Susan Schreibman, delivered a keynote lecture as part of the DH Tokyo Commemorative Lecture Series on the topic of 3D Digital Scholarly Editions: The Text as Object.
There is a centuries-old tradition of establishing and annotating the written word. And one of the first and still key areas of digital scholarship is creating digital scholarly editions. But what happens if we think of the text to be annotated as a 3D model, either a model of an object or of an entire virtual world. What does the semantic field look like when we shift from annotating and contextualizing the written word to annotating and contextualing 3D models of anything from (re)presentations of extant objects (from sculpture, to buildings, to cities) to (re)creations of objects that we only have in fragmented form (such as foundations of ancient buildings or shards of pottery). What does annotating a 3D world entail when the annotation is exploratory, analytical, or interactive, such as the utilizing AI to understand what transpired (or what might have transpired during a battle) or how a choir in an mediaeval church sounded before centuries of rebuilding and reconstruction. What do we need to preserve and to future proof such scholarship? This talk explored these issues, in part, using as an example a particular 3D digital scholarly edition centred on a battle that took place in Ireland around 100 years ago.