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Projects

Screen capture from the Medieval Color Comes to Life mobile app. Image Credit: Mark Olson

Medieval Color Comes to Light

  • Objects
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Medieval Color Comes to Light

Project Lead(s):

Mark J. V. Olson,

Caroline Bruzelius

2012 – 2016

The Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University holds four pieces of an important ensemble of Romanesque figural sculpture. These four apostles, along with two others at the Rhode Island School of Design Museum of Art, another at the Smith College Museum of Art, and one more apostle and an angel at the Memorial Art Gallery at the University of Rochester, were originally part of a 12th-century Ascension scene, probably on the exterior of a church, that would have been comprised of at least fourteen figures. Unfortunately, several pieces of the original group have been lost, but other evidence remains.

The initial goals of this project were to recontextualize the figures at Duke by recreating a hypothesis of their original arrangement and proposing a hypothesis of color for the girues in order to better understand how polychromy creates and enhances particular visual effects. Meg Williams (Trinity ’12) and Katrina Robelo (Trinity ’12) thus drew upon conservation reports of the surviving sculptures, as well as Medieval manuscript illuminations to visualize these apostles as they might have originally appeared.

Following the initial project, the team developed an installation piece, Medieval Color Comes to Light, an app that enabled museum visitors to digitally recolor the four apostles in order to see for themselves how the statues might have originally appeared.

Animation showing the Medieval Color Comes to Life app prototype.
Animation showing the Medieval Color Comes to Life app prototype.


Banner Image: Screen capture from Medieval Color Comes to Light. Image credit: Mark J. V. Olson

Past Collaborators

Sinan Goknur
Katrina Robelo (Trinity ’12)
Guillermo Sapiro
Mariano Tepper
Meg Williams (Trinity ’12)

Related Projects

Alife Arch App
Art of the Americas Initiative
Operating Archives
The Lives of Things

Scholarship

In The Media

“Medieval Art Gets a Modern Twist.” Duke Today. December 8, 2015

Hypothetical floor plan for a setting in The Case of Charles Dexter Ward. Image credit: Victoria Szabo & Cosimo Monteleone

Visualizing Lovecraft’s Providence

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Visualizing Lovecraft’s Providence

Project Lead(s): Cosimo Monteleone,

Victoria Szabo

2019 – present

This project explores the use of historical and cultural visualization techniques to instantiate the imagined Providence, Rhode Island of author H.P. Lovecraft. H.P. Lovecraft famously declared, “I am Providence,” an epitaph inscribed on his tombstone. Drawing from detailed descriptions of city streets, vanished and current architectures, spooky interiors, urban denizens, and otherworldly intruders, Lovecraft creates a multi-layered, evocative, and at times disturbing imagined world of the city. By highlighting the spatial features of his writing, and the ways in which expressionist landscapes evoke an apprehensive appreciation of his world view, we are examining the potential of spatial media for a new kind of literary criticism and interpretive adaptation. Our first example will focus on The Case of Charles Dexter Ward, which combines early 18th-century action with early 20th-century scenes closer to Lovecraft’s own experience of the city.

Banner Image: Hypothetical floor plan for a setting in The Case of Charles Dexter Ward. Image credit: Victoria Szabo & Cosimo Monteleone

Composite image showing the MONADII augmented reality app's design, interaction in VR, and mobile interface.

Augmenting Scoletta del Carmine

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Augmenting Scoletta del Carmine

MONADII: Methodologies and Best Practice for Non-Destructive Approaches to Interoperable Design and Management of Cultural Heritage

Project Lead(s): Rachele Bernardello, Emanuela Faresin, Mirka Dalla Longa, Guilia Piccinin, Cosimo Monteleone, Andrea Giordano

January 2018 – May 2018

This research project, in part developed in the Wired! Lab at Duke University, celebrates the Scoletta del Carmine, a fifteenth-century space that originally functioned as the seat of the Carmelite confraternity in Padua, Italy. The historical research and digital surveys (photogrammetry, laser scans, geo-radar, and thermo-camera imagery) have formed the basis for a digital reconstruction of the Scoletta in relationship to the adjacent church of Santa Maria del Carmine. The interior reconstruction benefits from the scientific analysis of the frescoes, namely the perspectival restitution of the imagery, which has enabled 3D modeling of the painted spaces and fictive architecture. This data is presented in three different Virtual Reality platforms, the Oculus Rift, the Cave (Duke DiVE), and web VR. Beginning in July 2018, these dynamic and multi-sensory experiences can be enjoyed by the broad and varied public who visits the Scoletta in Padua, part of an academic/touristic itinerary developed by the School of Architecture and Engineering at the University of Padua.

Old Stones and New Technologies

  • Objects
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Old Stones and New Technologies

Computer Vision and Medieval Stone Carving

Project Lead(s): Carlo Tomasi,

Caroline Bruzelius

2012 – 2015

This project was a Humanities Writ Large funded initiative between Professors Caroline Bruzelius and Carlo Tomasi. It focused on capturing data on medieval chisel marks through photography in order to analyze chisel marks and process in the carving of stones for medieval sculpture and buildings.

Simon Verity, a stone carver from St. John the Divine, visited Duke to give students, graduate students & faculty experience in stone cutting. It was featured on Duke Today. Photo by Jared Lazarus/Duke University Photography.

Professor Caroline Bruzelius (Art, Art History & Visual Studies) led a team of Duke undergraduate students on a research trip to Naples over Spring break 2013. They used the opportunity to test a new data capture system for use with medieval masonry, working primarily in the church of San Lorenzo, a Franciscan basilica in the heart of medieval Naples. The students experimented with an analytic system for the study of historic buildings through pattern recognition, data mining, and texture analysis. Their research worked with computational analytics to examine the surface textures left by masons on building stones in order to extract information on the technology of stonecutting, possibly identify individual masons (tool marks are like signatures), and eventually provide educated estimates on the size of the labor force.

This project was part of a multi-year research and teaching initiative that resulted in independent research and senior distinction theses for undergraduates. The student team worked closely with Professor Bruzelius and Professor Carlo Tomasi (Computer Science) to collect data, develop and eventually test the new analytic systems with the intention of creating a systematic protocol for the study of walls, carved surfaces (flat and curved) and masonry construction in historic buildings and eventually sculpture.

Banner Image: Sculptor Simon Verity works with Timothy Shea (PhD ’18). Image Credit: Kyle Wilkinson.

Past Collaborators

Simon Verity

Related Projects

Decoding Artifacts

Funding & Sponsorship

Humanities Writ Large (2013)

Images in clockwise order of a book, circular arrows, puzzle piece, and two humans. Image Credit: Hannah L. Jacobs

Visualizing Objects, Places, and Spaces

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Visualizing Objects, Places, and Spaces

A Digital Project Handbook

Project Lead(s): Beth Fischer,

Hannah L. Jacobs

2019 – present

Website

Beth Fischer (Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow in Digital Humanities at the Williams College Museum of Art) and Hannah L. Jacobs (Digital Humanities Specialist, Wired! Lab, Duke University) have set out to gather and share a digital project handbook with researchers and instructors in the early stages of digital project development. The outcome-in-progress is a peer-reviewed open resource we are designing to fill the gap between platform-specific tutorials and disciplinary discourse in digital humanities.

This web publication offers guidance on workflows, resources, and computational principles; topics applicable to many types of projects, including those that arise in archival, dimensional, narrative, quantitative, spatial, temporal, and network visualization projects; modular, downloadable content, allowing users to build custom annotated guides.

Scholarship

Jacobs, Hannah L., and Beth Fischer. “Visualizing Objects, Places, and Spaces: A Digital Project Handbook.” [Presentation & Workshop] Digital Humanities Collaborative Institute. University of North Carolina at Greensboro, March 5-6, 2020. Jacobs, Hannah L., and Beth Ficsher. “Visualizing Objects, Places, and Spaces: A Digital Project Handbook.” Poster to have been presented at Digital Humanities 2020 (cancelled), University of Ottawa, Ottawa, Canada, July 2020. http://dx.doi.org/10.17613/ahxm-9s52.

A screen capture from Venice Virtual World, built in Second Life.

Venice Virtual World

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Venice Virtual World

Project Lead(s): Nicola Lercari,

Kristin Love Huffman

2013 – 2015

This project has recreated the life of Venice; its buildings, bridges, boats, gardens, and inhabitants; in a 3-D virtual environment. The focus is on the now completely transformed zone of the city around the train station. Using old maps, plans, and costume books, students have reconstructed Venice as it appeared in 1740. The outcome was a navigable virtual world and interactive narrative built in Second Life.

Banner Image: A screen capture from Venice Virtual World, built in Second Life.

Past Collaborators

Meng’En Huang
Bobby Liu
Sherry Liu
Ting Lu
Jimmy Zhang

Related Projects

A Portrait of Venice
Senses of Venice
Water and Food in Venice

Logo for The Medieval Kingdom of Sicily Image Database. Image Credit: Jack Edinger

The Medieval Kingdom of Sicily Image Database

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The Medieval Kingdom of Sicily Image Database

Project Lead(s): Paola Vitolo,

Caroline Bruzelius

2011 – 2023

Website

Note: this project was transferred to The Edith O’Donnell Institute of Art History in 2023. You can access the database and find current information about the project here.

The Medieval Kingdom of Sicily Image Database is a geo-referenced database of historic images from the 15th through the mid-20th centuries that represents the medieval monuments and cities constructed by the rulers of the historic Kingdom of Sicily: the Normans, the Hohenstaufen, the Swabians, and the Angevins. The kings and queens of these dynasties, who ruled from the late 11th until the early 15th centuries, were active patrons of the arts, founding, building, and decorating hundreds of abbeys, churches, castles, and other kinds of monuments. Our database identifies, collects, and illustrates images that are found in museums, libraries, archives, and publications throughout Europe and the United States as an aid for travelers and scholars. The images, which were often produced by traveling artists and architects as part of the Grand Tour, document the appearance of these historic structures prior to their transformation (or destruction) as the result of Baroque remodeling, urban expansion, earthquakes, the tragic aerial bombardment of WWII, and dramatic restoration.

The database is organized topographically by location. Mapping components “Map View” and “Map Research Questions” permit users to visualize their queries of the database in relation to Roman roads and ports, many of which were still the primary means of access to the Kingdom in the Middle Ages. Information about the website is available both in Italian and English.

Our purpose is to make as many historic images available to the public for research and study as possible. This initiative was originally created with funds from 2011-2014 from The National Endowment for the Humanities; although we are currently not funded, we continue to receive IT and data management support from Duke University.

Follow @medieval.kosid on Instagram to see the latest student research:

Screen capture of The Medieval Kingdom of Sicily Image Database's Instagram account.

Banner Image: Logo for The Medieval Kingdom of Sicily Image Database. Design Credit: Jack Edinger

Current Collaborators

Alex Pieroni
William Broom
Francesco Gangemi
Olga Grlic
John Herr
Hannah L. Jacobs
Emma Keaton
Brenden Li
Julia Nasco
Jules Nasco
Satya Khurana
John T. Taormina
David Tremmel
Joseph Williams

Past Collaborators

Jessica Edelson
Adriano Napoli
Brian Norberg
Jessica Williams

Scholarship

Books & Book Chapters

  • Bruzelius, Caroline. “Imperialism, Orientalism, and the North European Encounter with Palermo.” In Chiaromonte. Lusso, prestigio, politica e guerra nella Sicilia del Trecento Un restauro verso il future. Palermo, 2020. Exhibition catalog.

Articles

  • Bruzelius, C., and P. Vitolo. “Recovering the Architectural Patrimony of South Italy: The Medieval Kingdom of Sicily Image Database.” Archeologia e Calcolatori Supplemento 10 (2018): 15-28. doi:10.19282/ACS.10.2018.02.
  • Bruzelius, Caroline, and Paola Vitolo, Joseph C. Williams. “Historical Images and the Recovery of the Past. The Medieval Kingdom of Sicily Image Database.” In 7th AIUCD congress (Italian Association for Digital Humanities): Patrimoni culturali nell’era digitale. Memorie, culture umanistiche e tecnologia/Cultural Heritage in the Digital Age. Memory, Humanities and Technologies, Bologna, Italy, (2018): 135-138.
  • Bruzelius, Caroline, and Paola Vitolo. “The Medieval Kingdom of Sicily Image Database.” Visual Resources 35, no. 1-2 (2019): 74-87. doi:10.1080/01973762.2019.1558994.
  • Bruzelius, Caroline, and Paola Vitolo.”The Medieval Kingdom of Sicily Image Database.” Archeologia e Calcolatori no. 27 (2016): 107-130. doi:10.19282/AC.27.2016.06.
  • Bruzelius, Caroline. “The Norman Cathedral of Sant’Agata in Catania,” L’Officina dello sguardo. Scritti in onore di Maria Andaloro. Rome, 121-126.
  • Bruzelius, Caroline. “Visualizing the Medieval Past. The Kingdom of Sicily Image Database Project.” Quei maledetti normani. Studi offerti a Errico Cuozzo per i suoi settant’anni. 109-116.
  • Vitolo, Paola, and Caroline Bruzelius. “Recovering the Architectural Patrimony of South Italy: The Medieval Kingdm of Sicily Image Database.” In “Progetti Digitali per la storia dell’arte medievale / Digital projects in Medieval Art History,” supplement, Archeologia e Calcolatori no. 10 (2018): 15-28.
  • Vitolo, Paola. “Il Medioevo illustrato nella Sicilia di Gustavo Chiesi (1892).” ArchHistory, ed. Bruno Mussari and Giuseppina Scamardì. 2019.
  • Vitolo, Paola. “Il Medioevo illustrato nella Sicilia di Gustavo Chiesi (1892).” In “Il Sud Italia: schizzi e appunti di viaggio. L’interpretazione dell’immagine, la ricerca di una identità,” supplement, ArcHistoR 11, no. 5 (2019): 396-435.
  • Vitolo, Paola. “Il Medioevo, il paesaggio, le città: evocazione, interpretazione, documentazione. Il progetto The Medieval Kingdom of Sicily Image Database.” 8th AISU Congress (Associazione Italiana di Storia Urbana- Italian Association for Urban History: La città, il viaggio, il turismo. Percezione, produzione e trasformazione La città, il viaggio, il turismo, Napoli, Italy, (2017): 731-736.
  • Vitolo, Paola. “The Kingdom of Sicily Database Project.” Virtual Museum of Archaeological Computing. 2016.
  • Vitolo, Paola. “Un contributo allo studio del patrimonio artistico e architettonico dell’Italia meridionale: il progetto The Medieval Kingdom of Sicily Image Database.” The international seminar Università degli studi di Catania, Dipartimento di Architettura: Sicily through foreign eyes: travelling architects/La Sicilia nello sguardo degli altri: architetti in viaggio, Siracusa, Italy (2017): 304-321.

Presentations

  • Bruzelius, Caroline, and Paola Vitolo. “Why Make an Image Database? Digital Tools and New Perspectives in Art History.” Centro per la Storia dell’Arte e dell’Architettura delle Città Portuali. December 11, 2020.
  • Bruzelius, Caroline, William Broom, and John Taormina. “The Medieval Kingdom of Sicily Image Database Project: From Conceptual Design to Management.” Paper presented at Digital Matters in Medieval and Renaissance Studies, Duke University, Durham, NC, April 6-7, 2018.
  • Bruzelius, Caroline. “Robert Willis and Architectural Taxonomy.” Paper presented at the International Congress: Sant’Andrea di Vercelli e il Gotico Europeo all’inizio del Duecento, Vercelli, Italy, May 29-June 1, 2019.
  • Bruzelius, Caroline. “The Kingdom of Sicily Image Database: Creating a Scholarly Resource.” Paper presented at Australia National University, Canberra, Australia, November 2, 2015.
  • Bruzelius, Caroline. “What is Architectural History? The Neapolitan Drawings of Robert Willis (1800-1875) and the Origins of Architectural Analysis.” Paper presented at the Dipartimento di Architettura, Università di Napoli Federico II, Naples, Italy, December 2, 2019.
  • Taormina, John J. “Project Creation: Making Concept into Reality,” in The Medieval Kingdom of Sicily Image Database Project: From Conceptual Design to Management. Symposium on Digital matters in Medieval and Renaissance Studies. Duke University, April 2018.
  • Vitolo, Paola, and Joseph C. Williams. “Historical Images and the Recovery of the Past. The Medieval Kingdom of Sicily Image Database.” Paper presented at the 7th AIUCD Congress (Italian Association for Digital Humanities): “Cultural Heritage in the Digital Age. Memory, Humanities and Technologies,” Università degli studi di Bari, January 31-February 2, 2018.
  • Vitolo, Paola. “I viaggiatori stranieri e la scoperta dei monumenti medievali siciliani: l’esperienza del progetto The Kingdom of Sicily Image Database.” Paper presented at Sicily through foreign eyes: travelling architects. La Sicilia nello sguardo degli altri: architetti in viaggio, Università degli studi di Catania, Dipartimento di Architettura, Siracusa, Italy, May 18-19, 2017.
  • Vitolo, Paola. “Il Medioevo, il paesaggio, le città: evocazione, interpretazione, documentazione. Il progetto The Medieval Kingdom of Sicily Image Database.” Paper presented at the 8th AISU Congress (Associazione Italiana di Storia Urbana – Italian Association of Urban History), La città, il viaggio, il turismo, Percezione, produzione e trasformazione, Napoli, Italy, September 7-9, 2017.

Reviews

  • “The Medieval Kingdom of Sicily Image Database.” ARLIS/NA Multimedia Technology Reviews. “The Medieval Kingdom of Sicily Image Database.” ICMA Newsletter, Summer 2017, nr 2. “The Medieval Kingdom of Sicily Image Database.” Mary Jahari Center.

Funding & Sponsorship

  • The National Endowment for the Humanities (2011-2014)
  • IT and data management support from Duke University (2011-present)

The Lives of Things

  • Objects
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The Lives of Things

Using new technologies to reconstruct contexts and meanings of places, spaces, and objects

Project Lead(s):

Mark J. V. Olson,

Caroline Bruzelius

2012 – present

The goal of the Lives of Things project is to create new interactive displays and hybrid digital/physical exhibition platforms that reconstruct the location, color, and meaning of works of art in the collections of the Nasher Museum of Art. A wide range of interests and interdisciplinary expertise are sought for this project, from Art History and Visual and Media Studies to Computer Science and Engineering. Students will work in teams in close collaboration with professors and graduate students or post-docs, learning an array of techniques and technologies that include the following: 3D modeling and acquisition using laser scanning and photogrammetry, geospatial mapping, augmented reality, gaming platforms, projection mapping, spatial analysis, data visualization, web or app design, writing, graphic design, database design and management, computer programming, interactive sensors, and gesture recognition interfaces such as Kinect and Leap Motion. The first of these exhibitions was Medieval Color Comes to Light, an app that enabled visitors to digitally recolor four pieces of an important ensemble of Romanesque figural sculpture in the Nasher Museum of Art’s collection in order to see for themselves how the statues might have originally appeared.

Banner Image: Screen capture from Medieval Color Comes to Light. Image credit: Mark J. V. Olson

Past Collaborators

Guillermo Sapiro
Mariano Tepper

Related Projects

Alife Arch App
Art of the Americas Initiative
Medieval Color Comes to Light
Operating Archives

Images of the J. B. Duke statue on West Campus. Image Credit: The Duke Chronicle; Duke University Libraries.

Statues Speak

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Statues Speak

Project Lead(s): Elizabeth Baltes,

Sheila Dillon

2015 – 2017

Website

Statues are all around us, but we often walk past them without reflecting on who or what they represent. Once shiny new landmarks in the built environment, statues can become invisible over time. In our hurry to get from one place to another, we do not stop to read the inscriptions that often tell us why the statue was set up. In any case, the information given on the statue base is only part of the story. Statues can “speak” to us in many ways, but what if we could actually give them a voice? What would they want to tell us about themselves? This project, a collaboration between undergraduate students and faculty at Duke University and Coastal Carolina University, aims to help statues speak, to help them tell their own stories. By combining historical research with mobile and web technologies, we will present the “autobiographies” of the statues on Duke ‘s campus, exploring how they fit into the fabric of Duke ‘s history and the long-standing practice of setting up honorific portrait statues. View a time map version of the project.

Video research and script by Darrah Panzarella.

Past Collaborators

Hannah L. Jacobs
Christy Kuesel
Darrah Panzarella
Edward Triplett
Mary Kate Weggeland
Jessica Williams

Scholarship

In The Media

  • Kwon, Ashley. “Wired! Lab’s ‘Statues Speak’ brings the legacy of campus monuments to life.” The Duke Chronicle.  March 28, 2018. Hubbard, Lucas. “Not Cast In Stone.” Duke Magazine. (Summer 2018): 10-11.

Still from a 3D parallax animation using historic imagery to show Venetian boats entering and exiting the city.

Senses of Venice

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Senses of Venice

Project Lead(s):

Kristin Love Huffman

2017 – 2019

Website

This project brings to life the first accurate map of Venice produced in 1729 by Ludovico Ughi. Printed in sections, it included sixteen vignettes of notable sites and a legend of important locations within the city. Sold to visitors, especially those coming to Venice as part of the Grand Tour and lavish parties of Carnival, this map was printed in a transportable album format that could be cut out and reassembled upon arrival back home. Working with the document in its original format, the team will animate and contextualize the newly acquired version at the Rubenstein Library at Duke University. The map and its story will form the centerpiece of an exhibition in 2019 at Duke Libraries that celebrates the collection’s rare Venetian books.

Banner Image: Still from a 3D parallax animation using historic imagery to show Venetian boats entering and exiting the city. Image Credit: Senses of Venice

Past Collaborators

Lizzet Clifton
Hannah L. Jacobs
Noah Michaud
Angela Tawfik
Mary Kate Weggeland
Cristina Zago
David Zielinski

Related Projects

A Portrait of Venice
Venice Virtual World
Water and Food in Venice

Scholarship

Presentations

  • Michaud, Noah. “Mapping Social and Spatial Encounters in Eighteenth-Century Venice.” Poster presented at the College Art Association Conference, Chicago, IL, February 14, 2020.
  • Michaud, Noah. “Mapping Social and Spatial Encounters in Eighteenth-Century Venice.” Paper presented at the State of North Carolina Undergraduate Research & Creativity Symposium, Duke University, Durham, NC, November 23, 2019.
  • Tawfik, Angela. “Senses of Venice. Rosalba Carriera and the Politics of Pastel Portraiture.” Paper presented at the Undergraduate Research Symposium, Duke University, Durham, NC, April 22, 2019.
  • Weggeland, Mary Kate. “The Rise of Print Culture in Early Modern Venice.” Paper presented at the Undergraduate Research Symposium, Duke University, Durham, NC, April 22, 2019.

Funding & Sponsorship

  • Furthermore Grant Publication Subvention (2020-21)
  • Gladys Krieble Delmas Foundation Publication Subvention (2020-21)
  • Renaissance Society of America, Samuel Kress Art History Award (2020-21)