#imfm

Image of a manuscript, generated in MidJourney by Suzette van Haaren

(a few words originally posted on Twitter on March 27, 2023 and then on my blog. It’s resonating there so I thought I would post it here too.)

I’ve been trying all morning to figure out what bothers me about these Mid journey-generated manuscripts without simply sounding like a Luddite, and I think I finally have it.

It’s because my interest in manuscripts is almost entirely about the humanity behind them. Who made them? Who used them and why? What happened to them after they were made? Where are they now? What did they mean in the past and what do they mean now?

A computer generated book doesn’t have any of that context. I’ve talked about the uncanny valley with regard to digitized manuscripts, and this is that, one step further. It’s one thing to digitize a manuscript in a way that elides its materiality, and a whole other thing to create manuscripts that don’t exist materially at all.

I think there are potentially interesting ways to use AI in my work. I’m interested in structure, and have been part of a project, VisColl, to develop models and software to build models of manuscripts. Could AI be used to combine structural models and digital images to create photorealistic imagery of existing manuscripts? Imagine an AI reconstruction of manuscripts cut apart and distributed by Otto Ege. Could it even generate pages that are lost as semi-realistic placeholders?

Just a few thoughts. I’m less interested in generating realistic looking manuscripts than in the potential to leverage the technology to help us understand the use and history of manuscripts that exist in the real world.

In Episode 9 of Inside My Favorite Manuscript, Lindsey and Dot chat with Zoe and Mac from the Maniculum podcast, where they suggest ways to adapt medieval texts for TTRPG’s (tabletop roleplaying games). We talk about marginalia, games, and Mac takes us for a dive into the Rutland Psalter. We also talk to Zoe about her storytelling for Pentiment, a medieval adventure video game by Obsidian Entertainment.

Listen here, or wherever you find your podcasts.

If you enjoyed this episode, you can listen to Dot and Lindsey over on The Maniculum Podcast! We talked about digital humanities, book history, and the secrets of women. Find links to listen here: https://www.themaniculumpodcast.com/episodes

Below the cut are page images and further reading from our conversation.

In Episode 14 of Inside My Favorite Manuscript, Dot chats with Aaron Macks about Harvard University, Houghton MS Typ 213, a gorgeous book of hours written and illustrated in Italy towards the end of the 15th century. We talk about the scribe and artist, the illuminations, the calendar, and discuss the practicalities of working with manuscripts as data.

Listen here, or wherever you find your podcasts.

Below the cut are more photos and links to the shows and books we mention during our conversation. Unless otherwise noted, the photos were taken by Aaron.

Women bathing in the Voynich manuscript

In Episode 2 of Inside My Favorite Manuscript, Dot and Lindsey talk to manuscript scholar Lisa Fagin Davis about three of her favorite manuscripts, all of which happen to be in the collections of the Beinecke Library at Yale University:

The Gottschalk Antiphonary, now a collection of fragments

Epistolary, Cistercian Use, a 15th century manuscript with substantial forged illustrations added in the 19th century

Cypher Manuscript aka The Voynich Manuscript, a fiend of a manuscript that has proven itself impossible to decipher

Listen to the episode here or wherever you get your podcasts!

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Below the cut are photos of some of the specific things we discuss in this episode.

Our first episode, featuring Allie Alvis aka @book-historia introducing us to two of their favorite manuscripts from the Huntington Collection at the University of Glasgow, will drop on Tuesday, November 15. Until then, here is me talking a tiny bit about the show and how I hope it will go.

Pilgrim portrait of the Monk from CUL MS Gg.4.27.1

In Episode 3 of Inside My Favorite Manuscript, Dot sits down with Megan Cook, professor of English and book historian, to talk about Cambridge, University Library MS Gg.4.27.1. GG (as Megan affectionately calls it) is an early effort to bring together Chaucer’s major works outside of London, the writing might indicate something interesting about the person who wrote it, and it had a long and interesting history after it was written around 1425.

Listen here, or wherever you find your podcasts.

Join our mailing list to receive weekly updates about the IMFM pod!

Below the cut are photos of some of the specific things we discuss in this episode.

A photo of a page from one of the Medinet Madi Coptic Manichaean Codices taken under ultraviolet light.

In Episode 20 of Inside My Favorite Manuscript, Dot talks with Paul Dilley about one of the Medinet Madi Coptic Manichaean Codices. These seven papyrus manuscripts dating to the 4th and 5th centuries were discovered in Egypt in 1929, and they tell the story of a religion that was intended to draw from Christianity, Buddhism, Gnosticism, and other religions to create something new, but it was later crushed by Christian Roman emperors who considered it heresy. Our conversation ranges from the conservation of papyrus and the details of the beliefs of Manichaeism, to papyrus conservation and multispectral imaging.

Listen here, or wherever you find your podcasts

Below the cut are more images and links relevant to the conversation. Please note that there is an animated gif that switches between light and dark at one second intervals. Please be careful if you are sensitive to flashing lights.