BASIRA Project:Books as Symbols in Renaissance Art

It’s grand to be here: looking forward to many fabulous presentations.

SO excited about this masterwork, just arrived in the post! Raising a toast to Georgios Boudalis, to the intricacies of textile history, #bookhistory, #bookbinding, the material text.

Intrigued by creative uses of DH in the classroom. Only one of many engaging encounters here at ⁦@KzooICMS⁩. Am already looking forward to next year.

We had the fascinating experience of staying 2 nights in the Price Tower, Bartlesville, OK: FLW's only skyscraper: many angles and convoluted passages made it seem an excursion to an alternate mind-set -- which it was, of course.

Books as playgrounds in Shreveport, Louisiana at the R. W. Norton Art Museum. Ribbit.

For all of us focused on media studies:

How did I not ponder whence the gold that glitters on so many paintings & MSS? Enlightened by Mus.African Art @si_africanart #CaravansNMAFA to connections between W. Africa and W. Europe. Thanks to scholars like Sarah Guérin et al. for insights.

Shout outs to Matilde Malaspina and Barbara Tramelli for organizing a fascinating workshop on digital images: study, methodology, iconography: via @CaFoscari @venicedph. Recordings of the public sessions can be found here:  youtube.com/watch?v=tO-MDcEa…

Even while plodding through data entry, sometimes an image brings us up short: pause, linger, & prize this beauty by Jan de Beer. Images by colleague Andrea Zietlow at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts.

My new word of the week: “canivet” courtesy of Online Window into the Library, OWL, Nr. 18, April-June 2021, #VaticanLibrary: cutting text into paper lace, no less. vaticanlibrary.va/newsletter…. Astonishing.

What, after all, is reading? Memory, hearing, seeing, imagining, touching, singing, chanting, deciphering, translating, gathering, scattering. This week at @RBS21 #rbs21 with @PStallybrass and Lynne Farrington has been an exhilarating excursion. Applause & thanks.

Fascinated by work of @leoba and @acampagnolo on VisColl, @SIMS_MSS. The new VCEditor, in cooperation with VisCodex, @uoftlibraries, offers insights w/out coding for non-techies like me. And much more: even degrees of uncertainty! Huzzah!

What & how do we see when artists portray books? At #RenSA21, April 21, two panels “Image of the Book” explore images from Byzantine bindings to Mary as reader, from DH pattern analysis to Holbein’s book “portraits.” Inspired by @BasiraProject, hope to see you./1 

Triangle DH Institute symposium at NCCU, Durham. Dr. marilyn thomas-houston delivered a keynote lecture both inspiring & challenging. #RepresentationMatters

Wonderful day at the Nasher Museum yesterday, celebrating 10 years of the Wired! Lab at Duke. So much inspiration, and many decades to look forward to.

CFP: The Image of the Book: 1300–1600 bit.ly/32tqCPB Inviting papers for the RSA meeting, April 2020

Was so glad to learn about this database of 15th century illustration, developed by Mathilde Malaspina and the VGG group at Oxford Univ.

Reflecting on stimulating 3 days w/ Cristina Dondi et al. at Lincoln College, Oxford, learning about the MEI database, about incunabula provenance and all that has to teach us. Try exploring the connections? data.cerl.org/mei/_search