Rinascimento

DECIMA is three things: first, it is a searchable spatial database that plots 1561 census data onto Buonsignori's 1584 map of Florence—in other words, it enables unprecedentedly granular research upon 16th-century-Florence locational, social, and economic data. Second, DECIMA is a hub for international collaborators and a clearinghouse for projects that touch upon Florence, the Renaissance, and the spatial humanities. We are always looking for new partners and new and interesting ways to collaborate. Finally, DECIMA is entering the realm of 3D visualization: the development of an interactive tool which will help scholars better understand urban space and the sensory and experiential aspects of 16th-century Florence.
Contact: University of Toronto, Department of History.

This project elaborates a detailed cognitive semantic analysis of the diverse historio- and geographical descriptions in Biondo's Italia Illustrata. It also presents various mapping processes that operate to build and link mental spaces. The general assumption is that different knowledge systems of spatial encodings and duration are implicit or tacit. This approach is guided by cognitive semantic analysis based on visual perception and mental space theories in addition to computational linguistic annotation and parsing techniques as well as analyses of contemporary maps. This collaborative and interdisciplinary project is situated at the Bibliotheca Hertziana/MPI Rome under the auspices of Prof. Dr. Tanja Michalsky, History of Arts, Prof. Dr. Klaus Geus, Free University of Berlin, Department of History and Cultural Studies, Prof. Dr. Günther Görz, FAU Erlangen-Nurnberg, Computer Science Department, and PD Dr. Martin Thiering, Technical University of Berlin, Department of Linguistics.

The digital project Mapping Sculpture explores the relationship between art and nature during the early modern period. Mapping Sculpture traces the movement of the materials of sixteenth-century Italian sculpture from sources such as mountains, caves, and rivers to storage areas, artists' workshops, early modern installation sites and private collections, and to current museum locations. Through spatial analysis, this project draws attention to the removal of materials from the natural environment and to the movement of materials and completed artworks. GIS tools are used to analyze the displacement of materials (in terms of volume and distance), and the fragmentation, disappearance, and duration of these materials at the locations that they inhabited over time. An interactive map will allow users to interrogate the relationships between geological and geographical origins and various subsequent locations, such as these gardens. By visualizing the spatial and material history of sculptures, the map encourages users to critically evaluate the environmental consequences of early modern artistic practices.
Contact: Catherine Walsh, cwalsh@montevallo.edu

The Recusant Print Network Project (TRPNP) is a project investigating the printing of recusant material both in traditional locations like Douai, Rome, etc. and the level to which this material was clandestinely produced in England at the time of high-recusancy. This project uses metadata scrapped from the EEBO-TCP and is in an early phase, but some early conclusions are available in the essays page and in the discussions surrounding the available visualizations.
Contact: Jordan S. Sly, University of Maryland

Using the digital files derived from one medieval manuscript (a Middle English Prose Brut chronicle), we are exploring the tools for born-digital research. How many different kinds of questions can we ask? The project aims to provide comparative analyses that deepen our understanding of how digital processing is shaping our historical imagination.
Contact: Michelle R. Warren, Dartmouth College

LayerCake, a 3-axis mapping tool enabling users to build maps layering narrative, time, and space simultaneously, is currently under development at the Aga Khan Documentation Center at MIT Libraries. In LayerCake, latitude and longitude are mapped on the horizontal axes while time is mapped on the vertical axis. The scale of the time axis is remapped to accommodate the chronological span of items on the map. Users may explore the map by panning, orbiting, and zooming their point of view. They may also click on map items for detailed information.
The prototype of LayerCake documents the hajj of Ibn Jubayr--a twelfth century pilgrim--through an analysis of his Rihla (Travels). Referencing Ibn Jubayr’s text in the left column (by date, place, and chapter), the sites and cities he visited on pilgrimage are displayed as points in geographic and temporal space; wherever possible, cities or sites are linked to Archnet--AKDC’s globally-accessible research portal focused on architecture, urbanism, and material/visual culture of Muslim societies--for context and further exploration. The nature of Ibn Jubayr’s writings allowed the LayerCake development team to add a fourth dimension, the notion of ghurba, or separation, in both physical and emotional states of the traveler including the sense of foreignness, homelessness, loneliness, separation, estrangement, alienation, or being out of place: Ibn Jubayr’s ghurba is revealed through the use of color on this map.
LayerCake will be released as an open source tool and it is our intention that the tool be used by scholars, researchers, and students to tell stories, display collections, and reveal complex temporal and geographic relationships in ways that purely spatial maps cannot.
For more information, comments, or suggestions, please contact the project PI, Sharon C. Smith, Ph.D., at scsmith@mit.edu or layercake@mit.edu.

Books of Duchesses: Mapping Women Book Owners in Francophone Europe, 1350-1550, collects, organizes, and presents data related to late-medieval laywomen and their books. Through an interactive map of Europe, users are able to visualize networks of manuscripts, texts, and readers and explore the libraries and peregrinations of woman book owners. The data collected in the project has the potential to shift scholarly paradigms by challenging narratives of national literary history and uncovering the active role played by women in creating, consuming literary and material culture and in circulating texts across national, geographic, and generational borders.
Names: Dr. S.C. Kaplan (Independent Scholar) and Dr. Sarah Wilma Watson (Haverford College). Contact: booksofduchesses@gmail.com