MONARCH presented at Digital Humanities 2007
07/12/07
Clifford Wulfman, Brown University, presented "The Abbey Inside the Machine: The MonArch Project". The web site, which uses hypertext and multimedia to link translations of primary texts, 3D reconstructions of the abbey at various stages over it’s 1000 year lifetime, was well received for its articulation of paths between data collection, analysis and synthetic argument.
From the abstract: “Our research, then, is focused on establishing a layered set of models that enable researchers to articulate their understanding of monasticism and allow scholars (students, readers, users) to interact with that understanding. Underlying the whole project is a fundamental data model that represents the characteristics of the texts, spaces, buildings and artifacts that form the object of study. Overlaying the data model is another model, that of the relationships that embody the intellectual connections that the researchers have made as they work over their materials and which embody their definition of monasticism. These connections are the evidence for their claims. At the topmost layer is a model of user interaction, one consisting of visual juxtapositions that illustrate the relationships among the historical evidence and that enable further questioning…” continue reading
The MONastic ARCHaeology Project at the Abbey of Saint-Jean-des-Vignes, Soissons was conceived as a multi-disciplinary project that takes monasticism rather than the monastery as its object of study. This approach treats the monastic complex at Saint-Jean as an integrated, corporate whole rather than as a cluster of related buildings; as the physical expression of spiritual, social and economic motives rather than simply as a construction site. MonArch considers not only the form of the abbey's buildings and the style of their decoration, but also the functions of those structures; the men, and sometimes the women, who used them; and the quality of life carried on within and around them. MonArch studies not only the site of the abbey itself, but also the farms, mills, priories and parishes, as well as other holdings that constituted its domain and provided its revenue base. Moreover, MonArch considers these phenomena not as constants but as changing elements within the history of the abbey's existence.
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