rosselli del turco - mixed data, mixed audience [dh 2014]
DESCRIPTION
Slides for paper given at the Digital Humanities conference in Lausanne (DH 2014).TRANSCRIPT
Mixed data, mixed audience: building a flexible platform for the Visionary
Cross project
Digital Humanities 2014
Lausanne, 7-12 July 2014
Roberto Rosselli Del Turco
Università di Torino / Università di Pisa
[email protected]@ling.unipi.it
Mixed data, mixed audience: the Visionary Cross project
The Visionary Cross Project
● an international project: University of Leeds, UK (C. Karkov) University of Lethbridge, CA (D. O’Donnell, J. Graham) Università di Torino, Italy (R. Rosselli Del Turco) ISTI-CNR, Italy (M. Callieri, M. Dellepiane)
● multidisciplinary approach● main goal: producing an integrated edition of
Anglo-Saxon monuments and texts● web site: http://www.visionarycross.org/
Mixed data, mixed audience: the Visionary Cross project
Ruthwell Cross
● Dumfriesshire, Scotland
● first half of VIII c.● site of an ancient
Roman fort● about 5.30m h● rectangular base● figurative panels● runic inscriptions● celtic decorations● 1642: pulled down
and broken● rebuilt 1802 by Rev.
Duncan● moved into the abse
in 1887
Mixed data, mixed audience: the Visionary Cross project
Ruthwell Church
Mixed data, mixed audience: the Visionary Cross project
Ruthwell Cross
Originally built outside the church, rebuilt in a close-by position, then moved inside
Mixed data, mixed audience: the Visionary Cross project
Bewcastle Cross
● Cumbria, England● first half of VIII c.● religious community
on the site of an ancient Roman fort
● about 4.50m h● square base● figurative panels● runic inscriptions● celtic decorations● sundial● weather/lychen
damages
Mixed data, mixed audience: the Visionary Cross project
Bewcastle Church
Mixed data, mixed audience: the Visionary Cross project
Bewcastle Church
Mixed data, mixed audience: the Visionary Cross project
Bewcastle Cross
Mixed data, mixed audience: the Visionary Cross project
Bewcastle Cross
Mixed data, mixed audience: the Visionary Cross project
The Brussels Cross
● St. Michael and Gudula Cathedral, Brussels, Belgium
● ancient reliquary end of X century
● about 46x28cm● wooden structure● front plate in gold,
stolen at the end of the XVIII c.
● silver foil on sides and back
● inscriptions in Old English on the sides
● symbols of the four evangelists
Mixed data, mixed audience: the Visionary Cross project
The Vercelli Book
● manuscript dating back to the end of the 10th century, containing miscellaneous religious works, in verse and prose
● 136 folios of very thin parchment● written by a single scribe in Anglo-Saxon square
minuscule● 23 homilies and 6 poetic works● together with Exeter Book, Ms Junius, Ms Cotton
Vitellius A XV one of the most important OE mss● still unclear how it arrived in Vercelli about XII c.● preserved in the Biblioteca Capitolare di Vercelli● a full scan is available thanks to the Digital
Vercelli Book project (http://vbd.humnet.unipi.it/)
Mixed data, mixed audience: the Visionary Cross project
The Vercelli Book
The Dream of the Rood Elene
Mixed data, mixed audience: the Visionary Cross project
Dumfries Peninsula
Mixed data, mixed audience: the Visionary Cross project
Complex relations among objects
Mixed data, mixed audience: the Visionary Cross project
Ruthwell Cross 2D/3D scan (April 2012)
Mixed data, mixed audience: the Visionary Cross project
The original plan
in the beginning, we envisioned an edition of the two standing crosses and of The Dream of the Rood
separate editions with links between 3D objects and poetic texts
navigation within a single web site, different UI for different objects
this plan proved inadequate, both because new objects were added, and above all for methodological reasons
specific technical problems also related with multidisciplinary issues
Mixed data, mixed audience: the Visionary Cross project
Chaos awaits … (courtesy of J. van Zundert)
Mixed data, mixed audience: the Visionary Cross project
1. Heterogeneous material
an edition of Anglo-Saxon texts together with the manuscript scans is not a particular problem (http://vbd.humnet.unipi.it/beta/)in the case of the Visionary Cross project, though, we have to deal with very different objects:
standing crosses → 3D modelsBrussels Cross → photos, 3D modelVercelli Book → manuscript scansrunic inscriptions → 3D, but also text (TEI XML)poetic texts → TEI XML
needed: a flexible environment to integrate the separate components and expose all the connections
critical feature: navigation, inter-object linking
Mixed data, mixed audience: the Visionary Cross project
Combining text and 3D model
Mixed data, mixed audience: the Visionary Cross project
Text and context
Mixed data, mixed audience: the Visionary Cross project
2. A single version for the edition?
a problem faced as soon as we had a working prototype
crucial question: who are our users? what are they going to do with the edition?
two extremes:
a simple 3D viewer based on the SpiderGL library (http://spidergl.org/)
Meshlab (http://meshlab.sourceforge.net/)
User Interface and navigation problems
different features available for different types of users? Is a unified UI going to work?
Mixed data, mixed audience: the Visionary Cross project
Measuring tools
Mixed data, mixed audience: the Visionary Cross project
Ligthing
Mixed data, mixed audience: the Visionary Cross project
Radiance scaling
Mixed data, mixed audience: the Visionary Cross project
Movement 1
Mixed data, mixed audience: the Visionary Cross project
Movement 2
Mixed data, mixed audience: the Visionary Cross project
Roadmap to the edition(s)
first step: “teaching edition” of RC
to be followed by a “research edition”, richer in functionality and with an adjusted UI → same code base, different widget offer/layout
a virtual environment on three levels:
outside church (Google Earth)
inside church (UDK)
single object (3D Viewer)
user testing: currently finishing a first trial, feedback is very important to us
Mixed data, mixed audience: the Visionary Cross project
Mixed data, mixed audience: the Visionary Cross project
Mixed data, mixed audience: the Visionary Cross project
Rune text experimental edition
Mixed data, mixed audience: the Visionary Cross project
Experimental readability enhancing
Mixed data, mixed audience: the Visionary Cross project
Experimental runic fragment edition in TEI XML
Mixed data, mixed audience: the Visionary Cross project
Ruthwell Church as a virtual environment
Mixed data, mixed audience: the Visionary Cross project
The final edition(s)
full 2D/3D integration, flexible UI
an open edition:
expansible framework
unnegotiated access to our data
a social edition:
local community
extended community
a distributed edition:
framework on different servers
MESA network (http://mesa-medieval.org/)
Mixed data, mixed audience: the Visionary Cross project
Conclusion
our roadmap may look … tentative
in our experience, though, it’s the only suitable path allowing us to build both the technical and methodological tools to deploy the edition
we will need quite a lot of experimenting and of user testing to refine the UI
all the more so when we will start to combine the different editions together (→ Bewcastle Cross scan)