Rosselli Del Turco - Mixed data, mixed audience [dh 2014]

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

roberto.rossellidelturco@unito.itrosselli@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)