BEHOLD! SEE! ME?IMAGING TECHNOLOGIES & THE MANUSCRIPT

Franz Fischer, University of Cologne

I. INTRODUCTIONII. FACSIMILES AND EDITIONSIII. ADVANCED IMAGING TECHNOLOGIESIV. CONCLUSIONS

Editing Medieval Texts, Part III

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I. INTRODUCTIONEditing Medieval Texts, Part III

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Imaging technologies & manuscripts?

• Preservation– damage, destruction, theft– water, war, vandalism

• Accessability & distribution– web, email, cloud– digital and virtual archives– shared cultural heritage

• Documentation & annotation– digital resources & databases– digital scholarly editions

• Analysis– readability– pattern recognition (palaeography, HTR)– material analysis (codicology)

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II. FACSIMILES AND EDITIONSEditing Medieval Texts, Part III

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Graz Book Table(Manfred Mayer: Digitalisierung

mittelalterlicher Handschriften an der

Universitätsbibliothek Graz, 1999,

http://cool.conservation-us.org/iada/ta99_185.pdf

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III. ADVANCED IMAGING TECHNOLOGIES

Editing Medieval Texts, Part III

Infrared, Multi- and Hyperspectral Imaging

• non-destructive optical technologies• in-depth analysis of mansuscripts• capture non-visible ranges of the spectrum• maesure reflectance characteristics of a manuscript

page surface under non-visible light conditions• identify ink, recover faded or hidden text• draw conclusions about the place and date of

production

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Natural Sciences and Technology in Manuscript Studies. manuscript cultures 7 (2014).

https://www.manuscript-cultures.uni-hamburg.de/MC/manuscript_cultures_no_7.pdf

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manuscript cultures 7 (2014)

manuscript cultures 7 (2014)

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Marcel Nadjari in Greek army

uniform before he was sent

to Auschwitz

Multispectral imaging setup at the British Library

Beta Radiography / X-Ray Photography

• paper thickness tested in mid 1940s in the USA

• in the late 1950s Russian scientists published the first high quality and high contrast images of watermarks and paper mould

• since then more refined, safe and efficient methods (electron, soft-x-ray radiography)

• alternative technology for watermark studies: thermography

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Comparision Soft X-Ray Radiography / Tracing (Picard online)

http://www.bernstein.oeaw.ac.at/twiki/pub/Main/ProjectExhibitions/bernstein_2009_book_en.pdf

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1 X-ray source2 Items with watermarks3 Film4 Object slide

1 X-ray source2 Book / incunabulum3 Electron transmitter / Metal foil4 Folio with watermarks5 Film6 Object slide / table

1 Book / incunabulum2 Radiation beams / C14-source3 Folio with watermark4 Film5 Object slide / table

Electron radiography

Soft-X-ray radiography

Beta radiography

X-Ray Spectrometry / Fluorescence

• chemical composition of ink

• remains on a manuscript or papyrus surface

• salt crystals

• erased writings

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(a) carbonized papyrus scroll PHerc.Paris. 4 (~16 cm length), extremely fragile

(b) three orthogonal slices, and (c) a volume rendition of the reconstructed papyrus

DNA• in the mid 1990s first time successfully extracted from

parchment• extracting and analysing genetic information• research on parchment production and the potential

influence of diet, urbanisation, animal husbandry and trade• Two major problems

– destructive (samples of 0.5 x 0.5 cm or 5 mg needed)– storage of extracted DNA (needs to be frozen to preserve integrity)

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Relative proportions of animals used to make parchment

Sarah Fiddyment et al. PNAS 2015;112:15066-15071

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3D Technology

51The Great Parchment Book (LMA reference: CLA/049/EM/02/018; The Irish Society and LMA, The City of London

Corporation. From: Digitally reconstructing the Great Parchment Book: 3D recovery of fire-damaged historical

documents Digital Scholarship Humanities. 2016;32(4):887-917. doi:10.1093/llc/fqw057)

52On the left, the distorted parchments … On the right, the documents are virtually restored,

flattening the folios and removing the distortion.

Reflectance Transformation Imaging (RTI)

• origins from HP Labs (2001)• based on Polynomial Texture Mapping (PTM)• non-invasive and non-contact recording method• cost & time effective• easy to learn• transportable• currently developed by

– Cultural Heritage Imaging (CHI)– Visual Computing Lab of CNR-ISTI

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IV. CONCLUSIONSEditing Medieval Texts, Part III

What‘s the bigger picture?

• Technology

• Cultural heritage

• Digital transformation

• Cultural identity

• Humanities

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GRAZIE! DOMANDE?franz.fischer@uni-koeln.de