Field of Focus III - Funded projects Pilot study to optimize digital presentations of movable image and text formats

Project leader:

Prof. Dr. Melanie Trede (Institute of East Asian Art History)

Funding line:

Core facilities

 

Japanese illuminated hand scrolls from the fourteenth to the seventeenth centuries serve as case studies for this pilot study to develop innovative digital presentation forms of monumental and movable image formats.

The materiality of hand scrolls requires physical contact and direct interaction: the scrolls have to be unrolled with both hands so as to reveal the calligraphy and painting passages, while the viewer chooses the sections of interest herself. The static fixation of text and image parts in the digital display of databases proves thus to be inadequate for such interactive artifacts.

Based on HyperImage and newly to be developed digital methods for the dynamic presentation and publication of scientific findings, this project seeks to improve the academic infrastructure for interdisciplinary research and to overcome disciplinary, linguistic and regional boundaries. Next to the transliteration and translation of the texts passages as well as annotations and full searchability, a direct comparison between two or more scrolls of several aspects including materiality, iconography, calligraphy ecc. is intended.

This project is a cooperation between Heidelberg University’s Institute of East Asian Art History, the Heidelberg Research Architecture (HRA) at the Cluster of Excellence “Asia and Europe,” and the Collaborative Research Centre (SFB 933) "Material Text Cultures"  as well as the software developer bitGilde IT Solutions UG, Berlin.