinerary of a specific Romanesque fresco, this article explores how such transfers can affect the experience, the meaning, and the interpretation of virtual reproductions. In Sant Climent de Taüll, a virtual mapping video installed in 2013 projects onto the twelfth-century apse both the original Romanesque fresco digitally restored and a recreation of how the mural would have looked when it was originally painted. The apse emerges as the natural meeting point of the original and its digitalization. Unlike the wall in Plato’s cave, here the archetype and the simulation converge: reality and its shadow.