The Ekphrasis Engine: Towards a New Industry Architecture for Digital Art Historical Practice in the Age of the Virtual

In 1956, Sidney Nolan spent a day exploring the Gallipoli peninsula. Though brief, the experience crystallised in him the historical significance of the Dardanelles.'I stood on the place where the first ANZACs had stood, 'he later recalled,'looked across the straits to the site of ancient Troy, and felt that here history had stood still.'1 At the time Nolan had been reading Homer's Iliad, and was wrestling with how to reconstruct the grand, heroic narratives of classical mythology for a new time and a new place.