www.iath.virginia.edu
pompeii.virginia.edu
www.iath.virginia.edu/blake
For more information
Worthy Martin, martin@virginia.edu
"New computing technologies are opening doors for researchers in the humanities," says John Unsworth, director of the Institute for Advanced Technology in the Humanities (IATH) and an associate professor of English at the University of Virginia. As in other disciplines, one of the obstacles to research in this area has to do with navigating large collections of data. Perhaps unique to the disciplines of the humanities, though, is that much of this information is in the form of objects and images--works of art, literary compositions, letters, artifacts, and photographs--whose description and representation is of great importance. In other words, the relationship between medium and message is integral, and to work with originals is desirable, but time-consuming, costly, and difficult.
The Pompeii Forum Project
Researchers create computer-generated models of buildings at Pompeii using photographs from the site.
IATH provides resources--consulting, technical support, help in applications programming, and access to networked publishing facilities--to Institute Fellows, who participate in Residence or over the Internet as Network Fellows. The result is a community of multidisciplinary research teams that combine the knowledge and expertise of faculty from the humanities with faculty and staff from engineering and computer science. Their intention is to help humanities scholars overcome barriers in their research by applying information technology. Solutions being developed involve 3-D models for visualization and analysis, collaborative virtual environments for exchanging ideas, and abstract mark-up--using, for example, SGML and XML--and collection organization for creating thematic archives comprising text, images, and other digital representations of original source material.
One recent IATH project--led by Edward L. Ayers, a professor of history at Virginia--collected volumes of source data on life during the Civil War. The data consisted of collections of letters, diaries, documents, and photographs, and was made possible in part by offering the citizens of two small towns--one north and one south of the Mason-Dixon line--the option of having their memorabilia scanned rather than parting with it. The researchers then created a database of the high-quality digital images generated. The collection is part of the multi-faceted "Valley of the Shadow" project.
But what of events that occurred outside the U.S., or so far back in history that finding descendants of the participants, much less their mementos, is virtually impossible?
The eruption of Mt. Vesuvius in 79 A.D.--which buried the Roman city of Pompeii beneath layers of volcanic ash and dust--is such an event, yet recreating daily life in the city is of interest to urban historians as well as engineers, archaeologists, and architects.
A project led by IATH Fellow John J. Dobbins, a professor of classical art and archaeology at Virginia, with Kirk Martini, a professor of architecture and civil engineering at Virginia--uses computers to make 3-D models of ancient structures found in the Pompeii Forum--the city's center. The models support an investigation into the nature of the reconstruction of the Forum following a severe earthquake 17 years prior to the Vesuvian eruption. For more than a hundred years, Pompeii scholars believed that the Forum lay in disrepair following the earthquake, and that the repair was not complete at the time of the eruption, reflecting civic decline. Recent research led by Dobbins has put forth a new interpretation, finding that the earthquake was used as an opportunity to create a stronger and more vital civic center.
The Pompeii researchers use a terrestrial photogrammetry program to create the building models. Photogrammetry uses photographs to derive 3-D geometry, that can be modeled with methods such as the Virtual Reality Modeling Language (VRML). The 3-D models in the Pompeii project are generated by the EOS Systems Photomodeler program. Surface textures from the photographs are mapped onto the model so that it shows not only geometry, but also surface material and texture, effectively creating a 3D photograph that can be viewed at any angle.
Since the forum structures require numerous photographs for reconstruction the interdisciplinary IATH research team has developed a "stitching" process that allows the modelers to create a large VRML model of a building by joining smaller models created with Photomodeler. Evidence gathered to date by the Pompeii Forum Project challenges commonly held and widely published notions about the evolution of the forum, especially during the final years of the city's life. The project aims to provide the first systematic documentation of the architecture and decoration of the forum and to interpret this evidence as it pertains to the city's urban history. According to Carroll William Westfall, an urban historian who has participated in the project, reading the remains of Pompeii also helps researchers studying how modern urban architecture supports city life and the well-being of its citizens.
Other projects in the humanities focus on places and events real only in the mind of their creator, as in works of literature. At times--as with the manuscripts of the British writer William Blake--the complete composition of a work includes not just text, but also prints or engravings. Consequently, to study Blake requires that the researcher investigate the interplay between words and images, both within an individual work and across the body of his works. The William Blake Archive project at IATH is doing just that. The project is sponsored by the Library of Congress and supported by the Getty Grant Program, IATH, Sun Microsystems, and Inso Corporation, with additional support from the Paul Mellon Center for Studies in British Art and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Indispensable to this research--and related to the Institute's mission to investigate and develop systems to facilitate the use of networks for collaborative editing and the presentation of visual and textual materials--is the creation of a thematic archive. The archive is a collection of primary materials and authoritative secondary materials focused on a specific author, artist, or theme--in this case, Blake.
A separate IATH project led by Worthy Martin, a professor of computer science and engineering at Virginia, has developed the INote tool to present primary materials and enable researchers to peruse and contribute to the associated secondary materials within the thematic archive over the Web. Through a Java application, the researcher can annotate images with text, audio, or other images, using one or more overlays.
The tool has been incorporated into the Blake project, central to which is a collection of scanned images from approximately 55 key copies of Blake's 19 illuminated books, about half of which have never been reproduced before. Altogether, the archive will contain approximately 3,000 images, about two-thirds from the illuminated books, the remaining one-third from Blake's paintings, drawings, and engravings. By incorporating much of Blake's pictorial canon--with images indexed by subject, date, and theme--and by providing the historical, technical, and aesthetic contexts necessary to study Blake as a printmaker, artist, and poet, the archive will support a deeper, more responsible understanding of his aims and methods.
Illuminated works currently available through the William Blake Archive include All Religions are One, There is No Natural Religion, The Book of Thel, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, Visions of the Daughters of Albion, America: a Prophecy, Songs of Innocence and of Experience, Europe: a Prophecy, The First Book of Urizen, The Song of Los, The Book of Los, The Book of Ahania, and Milton, a Poem.