Workshop “Dalla pietra all’immagine digitale. Tecniche e metodologie del rilievo e della ricostruzione digitale dei monumenti iscritti”

18-22 ottobre 2010, Aquileia (Udine, Italia)

Il corso intende far conoscere e imparare ad utilizzare le moderne tecnologie disponibili per il rilievo, la riproduzione fotografica e in 3D, la ricostruzione virtuale e la diffusione su supporto informatico dei monumenti epigrafici e delle scritte su instrumentum domesticum.

Programma: http://www.units.it/epilab/Workshop_Bando.doc

Le domande devono essere fatte pervenire entro il 16 settembre 2010 preferibilmente come allegato di un e-mail all’indirizzo: zacclau@units.it, oppure per fax al numero +39 040 5582814.

Il Formulario per l’iscrizione: http://www.units.it/epilab/Workshop_Formulario.doc

Eventuali comunicazioni epistolari possono essere inviate a : Prof. Claudio Zaccaria, Dipartimento di Storia e Culture dall’Antichità al Mondo Contemporaneo, Università di Trieste, Via del Lazzaretto Vecchio 6, 34123 Trieste (Italia).

(Apologies for cross-postings to lists. Please feel free to forward to colleagues, students and other discussion fora.)

Please send me (tom.elliott@nyu.edu) information about digital projects, publications and computer-aided research in epigraphy. This information will be used to update or inform multiple resources including:

• The “ASGLE links” resource (currently out of date): http://www.case.edu/artsci/clsc/asgle/links.html
• A section on “digital epigraphy” in the forthcoming Oxford Handbook of Latin Epigraphy
• A review of the state of the discipline to be presented at the ASGLE-sponsored session of the Joint Meetings of the APA/AIA in Philadelphia in January 2009

I am interested in any undertaking that involves computational approaches or digital data, whether it has resulted in publication or not. Any subdiscipline of epigraphy (Latin, Greek, other) is of interest. Information about papyrological and palaeographical projects whose methodology, technology or content has direct application in epigraphic study is also welcome.

The ASGLE links update will include a software upgrade, and will be carried out in collaboration with the editorial board of Current Epigraphy and the leadership and appropriate committees of the Association Internationale d’ Épigraphie Grecque et Latine and of the American Society of Greek and Latin Epigraphy. All information presented in the resulting “new” links collection will be released to the public under terms of a Creative Commons Attribution license so that it can be re-used freely by others. All information sent to me will be assumed to be the intellectual property of the person submitting it, and will be treated under terms of the CC license.

Ideally, I would like to have as much of the following information as possible (please feel free to use your native language):

• Title of project, resource or publication
• Principal investigator(s), author(s) or editor(s)
• Intitutional affiliation(s)
• URLs for websites
• Publication citation(s)
• A short description
• Status (e.g., experimental, complete, published, in progress, continuing, private)
• Technologies, methodologies used
• Sources of funding (past and present)
• Contact email address

Thank you for your assistance in this endeavor.

Best,
Tom
–
Tom Elliott
Associate Director for Digital Programs
Institute for the Study of the Ancient World
New York University
http://homepages.nyu.edu/~te20/

Starting in mid to late May, about every two weeks throughout the summer Iversen and Laing will upload a preliminary text of an unpublished Greek or Latin inscription along with a photo. They will then invite comments and suggestions for restorations, context, date, etc. The ideas that result from this virtual seminar will then be incorporated into the final print article for Hesperia, with proper attribution to those who proposed any particular idea or reading. Elliott and Bodard will also work up an EpiDoc version of the resulting texts.

The idea behind the seminar is to promote a new model of collaboration and publication of epigraphical texts with the following benefits: a preliminary text will be made available very quickly; scholars or those interested will be able to “attend” the seminar at their leisure from anywhere in the world with an internet connection; students will see how epigraphers work and it may raise more interest in the discipline; the project will introduce epigraphers to the advantages of EpiDoc; there should be more interest in the final print version, which will include comments on this experiment.

Those who monitor CurEp via a feed reader will receive automatic notification whenever a new inscription is posted. The editors of CurEp will also post a corresponding notice to the Inscriptiones-l discussion list.

While this article is light-hearted and only skims the surface of issues such as space saving, the ability of a fluent community to understand abbreviated jargon, and the potential ambiguity of messages sent in this way, there may be a serious point in all this. Is there value in the comparison with other cultures of condensed writing (including but not restricted to text messaging and 1337-speak) as a tool in the teaching and the study of epigraphic and palaeographic abbreviation?

Why do ancient scribes abbreviate? Is there any evidence that abbreviation ever led to ambiguity and misunderstanding of important documents? Is epigraphic abbreviation a completely different phenomenon from digital shorthand, or is there something to be learned from comparisons of this kind–or contrasts?

(Thanks to JLavagnino for pointing out this web log.)

What’s the use case for digitized inscriptions? I don’t comprehend.

I thought readers of CurEp might be interested in the demo. I also hope I can encourage a discussion on the potential merits and pitfalls of digitally tracing and annotating inscriptions. Can we answer Paul’s question, both for him and ourselves?