Access to Every Page of a Woman’s Ancient Manuscript in Virtual Space

FAIN: HAA-287925-22

University of Southern California (Los Angeles, CA 90089-0012)
Lynn S. Dodd (Project Director: January 2022 to January 2025)
Sabina Zonno (Co Project Director: May 2022 to January 2025)

The further development of an immersive VR experience that allows users to explore and study an illuminated manuscript from the 15th century.

This embodied, interactive experience enables global audiences to explore and learn to handle an ancient, fragile Renaissance book while being immersed in the aural and spatial environment in which the manuscript was originally used. A key innovation is the true interactivity and material physics technology that enable people to actually turn and “feel” like they are turning parchment pages. This supports enhanced awareness of the risk of use-damage for ancient artifacts of cultural and historical interest. The virtual reality experience promotes engagement without damaging the originals and facilitates education, public programming, and humanities research and teaching in libraries, archives, museums, and colleges. This virtual reality project is a means both to preserve and promote access to and reading of a 15th-century illuminated, parchment Book of Hours that was owned by a woman associated with a community of lay women, and is now at the University of Southern California.