Transforming structured descriptions to visual representations. An automated visualization of historical bookbinding structures.

In cultural heritage, the documentation of artefacts can be both iconographic and textual, i.e. both pictures and drawings on the one hand, and text and words on the other are used for documentation purposes. This research project aims to produce a methodology to transform automatically verbal descriptions of material objects, with a focus on bookbinding structures, into standardized and scholarly-sound visual representations. In the last few decades, the recording and management of documentation data about material objects, including bookbindings, has switched from paper-based archives to databases, but sketches and diagrams are a form of documentation still carried out mostly by hand. Diagrams hold some unique information, but often, also redundant information already secured through verbal means within the databases. This project proposes a methodology to harness verbal information stored within a database and automatically generate visual representations. A number of projects within the cultural heritage sector have applied semantic modelling to generate graphic outputs from verbal inputs. None of these has considered bookbindings and none of these relies on information already recorded within databases. Instead they develop an extra layer of modelling and typically gather more data, specifically for the purpose of generating a pictorial output. In these projects qualitative data (verbal input) is often mixed with quantitative data (measurements, scans, or other direct acquisition methods) to solve the problems of indeterminateness found in verbal descriptions. Also, none of these projects has attempted to develop a general methodology to ascertain the minimum amount ii of information that is required for successful verbal-to-visual transformations for material objects in other fields. This research has addressed these issues. The novel contributions of this research include: (i) a series of methodological recommendations for successful automated verbal-to-visual intersemiotic translations for material objects — and bookbinding structures in particular — which are possible when whole/part relationships, spatial configurations, the object’s logical form, and its prototypical shapes are communicated; (ii) the production of intersemiotic transformations for the domain of bookbinding structures; (iii) design recommendations for the generation of standardized automated prototypical drawings of bookbinding structures; (iv) the application — never considered before — of uncertainty visualization to the field of the archaeology of the book. This research also proposes the use of automatically generated diagrams as data verification tools to help identify meaningless or wrong data, thus increasing data accuracy within databases

Bookbinding Information on the Web: Breaking the Circle, from Pixels to Linked Open Data

The “Digital Heritage: Spotlight on Europe” column examines technological advances internal and external to cultural institutions. The digital shift changed radically how cultural heritage is made, disseminated, distributed, accessed, consumed, and monetized. One of the most important revolutions is that the user's role changed dramatically, shifting from passive observers to active participants and content producers with many new and exciting opportunities for engagement, creative use, and access. The strength of the column is its broad, international focus, and contributors are encouraged to explore issues and recent advances in digital heritage theories, methodologies, standards relevant to the European region, as well as the larger, global audience. Interested authors are invited to submit proposals and articles to the column editor at [email protected]. Please include “ILLR submission” in the subject line of the e-mail. Research on historical bookbindings has suffered both for reasons internal to the discipline and external. Internally, the almost exclusive focus on decorated bindings has hindered the development of methodologies to describe any kind of bookbinding, which externally, in turn, has impeded cataloguers from describing these objects—their structures in particular—creating a vicious circle in the production of resources on bookbindings. After having analyzed the state of the art of bookbinding resources, we propose that the implementation of semantic web technologies may offer a way to break the bookbinding resource vicious circle

‘My Mother Tongue Is a Foreign Language’:On Edmond Jabès’s Writing in Exile

This chapter examines Edmond Jabès, who chose to write his oeuvre in French despite his Jewish-Arabic origins and his being conversant in both Hebrew and Arabic. French was never a true ‘mother tongue’ to him but rather ‘a foreign one’. This poetical choice was also instrumental to his creation of a cosmos that is very clearly defined by la page blanche, or the ‘blank page’. His writing develops this idea, both literally and metaphorically. A blank sheet is the only thing a writer has to work with at the start of every writing act, therefore it represents a kind of material opposition that all writers must overcome. It represents in this context an existential nothingness that precedes and simultaneously escapes both human and divine creation. In Jabès’s writings, a blank page has two connotations at once: a condition for writing and nothingness. This ambivalent condition results in the paradoxical assumption that his ‘mother tongue is a foreign language’, because it cannot offer the same spiritual intimacy as another language, say, the Holy Language, and because the writer’s ‘mother tongue’ — and, by extension, human language — is always impure and infiltrated by foreignness.Federico Dal Bo, ‘“My Mother Tongue Is a Foreign Language’: On Edmond Jabès”s Writing in Exile’, in Untying the Mother Tongue, ed. by Antonio Castore and Federico Dal Bo, Cultural Inquiry, 26 (Berlin: ICI Berlin Press, 2023), pp. 45-83 <https://doi.org/10.37050/ci-26_3

Towards an archaeology of Dusklands

This essay seeks to explore the question of origins: the beginnings of the literary career of arguably South Africa's most significant author, and the development of a form of authorship that was, at its inception, situated both locally and globally. An archaeology of the publication history of the debut novel Dusklands (1974) can shed light on the emergence of a particularly complex form of transnational authorship that J. M. Coetzee came to assume, a form locating itself within the South African literary landscape while simultaneously connecting itself to broader international literary currents.Department of HE and Training approved lis

Puošnu ir praktiška: XVI a. viduryje – XVII a. pirmojoje pusėje Italijoje ir Abiejų Tautų Respublikoje spausdintų knygų įrišai Vilniaus jėzuitų akademijos bibliotekoje

In the early modern period, the relentless growth in the copies of printed books and the increasing competition between craftsmen meant that, since the invention of Gutenberg until the 19th&nbsp;century, European bookbinders were forced to look for cheaper and quicker binding techniques. Based on this assumption, the article focuses on some of the bindings of books printed from the middle of the 16th&nbsp;until the middle of the 17th&nbsp;century which belonged to the library of Vilnius Jesuit Academy. This study is part of a broader research on the bindings of the Vilnius Jesuit Academy Library, and the article is limited to two groups of sources: books printed in Italy and books printed in the Kingdom of Poland and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania (Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth). The historical bindings are discussed by following the approach targeting the field of decorative arts and material culture studies, which is also well&nbsp;known as the ‘archaeology’ of the book or the bookbinding. It focuses not only on the decorative features of the cover of the book, but also on the structural features of the bindings which reveal comprehensively the work of the craftsmen of the past. This method of analysis is particularly useful for discussing not only decorated but also undecorated bindings which have so far received very limited attention in the research of the old Lithuanian book. As a result, the research revealed that the modest parchment bindings form nearly a half of all the examined bindings of the collection, and confirm the practical rather than the representational aspect of the Jesuit Library. According to the complexity of the technical execution and the number of operations involved in the process of binding, five binding techniques have been distinguished, ranging from the most complex to the simplest bindings, closely related with a retail bindings. What is more, a consistent number of parchment bindings are denoted by structural features, which is close to the Italian bookbinding tradition. The predominance of the latter in the group of Italian prints makes it possible to consider the possibility of already bound books entering the library of Vilnius Jesuit Academy. Moreover, the research has revealed certain binding features linked to the bookbinding traditions in Italy and the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth.&nbsp;Ankstyvaisiais naujaisiais laikais nepaliaujamai augęs spausdintų knygų egzempliorių skaičius ir didėjanti amatininkų tarpusavio konkurencija lėmė, jog nuo Gutenbergo išradimo iki pat XIX&nbsp;a. Europos knygrišiai buvo priversti ieškoti pigesnių ir greitesnių įrišimo technikų. Remiantis šia prielaida, straipsnyje aptariama dalis Vilniaus jėzuitų akademijos bibliotekai priklausiusių XVI&nbsp;a. antrojoje pusėje&nbsp;– XVII&nbsp;a. viduryje spausdintų knygų įrišų. Šis tyrimas yra platesnio Vilniaus jėzuitų akademijos bibliotekos knygų įrišų tyrimo dalis, o straipsnyje apsiribota dviem šiai bibliotekai priklausiusių spaudinių grupėmis: Italijos bei Lenkijos Karalystės ir Lietuvos Didžiosios Kunigaikštystės teritorijose spausdintomis knygomis. Istoriniams įrišams aptarti pasitelkta taikomosios dailės ir materialiosios kultūros tyrimų sričiai artima prieiga, literatūroje taip pat žinoma kaip knygos ar knygų įrišų „archeologija“, pagrindinį dėmesį skiriant ne tik knygų įrišų viršelio dekoro bruožams, bet ir jų struktūrinėms savybėms, visapusiškiau atskleidžiančioms praeities amatininkų darbo pobūdį. Toks analizės būdas ypač parankus aptariant ne tik puošnius, bet ir visai nedekoruotus knygrišių dirbinius, iki šiol Lietuvos senosios knygos tyrimuose sulaukusius labai mažai dėmesio. Tyrimo metu nustatyta, kad kuklesni pergamentiniai įrišai sudaro beveik pusę visų nagrinėtų Vilniaus akademijos bibliotekos įrišų ir kol kas patvirtina labiau praktinį nei reprezentacinį jėzuitų bibliotekos aspektą. Pagal techninio atlikimo sudėtingumą ir įrišimui pasitelktų operacijų skaičių išskirtos penkios įrišimo technikos, aprėpiančios spektrą nuo sudėtingiausių iki paprasčiausių įrišų, glaudžiai sietinų su prekybinio formato įrišais. Be to, nemažai pergamentinių įrišų pasižymi struktūriniais bruožais, artimais itališkai knygrišystės tradicijai. Pastarųjų dominavimas Italijos spaudinių grupėje leidžia pagrįstai svarstyti apie jau įrištų knygų patekimo į Vilniaus jėzuitų akademijos biblioteką galimybę ir iš naujo permąstyti kai kurių knygų spausdinimo bei įrišimo vietų santykį. Tyrimo metu taip pat išryškėjo tam tikri įrišų bruožai, sietini su Italijos ir Abiejų Tautų Respublikos knygrišystės tradicijomis

Adapting the Hellmouth in the Office of the Dead from the Hours of Catherine of Cleves: An Experiment in Using a Dramaturgical Approach to Medieval Studies

This thesis is an artefact documenting the process of adapting a late medieval painting of hell into a short horror film. The process of adapting the Three Mouths of Hell, housed within the Hours of Catherine of Cleves, serves as an experiment in applying a dramaturgical approach to medieval studies. The process of adaptation and production, informed by critical research about the Hours of Catherine of Cleves and its Three Mouths of Hell, yields new frameworks for understanding the history of Catherine of Cleves, her Book of Hours, and the Three Mouths of Hell