Object Artefact Script Tarte
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Object Artefact Script (October 8-9, 2009)
Ségolène Tarte (University of Oxford)
A puzzling letter form, or how ways-of-looking and ways-of-seeing differ
This talk will present how, in the context of building an Interpretation Support System for the transcription and interpretation of ancient and damaged documents [1], we are working on developing strategies to port perception and interpretation into the Digital world.
Based on a specific example, I will briefly present our digitization process, which aims to mirror the experts’ real-world strategy, and the image processing algorithms we developed to enhance the images. I will then elaborate further on the chain of reasoning that progressively unravels when experts set to discover meaning to a text-bearing artefact. Building on previous work that identified 10 levels of reading in the transcription process [2], I will present some of the strategies that the experts adopt, and how the jumps between reading levels occur [3-7]. Throughout, examples will be given of the continuous tension and search for balance between ways-of-seeing and ways-of-looking, between intentionality and serendipity, between what the text-bearing object allows and what it invites; all in an effort to make explicit, some of the key implicit mechanisms that cause perception and interpretation to be so tightly intertwined.
References
- Project website: http://esad.classics.ox.ac.uk
- M. Terras. Image to Interpretation. An Intelligent System to Aid Historians in Reading the Vindolanda Texts. Oxford University Press, 2006.
- H. C. Youtie. The papyrologist: artificer of fact. Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies, 4(1):19–33, 1963.
- E. J. Gibson. Improvement in perceptual judgments as a function of controlled practice or training. Psychological Bulletin, 50(6):401–431, Nov 1953.
- C. Grasseni, editor. Skilled visions: between apprenticship and standards, volume 6 of EASA - Learning Fields. Berghahn books, 2007.
- R. Neer. Connoisseurship and the stakes of style. Critical Inquiry, 32(1):1–26, 2005.
- D. E. Rumelhart and J. L. McClelland, editors. Parallel Distributed Processing: Explorations in the Microstructure of Cognition, volume II. MIT Press, 1986.
Discussion questions
- How well do editions of a text reflect the active resolution of the above-mentioned tensions?
- How can the validity of an interpretation and its supporting or attacking (network of) evidence be evaluated?
- To what extent can it be expected that scientific tools such as artificial intelligence or image processing will help facilitate and/or enhance the interpretation task and the validity of its outcome?
