Contributors to this guide

Brian Donovan, Photographer, Center for Flexible and Distance Learning, University of Auckland

Brian Donovan specializes in digital image manipulation, multimedia authoring, 3D modelling, and QuickTime VR. The latter technology in particular has been extensively used in his work on recent projects such as the documentation of a block of ancient Roman houses excavated at Pompeii (a collaboration between EMC, the University's Department of Classics and Ancient History, and the British School at Rome), similar work at Herculaneum for the Herculaneum Conservation Project, and coverage of the Byzantine monastery of Hilandar at Mt Athos in Greece for the University's Architecture Department.

In addition to being used in teaching both at this University and in a number of New Zealand secondary schools, his QTVR work is being used in courses at UCLA, Harvard and Yale.

Bernard Frischer, Director, IATH

Professor Frischer is a leading scholar in the application of digital technologies to humanities research and education. He is currently the director of the Institute for Advanced Technology in the Humanities. Previously, he was the founder and director of the Cultural Virtual Reality Lab at UCLA, which uses three-dimensional computer modeling to reconstruct cultural heritage sites. Frischer has overseen many significant projects, including virtual recreations of the Roman Colosseum and the Roman Forum.

Michael Gross, IATH Visiting Fellow

Michael Gross is the Technical Director of the Williams College Virtual Architecture Project, under the direction of Professor Eugene J. Johnson. Over the past four years he and his twin brother have photographed over one hundred significant cultural monuments in Europe and North America and produced virtual reality projects for Williams College, Williams College Museum of Art, University of Virginia, UCLA, and Saudi Aramco World magazine. Michael and Barry were recently visiting fellows at the University of Virginia, where they coordinated the writing of a best practices guide for digital panoramic photography documentation of World Cultural Heritage Sites.

Barry Gross, IATH Visiting Fellow

Barry Gross has been producing virtual reality models of historical architectural monuments in Europe and the United States for the past four years for the Art History Department at Williams College. Along with with his twin brother Michael, he has collectively spent a year in the field on assignment as a professional photographer, audio recorder, and digital archivist. He is currently collaborating with Dr. Bernard Frischer on various projects, including the digital documentation of the Roman Forum in Rome, Italy, and the St. Gallen plan and models in St. Gallen and Zurich, Switzerland. Barry also spent more than two years working with vascular surgeons at Harvard Medical School where he filmed many operations, several of which were accepted and presented at the American College of Surgeons (ACS) Clinical Congress in 2004 and 2005

Eugene Johnson, Professor of Art, Williams College

Dr. Johnson is a Class of 1955 Memorial Professor of Art and History of Architecture. His scholarly interests are in Italian Renaissance architecture and 20th century architecture. He has written articles on 16th century architecture in Venice and a book on the architecture of theaters in Italy from the late 15th to the late 17th centuries. He and the Gross brothers have worked together for the past few years to develop QuickTime VR panoramas of architecturally significant sites dating from 1500 B.C. to the present, in order to recreate far more faithfully the actual experience of being in a work of architecture. The panoramas will form the basis of the architecture part of an introduction to western art history to be taught at Williams College next fall.

Worthy Martin, Associate Director, IATH

Dr. Martin is a Professor of Computer Science at UVA. His primary research interest is dynamic scene analysis, i.e., computer vision in the context of time-varying imagery, as well as the fundamental concepts involved in machine perception systems composed of independent processes operating in distributed computing environments and cooperating to form interpretations of image sequences.

Lisa Reilly, Associate Professor, Architectural History, UVA

Professor Reilly is the 2006-2008 Fellow at IATH. Her chief research interest is in the history of Norman architecture in England, France and Italy. She published a monograph on Peterborough Cathedral with Oxford University Press in the series Clarendon Studies in the Fine Arts. Ms. Reilly publishes and lectures chiefly on Norman architecture and is currently preparing a book on Norman visual culture throughout the Romanesque world. Her IATH project will analyze the relationship between Norman architecture and later Gothic additions to English medieval cathedrals. Her interest in virtual reality developed out of her research into the use of technology in the humanities while she held the Horace Goldsmith/NEH Teaching Chair at the University of Virginia (1999-2002).

Will Rourk, Media Specialist, Digital Media Center, UVA Library

Will Rourke specializes in 3D and Animation at the University of Virginia Library's Digital Media Center, an electronic resource center for UVA faculty and students. He develops content for and manages UVA projects involving 3D technology. He also has created and produced several QuickTimeVR (QTVR) projects and objects. He is currently pursuing an advanced degree in architectural history at UVA.

Ken Stuart, Photographer

Ken has been shooting panoramas since 1999 and has travelled to four continents to do so -- mostly on archaeological and historical sites in Peru, Egypt, Iceland, Italy, and England, but also in U.S. locations near his home in Southern California.

With a graduate degree in archaeology, a keen interest in photography, as well as extensive professional experience in developing dynamic database-driven web sites, Ken finds immersive panoramas the perfect combination for virtual tours and one of the coolest things about the Internet.

Michael Tuite, Head, Digital Media Lab, UVA Library

Michael Tuite specializes in the development of digital cultural resource collections.

Tom Watson, Photographer

Tom Watson is a digital imaging innovator, large format digital photographer, and "panoramist". The quality of his work has attracted the attention of The American Institute of Architects, WIRED magazine, Architects' Journal, UK and BBC television. Watson's technology is ideally suited for architectural photography where his continuous panoramas can be used in interior spaces as well as exterior.

Sarah Wells, Scholarly and Technical Communications Officer, IATH

Sarah Wells first joined IATH in 1995. Since then, she has worked as a project manager, writer, and editor for a wide range of digital humanities and computing projects at the University of Virginia.

Madelyn Wessel, Special Advisor/Liaison to the General Counsel for the University of Virginia Libraries

Madelyn Wessel has lectured on copyright, digital responsibilities, legal and policy frameworks for sustaining digital scholarship, fair use and censorship in recent years to groups as diverse as the Art Libraries Society of North America, College and University Auditors, Digital Library Federation, Music Library Association, Educause, and the Visual Resources Association. Her work for the UVA Libraries focusses on a broad range of library system legal issues including intellectual property, copyright, licensing, and special issues arising in the area of digital scholarship.

 

Back row, left to right: Tom Watson, Eugene Johnson, Michael Gross, Bernard Frischer, Lisa Reilly, Michael Tuite, Brian Donovan.

Front row, left to right: Ken Stuart, Sarah Wells, Barry Gross.

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