Reverse Engineering the Mappa Mundi Site

CarletonStudent
Sat, 24 Sep 2022 02:40:29 +0000
Week 2, 3D Mapping, 3D modeling, Digital Humanities, Hereford Cathedral, Interactive Maps, Mappa Mundi, Medieval History, Scanning

The 3D model of the Mappa Mundi

The Hereford Cathedral has a rich collection of historical artifacts. It contains the Mappa Mundi, and around 1500 books dating from around 800AD until the early nineteenth century. To preserve and conserve these historical objects, the trustees of the Hereford Fund decided to digitize the Mappa Mundi. Judguing by the contents of the site, one can infer it focuses on historians, and students who might be studying the middle ages as well as the Mappa Mundi. The project comprises of a 3D, interactive, high resolution copy of the Mappa Mundi, as well as a digitally enhanced version of it.

Sources:

The first thing which was collected for the project was its source. The Mappa Mundi, a map made around the 1300s, which is currently on display at Hereford Cathedral. The map showed the regions of the world medievals knew were inhabited (Europe, Asia, the British Isles, and North Africa). After finding the primary source, the authors likely also used secondary sources. Those could be articles about the history of Mappa Mundi, its social implications, the relevant locations portrayed in it (as well why each one of those is relevant), among others.

Processed

The group had to somehow scan the primary source and upload it to the internet. This was done by a team from Factum Arte, who used a Lucida 3D scanner for the task. The device uses a low-intensity laser light projected onto the object and continuously records it with black and white video cameras. After that, they post-processed each frame creating a high-resolution three-dimensional copy of the Mappa Mundi. They also had to pinpoint each relevant point on the map and write a description on what it represents/why it is relevant.

Displayed

They displayed it using HTML, JavaScript, and CSS. This generated an interactive 3D version of the item and was posted on the web.

The site is intuitive, interactive, its primary sources are evident, and contains a detailed description of how the Mappa Mundi Was digitized. However, it contains no information on how it was implemented on the web, which languages and tools were used, nor provided an open source version of its code. Therefore, this is the only question left unanswered. I would like to learn more about how it was implemented and see its source code.

Sources:

The Mappa Mundi