I'm Looking Through You: Building the Interface for a 3D Edition for The Visionary Cross Project

I’m Looking Through You: Building the Interface for a 3D Edition for The Visionary Cross Project

3D modelling as a form of scientific visualization has increasingly been adopted in the Humanities and transformed how scholars analyze and present data. As an innovative tool, it enables scholars to create interactive models that explore historical artifacts, texts, and their interconnections; however, its full potential in the Humanities remains underexplored. This paper offers a reflective case study, which serves as a practical roadmap for projects using 3D visualization. It begins by reviewing several projects that focused on 3D modelling before outlining the developments and aspirations of the Visionary Cross Project.

Many early applications of 3D modeling in the Humanities have focused on visually engaging representations of artifacts and places, which has emphasized their aesthetic and educational value. Projects have showcased 3D models as interactive objects, where the visualizations primarily treat the models as supports to scholarship rather than as sources of data in their own right. While this approach has broadened public engagement, it frequently falls short of utilizing these models as dynamic resources for scholarly exploration. By changing our perspective on what the purpose of visualizations is, we can create editions that not only preserve cultural artifacts but also provide new, meaningful, avenues for analysis and interpretation of historical contexts and material culture.

The Visionary Cross Project is a multidisciplinary initiative that seeks to develop innovative methods for archiving and publishing texts as well as multimedia objects representing early medieval English stone crosses and related texts. It incorporates linked data from online repositories, 3D models, and TEI-encoded texts that are now being integrated into a human-friendly web-based digital edition. This edition will allow both the public and experts to explore the texts and objects interactively. In the course of 2024, The Visionary Cross Project progressed through three versions of development.

The 1.0 version of the framework provided a functional yet static platform, linking externally hosted 3D models to individual webpages. However, its limitations in editability and scalability led to the development of version 2.0, which introduced a restructured back-end layout, improved navigation, and interactive elements. Drawing inspiration from other well-established digital critical editions such as the Caedmon’s Hymn: A multimedia study, edition and archive, this iteration framed each cross as a distinct sub-edition while preserving their interconnected narrative.

Lessons learned from the developments of the Visionary Cross Project highlight both achievements and ongoing challenges. Looking ahead, version 3.0 aims to incorporate enhanced interactive features, encouraging the use of the 3D model not just as a visual aid but as a valuable piece of data for in-depth scholarly analysis and research. 

Bibliography

Leoni, Chiara, et al. “The Dream and the Cross: a 3D scanning project to bring 3D content in a digital edition.” JCCH. 2015.

O’Donnell, Daniel Paul, et al. “Archaeology in the Study: Scanning Anglo-Saxon Artifacts in the Visionary Cross Project.” Wiðowinde, vol. 185, 2018, pp. 21–27. 

Schreibman, Susan, and Costas Papadopoulos. "Textuality in 3D: Three-dimensional (re)constructions as digital scholarly editions." IJDH, vol. 1, no. 2, 2019, pp. 221–233.