Audrey Wells' Virtual Nau A Project by Audrey Wells It is
impossible to imagine, let alone describe, such a thing as a 40
m long Portuguese Indiaman of the early 1600s. Loaded with 450
people, including crew and passengers, food and water for six
months, spares and fittings, personal possessions of each and
any one, plus the main reason of its voyage: a cargo of around
250 tons of peppercorns, which was complemented with many other
spices and drugs, countless bales of cotton and silk cloth of
all sizes and colors, furniture, porcelain, exotic animals and
thousand of luxury items manufactured in the most exquisite
workshops of the far east. Audrey Wells, a student in the
Department of Visualization Sciences at Texas A&M University,
has modeled one of these ships and then tried to populate it and
load it. Each decision regarding the partition of a space, the
design of a detail, the dimensions of a ship part, was pondered,
discussed, evaluated in light of the known archaeological
parallels, iconography, and cont