Designing an Interactive Glimpse Into the Past

Editor’s Note:This is a guest post byDavid Hill, an associate professor of architecture at NC State, about the unveiling of a digital humanities project to create three-dimensional visual and acoustic models of the courtyard of St. Paul’s Cathedral in 17th century London. The Virtual Paul’s Cross Project recreates the reading of a sermon by English poet and clergyman John Donne on Nov. 5, 1622. The project, now complete,is available online, and an overview can be found这里. We wrote about the early stages of the project2011年. Here, Hill weighs in on some of the interesting/challenging design aspects of the project.

There are several things that I find exciting, and perhaps even novel, about the Virtual Paul’s Cross Project.

First of all, it brings together a wide ranging cast of characters – experts in their respective fields – to illustrate something that no longer exists. With current digital technology, we can re-examine the past. The project team consists of an English professor and John Donne scholar, an architecture professor and digital media specialist, an archaeologist, a linguist, a Shakespearean actor, acoustical engineers, and several technicians at Hunt Library – a real motley crew of contributors who normally would not find themselves working together. Adding to the complexity, this is a transatlantic team with participants in Raleigh, Manchester (UK), London, and Boston, Mass.

从我的角度来看，作为一个花费很多时间建筑物的建筑物的人，该项目以多种方式扼杀。I（和一般建筑师）通常使用数字建模来想象新的结构，并说明它们是如何看的。事实上，建筑师倾向于优先迎接“看到”他们的设计成形。我们是视觉上的人。该项目从数字模型询问更多;它询问数字模型描绘圣保罗庭院的空间会听起来像什么。该项目允许我们不仅仅是为了看到架构，而且还可以听到架构。简而言之，我们开始捕获比可以用典型模型实现的空间更大的感觉体验。

We actually constructed two separate models: one for visual representations, and one for audio representations. The visual model shows a greater amount of the architectural detail that is common to Gothic cathedrals. It illustrates the rose window, flying buttresses, stone coursing, and other material textures. The cathedral is known as “old” St. Paul’s because it burned to the ground in 1666. (The “new” St. Paul’s was not fully rebuiltuntil 1708现在站在伦敦的地方。）

Because the old cathedral burned in the 17th century, we have a limited number of reliable resources for rebuilding the church. We have used a painting by John Gipkin from the early 1600s, engravings, and other illustrations, but no measured drawings from the period exist. The dimensional accuracy of the model was derived from archaeological surveys of the site and discussions with the current chief archaeologist of St. Paul’s, John Schofield.

声音模型是视觉模型的缩小形式，因为细晶细节没有对Aural化的显着影响。然而，声音模型具有像分配给各种材料的反射率和吸收的声学性质（例如，石头，玻璃，砖）。这些是在视觉模型中不一定明显的东西，但他们确实有助于准确地描绘空间内的声音。那是很酷的部分！

The context of the exhibition, the Teaching and Visualization (T+V) Lab at Hunt Library, has been a real challenge: the space is new, the audio-visual technology is complex, and we are one of the first groups to make full use of the space. That said, the room is incredible, and it has offered us an amazing opportunity to present our project in an immersive digital environment. This is well beyond our initial goals to present this work through a webpage. In the T+V lab, one can listen to the John Donne recordings while surrounded by an 80-foot-long, 270-degree wrap-around animation of the St. Paul’s Courtyard.

这是一个很棒的挑战，荣幸地在这个项目上工作。我们乐观地说，它将用于历史，文学和宗教学者多年来。