St. Paul's Cathedral Rises Again (Blog Post)
Title: St. Paul's Cathedral Rises Again
Author: John N Wall
Abstract: This entry announces our project and our blog, The Virtual Paul's Cross Project
Date: 10.25.2011
Primary URL: http://virtualpaulscrossproject.blogspot.com/2011/10/st-pauls-cathedral-rises-again.html
Primary URL Description: Official blog for the The Virtual Paul's Cross Project
Research Report: Which Way Did the Paul's Cross Preacher Face? (Blog Post)
Title: Research Report: Which Way Did the Paul's Cross Preacher Face?
Author: John N Wall
Abstract: One challenge in modeling buildings and spaces now lost to us is interpreting the evidence that survives. One image that we thought gave us a different view of Paul's Cross turns out to be based on the Gipkin painting and looks different because the engraver reversed the Gipkin image in the process of making this image.
Date: 10/26/2011
Primary URL: http://virtualpaulscrossproject.blogspot.com/2011/10/research-report-which-way-did-pauls.html
Primary URL Description: This is the blog of the Virtual Paul's Cross Project
Virtual Paul's Cross Project -- Website (Web Resource) [show prizes]
Title: Virtual Paul's Cross Project -- Website
Author: John N. Wall
Abstract: This website contains basic information about the project, including the Advisory Board, the Staff, and a list of current developments.
Year: 2011
Primary URL: http://www4.ncsu.edu/~jnwall/vpcp.html
Did Paul's Cross Have a Pulpit? (Blog Post)
Title: Did Paul's Cross Have a Pulpit?
Author: John N. Wall
Abstract: In creating a model for the Paul's Cross preaching station, we have had to decide where the preacher stood to deliver his sermon -- underneath the roof of the preaching station or in a pulpit that placed him out from under the roof. We have reviewed contemporary images of preaching stations as well as surviving examples of such structures and decided he was probably in a small pulpit.
Date: 11/04/2011
Primary URL: http://http://virtualpaulscrossproject.blogspot.com/2011/11/did-pauls-cross-have-pulpit.html
Primary URL Description: Blog for the Virtual Paul's Cross Project
Blog Title: The Virtual Paul's Cross Project
Imagining St Paul's -- the Hollar Drawings (Blog Post)
Title: Imagining St Paul's -- the Hollar Drawings
Author: John N. Wall
Abstract: The Virtual Paul's Cross Project is made possible because St. Paul's Cathedral was the subject of an extensive body of visual documentation. For St. Paul's, the most important are the engravings of Wenseslas Hollar, done for William Dugdale's History of St. Paul's Cathedral (1658). We have located two of Hollar's original drawings made in preparation for his engravings. Happily, they show the parts of the cathedral we are most interested in.
Date: 12/05/2011
Primary URL: http://virtualpaulscrossproject.blogspot.com/2011/12/imagining-st-pauls-hollar-drawings.html
Primary URL Description: Blog for the Virtual Paul's Cross Project
Blog Title: The Virtual Paul's Cross Project
The Early Modern Sermon as Collaborative Experience: The Case of John Donne at Paul's Cross (Conference Paper/Presentation)
Title: The Early Modern Sermon as Collaborative Experience: The Case of John Donne at Paul's Cross
Author: John N. Wall
Abstract: The process of recreating the experience of hearing sermons at London's Paul's Cross has led to recognition that the early modern sermon was a collaborative experience, with both preacher and congregation participating in the process of sermon delivery. This has led to recognition of moments in Donne's sermons clearly designed to engage the congregation and to provoke response.
Date: 4/21/2012
Primary URL: http://hdsepisc.org/2011/11/06/preaching-and-the-theological-imagination/
Primary URL Description: website for the 2012 New England Anglican Studies Conference, Harvard University
Conference Name: 2012 New England Anglican Studies Conference, Harvard University
The Virtual Paul’s Cross Project: Documenting the Experience of Public Preaching at Paul’s Cross, London, in the Post-Reformation Period. (Conference Paper/Presentation)
Title: The Virtual Paul’s Cross Project: Documenting the Experience of Public Preaching at Paul’s Cross, London, in the Post-Reformation Period.
Author: John N Wall
Abstract: This paper discussed the challenges of recreating the experience of the Paul's Cross sermon, including the complexities of interpreting primary evidence, of understanding relative degrees of approximation, and of holding in tension past and present models of interpretation. One highlight of the presentation was the playing of the first audio file to result from this project.
Date: 05/28/2012
Primary URL: http://www.sdh-semi.org/conference/sessions.php
Primary URL Description: Link to the program for the SDH-SEMI Conference
Conference Name: SDH-SEMI Conference, a part of the 2012 CONGRESS for Humanities and Social Sciences, Waterloo, Canada
Hearing Donne: The Experience of Donne‘s Preaching at Paul‘s Cross (Conference Paper/Presentation)
Title: Hearing Donne: The Experience of Donne‘s Preaching at Paul‘s Cross
Author: John N. Wall
Abstract: Donne’s Paul’s Cross sermon for Gunpowder Day 1622 is best understood as a collaborative and interactive performance, not a monologue but a conversation, in which the congregation gathered for the sermon took an active and vocal role. The text of Donne’s sermon represents only one side of this conversation. Given this, we face the challenge of recovering the congregation's side of this conversation. Sometimes, however, response is already scripted, as in in its participation in the Lord's Prayer at the beginning of the sermon. Other times it can be inferred from the way the preacher structures his presentation, inviting certain kinds of response. Various kinds of possible congregational responses can be modeled and demonstrated using our virtual model of the physical and acoustic environment for this sermon, as illustrated by five audio clips combining Ben Crystal's realization of Donne's Gunpowder Day sermon for November 5th, 1622 with hypothetical congregational responses.
Date: 6/27/2012
Primary URL: http://johndonnesociety.tamu.edu/
Primary URL Description: Web site of the John Donne Society
Secondary URL: http://johndonnesociety.tamu.edu/files/2012Program.pdf
Secondary URL Description: Program for the Donne Conference 2012
Conference Name: Annual Conference of the John Donne Society
Virtual Paul's Cross: The Experience of Public Preaching at Paul's Cross in the Post-Reformation Period (Conference Paper/Presentation)
Title: Virtual Paul's Cross: The Experience of Public Preaching at Paul's Cross in the Post-Reformation Period
Author: John N. Wall
Abstract: Digital modeling projects are not exercises in time travel but opportunities to bring together diverse forms of historical documentation and to experience -- and thus to be able to assess -- the appropriateness of our conceptual models. Digital modeling projects also need to be grounded in specific data, in this case provided by careful measurement of the cathedral by Christopher Wren and of the cathedral's foundations by John Schofield and of the Cross's foundations by F C Penrose.
Our model of St Paul's and Paul's Churchyard enables us to explore the experience of John Donne's sermon for Gunpowder Day 1622, a sermon that was intended for delivery at Paul's Cross on the first Tuesday in November of 1622 but "because of the weather" was actually delivered inside the cathedral.
This has enabled us to explore several issues relevant to the experience of the Paul's Cross sermon. Here, I address two of these, audibility of the sermon given possible variations in crowd sizes and the location of the auditor, and questions of preaching as an address by a speaker to a generally passive audience or as a collaborative and interactive performance, in effect, a conversation for which the surviving text of these sermons represented only one side of the conversation.
Date: 08/18/2012
Primary URL: http://www.mcgill.ca/creor/events
Primary URL Description: UIRL for CREOR ( Centre for Research on Religion) at McGill University in Montreal, the host institution for htis conference.
Conference Name: Paul's Cross and the Culture of Persuaasion, 1520-1640
Interpreting the Manuscript: MS Royal 17.B.XX. and the Virtual Paul's Cross Project (Conference Paper/Presentation)
Title: Interpreting the Manuscript: MS Royal 17.B.XX. and the Virtual Paul's Cross Project
Author: John N Wall
Abstract: The Virtual Paul’s Cross Project (vpcp.chass.ncsu.edu) uses visual and acoustic modeling software to recreate the appearance of Paul’s Churchyard in 1622 and to explore the acoustic properties of this site for open-air preaching in the early modern period. The process of developing this project has shifted attention from the early modern sermon as a printed or manuscript text to consideration of the sermon as a performance in a particular physical setting and before a specific congregation. Even though the surviving manuscripts or printed texts of these sermons provide access to the content of the performed text, they are at best memorial reconstructions of the actual text as delivered. Early modern sermons were composed in performance from notes to recall for the preacher his prior preparation, described by Walton in his Life of Donne as including choice and division of the text, gathering of quotes from the Church Fathers, and articulation and organization of major points. This paper will focus on one way we can learn from traces that survive in sermon texts of earlier stages of the sermon’s development and of the conditions of original performance, as provided by Donne’s sermon for Gunpowder Day in 1622. This sermon contains sentence fragments that may be survivals of the notes Donne took with him into the pulpit, while the sentences around them suggest what Donne made of these notes in the process of his delivery.
Date: 04/06/2013
Primary URL: http://convention2.allacademic.com/one/rsa/rsa13/index.php?click_key=1&cmd=Multi+Search+Search+Load+Session&session_id=175404&PHPSESSID=foev6us34982051cbvpq1v8a25
Conference Name: Renaissance Society of America annual meeting, San Diego, CA
The Library Building as Research Platform (Conference Paper/Presentation)
Title: The Library Building as Research Platform
Author: Kristin Antelman
Author: Maurice York
Abstract: This paper discusses uses of technology in the James B. Hunt Library at NC State University, including the upcoming immersion installation of the Virtual Paul's Cross Project.
Date: 04/05/2013
Primary URL: http://www.cni.org/topics/learning-spaces/the-library-building-as-research-platform/
Conference Name: Coalition for Networked Information, spring meeting
Acoustical archaeology - Recreating the soundscape of John Donne's 1622 gunpowder plot sermon at Paul's Cross (Conference Paper/Presentation)
Title: Acoustical archaeology - Recreating the soundscape of John Donne's 1622 gunpowder plot sermon at Paul's Cross
Author: John N. Wall
Author: Matt Azevedo
Author: Ben Markham
Abstract: Auralization has become a valuable tool to explore the acoustics of spaces and activities that no longer exist. Generally, acoustical archaeology has explored a fairly limited number of sources in a space to determine specific acoustical aspects of the sound of the spaces and to separate intentionally designed acoustical phenomena from the often unintended effects of the architecture. We have expanded this technique to recreate the entire soundscape of a specific event, in this case John Donne's 1622 Gunpowder Plot sermon at Paul's Cross, outside St. Paul's Cathedral
in London as it was prior to the fire of 1666. This work augments ambisonic auralization techniques with techniques borrowed from computeraided music composition and audio production to create an immersive acoustical environment for the purpose of exploring the experience of listeners at many positions in a crowd that can be varied in size in real time. The paper outlines the role of geometric acoustics modeling, realtime convolution, randomized and statistically-derived sound event triggers, and other techniques employed to auralize a soundscape that
includes the sermon, crowd response, and the ambient sounds of pre-Industrial London.
Date: 06/07/2013
Primary URL: http://http://scitation.aip.org/getpdf/servlet/GetPDFServlet?filetype=pdf&id=PMARCW000019000001015133000001&idtype=cvips&doi=10.1121/1.4799054&prog=normal
Primary URL Description: Proceedings of the ICA Conference, includes abstract and full text of the paper
Conference Name: International Conference on Acoustics
Acoustical archaeology - Recreating the soundscape of John Donne's 1622 gunpowder plot sermon at Paul's Cross (Article)
Title: Acoustical archaeology - Recreating the soundscape of John Donne's 1622 gunpowder plot sermon at Paul's Cross
Author: John N. Wall
Author: Matt Azevedo
Author: Ben Markham
Abstract: Auralization has become a valuable tool to explore the acoustics of spaces and activities that no longer exist. Generally, acoustical archaeology has explored a fairly limited number of sources in a space to determine specific acoustical aspects of the sound of the spaces and to separate
intentionally designed acoustical phenomena from the often unintended effects of the architecture. We have expanded this technique to recreate the entire soundscape of a specific event, in this case John Donne's 1622 Gunpowder Plot sermon at Paul's Cross, outside St. Paul's Cathedral
in London as it was prior to the fire of 1666. This work augments ambisonic auralization techniques with techniques borrowed from computeraided music composition and audio production to create an immersive acoustical environment for the purpose of exploring the experience of
listeners at many positions in a crowd that can be varied in size in real time. The paper outlines the role of geometric acoustics modeling, realtime convolution, randomized and statistically-derived sound event triggers, and other techniques employed to auralize a soundscape that
includes the sermon, crowd response, and the ambient sounds of pre-Industrial London.
Year: 2013
Primary URL: http://scitation.aip.org/getpdf/servlet/GetPDFServlet?filetype=pdf&id=PMARCW000019000001015133000001&idtype=cvips&doi=10.1121/1.4799054&prog=normal
Primary URL Description: Proceedings of Meetings on Acoustics, Acoustical Society of America
Access Model: Open access
Format: Journal
Periodical Title: Proceedings of Meetings on Acoustics
Publisher: Acoustical Society of America
Recovering Lost Acoustic Spaces: St. Paul's Cathedral and Paul's Churchyard in 1622. (Article)
Title: Recovering Lost Acoustic Spaces: St. Paul's Cathedral and Paul's Churchyard in 1622.
Author: John N Wall
Abstract: The Virtual Paul's Cross Project, funded by a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities, helps us to explore public preaching in early modern London, enabling us to experience a Paul's Cross sermon as a performance, as an event unfolding in real time in the context of an interactive and collaborative occasion. This Project uses architectural modelling software and acoustic simulation software to give us access experientially to a particular event from the past–the Paul's Cross sermon John Donne delivered on Tuesday, November 5, 1622. These tools enable us to integrate the physical traces of pre-Fire St. Paul's Cathedral with the surviving visual record of the cathedral and its surroundings to create a visual model of the Cathedral and its churchyard. They also enable us to experience a historically informed interpretation of Donne's preaching style, based on contemporary descriptions of his capacity to engage his congregations imaginatively and emotionally and to delight them with his wit. We are also able to assess the audibility of a sermon delivered without amplification in a large open space for people positioned at different places in the crowd, and in the presence of different sizes of congregation.
Year: 2013
Primary URL: http://www.digitalstudies.org/ojs/index.php/digital_studies/article/view/251/310
Primary URL Description: Website of online journal
Access Model: open access
Format: Journal
Periodical Title: Digital Studies/Le Champ Numérique
Publisher: Society for Digital Humanities (canada)
Reconstructing Pre-Modern Spaces (Conference Paper/Presentation)
Title: Reconstructing Pre-Modern Spaces
Author: John N Wall
Abstract: The use of visual and acoustic modeling software enables us to integrate a variety of kinds of evidence for the look and sound of Paul's Churchyard, outside St Paul's Cathedral, in London in the early modern period. The Virtual Paul's Cross Project brings together visual images from the historic record with physical evidence from archaeological surveys as well as weather and climate conditions to create the look and sound of London in November of 1622. We have learned from this project that preachers at Paul's Cross could have been heard throughout the churchyard, if they used a measured delivery, that sermons preached from notes enable the preacher to be flexible and responsive to the crowd, and that texts of sermons are at best memorial reconstructions of events created in the process of their performance.
Date: 3/08/2014
Primary URL: http://web.utk.edu/~marco/symposium.php
Primary URL Description: This paper was delivered at the 11th annual MARCO Symposium at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, TN.
Conference Name: 11th Annual Marco Symposium: Reconceiving Pre-Modern Spaces
Virtual Medieval St Paul's Cathedral (Conference Paper/Presentation)
Title: Virtual Medieval St Paul's Cathedral
Author: John N Wall
Abstract: The use of visual and acoustic modeling software enables us to integrate a variety of kinds of evidence for the look and sound of Paul's Churchyard, outside St Paul's Cathedral, in London in the early modern period. The Virtual Paul's Cross Project brings together visual images from the historic record with physical evidence from archaeological surveys as well as weather and climate conditions to create the look and sound of London in November of 1622. We have learned from this project that preachers at Paul's Cross could have been heard throughout the churchyard, if they used a measured delivery, that sermons preached from notes enable the preacher to be flexible and responsive to the crowd, and that texts of sermons are at best memorial reconstructions of events created in the process of their performance.
Date: 2/18/2014
Primary URL: http://www.history.ac.uk/podcasts/digital-history/virtual-st-pauls-cathedral-and-pauls-cross
Primary URL Description: website of the Digital Humanities Seminar, Institute of Historical Research, Univ of London, UK
Conference Name: Digital Humanities Seminar, Institute of Historical Research, Univ of London, UK
The Virtual Paul's Cross Project (Exhibition)
Title: The Virtual Paul's Cross Project
Curator: John N Wall
Abstract: The Virtual Paul's Cross Project Installation in the Teaching and Visualization Lab of NC State's Hunt Library immerses the audience in the experience of Paul's Churchyard on November 5, 1622 between 10 AM and 12 noon. Using 10 projectors, we see a 270 degree panoramic view of Paul's Churchyard and St Paul's Cathedral, a view that changes as we move from listening position to listening position through 7 different positions. At each position, we can hear John Donne's sermon for Gunpowder Day 1622 in the presence of four different sizes of crowd.
Year: 2013
Primary URL: http://news.ncsu.edu/releases/wms-donne-2013/
Primary URL Description: Official Announcement of the Installation from NC State University News Office
Preaching, Performance, and Public Space in Medieval and Early Modern England (Conference/Institute/Seminar)
Title: Preaching, Performance, and Public Space in Medieval and Early Modern England
Author: Organizer -- John N Wall
Abstract: A symposium for the opening of the Virtual Paul's Cross installation at the James B Hunt Library, NC State University
Participants and their paper titles included:
Plenary Address -- John Schofield, Archaeologist, St Paul’s Cathedral, London, former Curator of Architecture, Museum of London -- “Reconstructing Medieval St Paul’s Cathedral”
Panel
Tom Barrie, Professor of Architecture, NC State University -- “The Architecture of the Sacred in Early Modern England”
Carol Symes, History, Theatre, Medieval Studies, University of Illinois -- “Sightlines, Soundscapes, and the Shaping of a Medieval Public Sphere.”
Heather Hyde Minor, History of Architecture, University of Illinois -- “The St. Paul’s that Wasn’t”
Anne MacNeil, History of Music, UNC – Chapel Hill -- “The Way-Back Machine: Digital Tools for Study of the Distant Past”
Date Range: November 5, 2013
Location: James B Hunt Library, NC State University
Primary URL: http://vpcp.chass.ncsu.edu/symposium/
Primary URL Description: Official website of the Virtual Paul's Cross Project
Virtual Paul’s Cross: the experience of public preaching after the Reformation (Book Section)
Title: Virtual Paul’s Cross: the experience of public preaching after the Reformation
Author: John N Wall
Editor: Torrance Kirby
Editor: P G Stanwood
Abstract: Central to the functioning of Paul’s Cross as a venue for public discourse between rulers and ruled in early modern England was the actual experience of hearing sermons delivered to crowds of people in an outdoor space in the midst of urban London. Working with a team of architects, acoustic engineers, linguists, and actors, we have engaged in recreating the experience of being present for the delivery of a Paul’s Cross sermon in a virtual model of the space in which it was originally delivered.
Year: 2013
Primary URL: http://www.brill.com/products/book/pauls-cross-and-culture-persuasion-england-1520-1640
Primary URL Description: publisher's website
Access Model: book is available for sale or as an ebook
Publisher: EJ Brill
Book Title: Paul’s Cross and the culture of persuasion in England, 1520–1640
ISBN: 9789004242272
Transforming the Object of our Study: (Article)
Title: Transforming the Object of our Study:
Author: John N Wall
Abstract: The Virtual Paul's Cross Project helps us to rediscover the sermon-as-event rather than the sermon-as-text, to glimpse the performative and participatory character of early modern preaching through recognizing the text that we have of the sermon as a trace of, at best a memorial reconstruction of, the sermon-as-event, rather than the sermon itself. This means we must, paradoxically, read the text both for what it tells us about the event it remembers and what it doesn’t tell us, read for clues about how this memorial reconstruction differs from the sermon-as-delivered as well as how closely it remembers that event.
Year: 2014
Primary URL: http://journalofdigitalhumanities.org/3-1/transforming-the-object-of-our-study-by-john-n-wall/.
Primary URL Description: website of the Journal of Digital Humanities
Format: Journal
Periodical Title: Journal of Digital Humanities
Publisher: Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media
Listening to the “Virtual Paul’s Cross”—Auralizing 17th Century London (Conference/Institute/Seminar)
Title: Listening to the “Virtual Paul’s Cross”—Auralizing 17th Century London
Author: Matthew Azevedo
Abstract: We set up the real-time auralization at the Acoustical Society of America’s Spring 2014 meeting in Providence, RI and ran a six-hour listening session where people could come and listen and interact with the simulation. I gave three 30-minute talks about the project (one every two hours), and the remaining time was dedicated to listening. Well over 100 people came to experience the simulation during the day. All the chairs in the main listening area were full for each talk with overflow to the sides, so at least 90 were in attendance for the talks alone. Several people sat and listened for over an hour, which was wonderful to see.
Date Range: May 9, 2014
Location: Providence, RI
Primary URL: http://acousticalsociety.org/sites/default/files/docs/Wednesday_0.pdf
Primary URL Description: Program for the annual meeting of the Acoustical Society of America, Providence, RI May 5-9, 2014
The Virtual Paul’s Cross Project: Digital Modeling’s Uneasy Approximations (Article)
Title: The Virtual Paul’s Cross Project: Digital Modeling’s Uneasy Approximations
Author: John N Wall
Abstract: Digital modeling aims to restore the multisensory and real-time experiences of the past that we have known only through static words, approximating the words as spoken and heard at the time of the original event. The visually compelling, historically appropriate, and convincing virtual model of Paul's Cross produces an illusion of completeness and authenticity, obscuring the extent to which much of the model is only representationally accurate. Limitations to our ability to exactly replicate past events in a virtual model limit — without eliminating — our ability to extrapolate from that model to advance scholarship.
Year: 2014
Primary URL: http://www.educause.edu/ero/article/virtual-paul%E2%80%99s-cross-project-digital-modeling%E2%80%99s-uneasy-approximations
Primary URL Description: Website of EDUCAUSE.edu
Secondary URL: http://www.educause.edu/
Access Model: open access
Format: Journal
Periodical Title: EDUCAUSE Review
Publisher: EDUCAUSE
Recreating the Paul's Cross Sermon at St Paul's Cathedral (Public Lecture or Presentation) [show prizes]
Title: Recreating the Paul's Cross Sermon at St Paul's Cathedral
Abstract: The Virtual Paul's Cross Project uses visual and acoustic modeling technologies in combination with careful historical research to recreate two hours of time in Paul's Churchyard, outside St Paul's Cathedral in London on November 5, 1622.
Author: John N Wall
Date: 11/22/2014
Location: St Paul's Cathedral, London UK
Preaching to the Choir: Understanding Worship in an Aural Culture (Book Section)
Title: Preaching to the Choir: Understanding Worship in an Aural Culture
Author: John N Wall
Editor: Zachary Guiliano and Cameron E. Partridge
Abstract: As a result of a concern with the spoken (and sung) voice, recent scholarship on early modern preaching has suggested the importance of recognizing sermons as things heard, as performances, delivered on specific occasions in particular locales and in the presence of unique gatherings of people. The question of post-Reformation English Christianity as a religion functioning in an oral culture, with speaking and hearing at the heart of its character, has been reinforced for me through my work with the Virtual Paul’s Cross Project (vpcp.chass.ncsu.edu). This project, funded by a grant from the Endowment for the Humanities, uses digital modeling technology to recreate as fully as possible the experience of hearing Donne preach his sermon for Guy Fawkes Day on November 5, 1622. Through this project, we are able to join the crowd gathered at Paul’s Cross, the preaching station in the churchyard of St Paul’s Cathedral in London, to hear Donne’s sermon performed, to experience it as an event unfolding in real time, moment by moment, an interactive and collaborative occasion heard in the physical space for which Donne composed it.
Year: 2015
Primary URL: http://www.peterlang.com/index.cfm?event=cmp.ccc.seitenstruktur.detailseiten&seitentyp=produkt&pk=77887&concordeid=312500
Primary URL Description: Book page on publisher's website
Access Model: book must be purchased
Publisher: Peter Lang
Book Title: Preaching and the Theological Imagination
ISBN: 978-1-4331-250
The Virtual Paul's Cross Project (Conference Paper/Presentation)
Title: The Virtual Paul's Cross Project
Author: John N Wall
Abstract: Poster presentation of the Virtual Paul's Cross Project at the Digital Visualization in the Humanities conference at the University of Reading, UK, a conference funded by the British Academy’s Rising Star Engagement Award scheme.
Date: 03/31/2016
Primary URL: http://blogs.reading.ac.uk/virtual-rome/2016/01/15/digital-visualisation-colloquium/
Conference Name: Digital Visualization in the Humanities (U of Reading, UK)
“Gazing into Imaginary Spaces: Digital Modeling and the Representation of Reality” (Book Section)
Title: “Gazing into Imaginary Spaces: Digital Modeling and the Representation of Reality”
Author: John N. Wall
Editor: Laura Estill, Diane K. Jakacki, Michael Ullyot
Abstract: Digital modeling provides humanists with powerful tools for integrating large amounts of historical information into a unified and coherent display. This essay is, however, about something else, about what we are doing when we believe we have discovered, from our experience with a digital environment, things about past events that are not documented by traditional sources. Such an outcome challenges traditional forms of knowledge while enriching our sense of what it is we know about past events and their meaning. The best results come from holding in tension the traditional understandings of the truthfulness of our work and new opportunities for enriching that understanding.
Year: 2016
Access Model: for sale
Publisher: Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies
Book Title: Early Modern Studies after the Digital Turn
ISBN: 978-0-86698-5
New Resource: The Virtual Paul's Cross Project Website (Blog Post)
Title: New Resource: The Virtual Paul's Cross Project Website
Author: John N. Wall
Abstract: The goal of this project is to integrate what we know, or can surmise, about the look and sound of this space, destroyed by the Great Fire of London in 1666, and about the course of activities as they unfolded on the occasion of a Paul’s Cross sermon, so that we may experience a major public event of early modern London as it unfolded in real time and in the context of its original surroundings.
Date: 05/09/2013
Primary URL: https://www.hastac.org/news/new-resource-virtual-pauls-cross-project-website
Primary URL Description: Blog for HASTAC at Duke University
Blog Title: https://www.hastac.org/news/new-resource-virtual-pauls-cross-project-website
Website: https://www.hastac.org/
The Contested Pliability of Sacred Space in St Paul’s Cathedral and Paul’s Churchyard in Early Modern London (Conference Paper/Presentation)
Title: The Contested Pliability of Sacred Space in St Paul’s Cathedral and Paul’s Churchyard in Early Modern London
Author: John N. Wall
Abstract: This paper will argue that the relationship between sacred and secular in the early seventeenth century played out in a complex and interactive relationship staged by the conduct of public worship and in the interactive character of preaching as quasi-theatrical events in specific locales and occasions. Donne’s role in worship took place on occasions enabled by the Book of Common Prayer; his preaching, which he sometimes opposed rhetorically to the theater, shared with the theater a wide range of audience expectations for the use of costumes, clearly-defined stages, and active engagement with the assembled congregation. This transformation of worship played out in spaces which were themselves engaged in contested relationships between sacred and secular. Our digital models of St Paul’s Cathedral and Paul’s Churchyard (vpcp.chass.ncsu.edu) foreground the complexities of these interactions during Donne’s time as Dean of the cathedral. The cathedral’s nave ceased being the site of festival processions or the site of chancery chapels where masses were said for the dead, becoming instead Paul’s Walk, the notorious site where the fashionable came to gossip and lawyers, prostitutes, and pickpockets plied their trades, interrupting the round of daily offices that continued to be sung in the cathedral’s Choir. In Paul’s Churchyard, the sacred world of cloisters and charnel houses gave way to a complex mix of sacred and secular; Paul’s Churchyard functioned both as a working graveyard and an increasingly commercial area where the proliferation of bookshops made Paul’s Churchyard into the commercial center of the English book trade. So formerly sacred spaces could shelter community and commercial activities while regaining a sense of a transformed sacred space through public ceremonies and occasions like the Paul’s Cross sermons, which while theologically instructive were also the most entertainment one could find in London for free on a Sunday morning.
Date: 05/12/2017
Primary URL: http://wp.unil.ch/johndonne-space/2017-conference/
Primary URL Description: Site for the Space, Place, and Image Conference in Lausanne, Switzerland, where I delivered this paper
Conference Name: Space, Place and Image in Early Modern English Literature