Mediated representations after laser scanning. The Monastery of Aynalı and the architectural role of red pictograms

In Cappadocian rock-cut architectures, red pictograms painted on rock suifaces were long considered only as abstract decorations of the iconoclastic period to be lately converted into polychromic frescoes, but today other interpretations appear plausible. In the Monastery of Aynal1 near Goreme, pictograms both decorate the key elements and describe visual hierarchies with the secondary consequence of transforming the architecture itself into a huge representation: a sort of full-scale model to evoke existing buildings and to design its final configuration. Integrated applications of laser scanning and digital photography today allow the study of these decorations together with the actual shape of rock suifaces supporting them, and may offer innovative contributes to archaeological and historical researches on Cappadocian rupestrian architecture.

In Cappadocian rock-cut architectures, red pictograms painted on rock surfaces were long considered only as abstract decorations of the iconoclastic period to be lately converted into polychromic frescoes, but today other interpretations appear plausible. In the Monastery of Aynalı near Göreme, pictograms both decorate the key elements and describe visual hierarchies with the secondary consequence of transforming the architecture itself in a huge representation: a sort of full-scale model to evoke existing buildings and to design its final configuration with. Integrated applications of laser scanning and digital photography today allow the study of those decorations together with the actual shape of rock surfaces supporting them and may offer innovative contributes to archaeological and historical researches on Cappadocian rupestrian architecture.