2023-2024
Material Transformations: In fall 2023, the three undergraduate interns, Jun Lee, Amy Chirstopherson, and Lylah Messinger, engaged two ambitious projects, both of which involving photogrammtry but moving beyond in interesting and productive ways. Material Transformations, a website Amy Christopherson created, captures the group’s work sorting out a puzzle of pottery shards that Lylah Messinger ultimately conserved and reconstructed and Jun Lee’s efforts to use a 3-D print of a bronze-age ax head modeled by the group as the basis for casting versions of that ax head using the lost ax process.
2022-2023
Lamp Mode: In fall 2022, three undergraduate interns, Eileen Wang, Rae Leonberger, and Clare Daly, photographed the roughly dozen oil lamps from various ancient cultures around the Mediterranean that are part of the UMD study collection. Their impressive work presently forms a site about these objects that interns in spring 2023 semester – Zeynep Yilmazcoban, Rhys Burns, and Bridget McElwee – developed and built using Omeka + Neatline.
2021-2022
Calabar Terracottas: In spring 2022, two undergraduate interns, Emily Lucie and Nicole Kaff, completed work begun by Jackie Soto and Mollie Goldman in fall 2021 photographing and development of models via photogrammetry using Agisoft’s Metashape of a dozen terracotta works on long-term loan from the National Museum of Calabar in Calabar, Nigeria, works that were excavated there in the 1990s by graduate students in the Department under the direction of Professor Ekpo Eyo. Dr. Eyo was a renowned archaeologist not only in his home country of Nigeria but equally in Europe and the United States, and he negotiated with museum officials in Calabar to allow a small group of the dozens and dozens of terracottas he and his team excavated to travel back with him to the University of Maryland. In spring 2022 as well, Despina Petradakis, an undergraduate archaeology student doing an independent study in the Collaboratory, developed the Omeka + Neatline website about the Calabar terracottas, working closely with Emily and Nicole on the content. The unusual map – really, an “unmap” – found on the site is Despina’s inventive response to concerns about not revealing precise information about dig sites to avoid site robbery.
2018-2019
Photogrammetry @Riversdale: Two graduate students in the Collaboratory, Charline Fournier-Petit (Art History) and Kenna Hernly (Education), working with Chris Cloke and Quint Gregory, photographed objects in the Riversdale House Museum collection and modeled these objects in Agisoft’s Photoscan photogrammetry software as 3D virtual objects.
Augmenting Visitor’s Center @ Riversdale: Alex Cave, undergraduate intern at Riversdale fall 2018, developed an augmented reality scavenger hunt for kids visiting the Visitor’s Center at Riversdale House Museum. Unfortunately, this brilliant project’s life was short, as HPReveal retired this summer (July 1, 2019) the platform on which Alex created the experience. A glimpse of the app in action can be spotted in the In Frame video series of Alex’s work at Riversdale.
Accessibility @ Riversdale: Using a 360 degree camera, Alex Cave created a tour of the second-floor spaces (and more) that are inaccessible to visitors unable to climb stairs in the historic home of Riversdale.
Study Collection VR @ Collaboratory: Two undergraduate interns, Josh Batugo and Sarah-Leah Thompson, worked with Quint Gregory and Chris Cloke to learn about the Department’s Study Collection and to consider best methods to better preserve and display these objects than presently is the case. Their work led to the creation of a new case design rendered in Maya and accessible in a Unity environment of the Department’s fourth floor, where virtual objects from the collection, created through photogrammetry, could be curated in the cabinet. This project represents a beginning onto which students (undergraduate and graduate) will build.
Shabti exhibition: Students in Dr. Emily Egan’s ARTH 300 Egyptian Art and Archaeology, working with Chris Cloke and Quint Gregory, learned about processes for re-presenting objects for a small exhibition, including photogrammetry and augmented reality, which they mounted in cases outside the Art Library. The shabtis the students modeled in photogrammetry are accessible in Sketchfab here.
2017-2018
Digital Portrait Basket for ARTH 488A – Ancient Mediterranean Portraiture (Spring 2017): Following the premise of the popular Food Network show, “Chopped,” this Omeka website serves as a “basket” into which members of the class deposited entries for ancient portraits throughout the Spring 2017 semester. In addition to serving as a useful repository of important information, this basket also provided the basis for each class member’s final project: the design in Sketchup (not linked) of a museum exhibition (a “tasty meal”!) using selected portraits found therein. Also a Digital Portrait Basket for Spring 2018.
Neatline Map of the Ancient World for ARTH 200 – This resource was developed for one of the Department’s core introductory courses – ARTH 200 – by Amanda Chen during her fall assistantship in the Collaboratory. Marissa Fischer, an undergraduate intern in fall 2019 rehabilitated the Neatline portion of this site – its vital center – after a failed update wiped all map and widgets features. Amanda Chen refurbished this site in spring 2022.
2016-2017
Stamp Art Gallery Model: Years ago the Collaboratory created virtual models in Sketchup of the University of Maryland Art Gallery and the Herman Maril Gallery, the two most prominent exhibition spaces in the Parren J. Mitchell Art and Sociology Building, models that are available for download and re-use to anyone with an interest in curating and in museum spaces. To this collection has been added a handsome model of the Stamp Art Gallery, complete with preset scenes that utilize the Stamp’s temporary wall system.
Life, Death, and Lekythoi: Learn more about ancient Greek funerary rites, the emergence of the white ground and polychrome techniques in Greek pottery, and iconographic image analysis in this topically narrow, but highly engaging, site.
Unfortunately, this site is disabled, possibly beyond repair. We hope to address this in the future. 2/2024
2015-2016
Golden Ratio In Art: A recursively repeating sequence found throughout nature that is expressed mathematically as 0.618, or phi (ϕ), the Golden Ratio often has been cited scholarship as the basis for works of art throughout art and architecture. This site, developed by Kristi Jamrisko, explores the Golden Ratio as an idea and as an element in art and design, with results that may surprise.
Gods, Saints, and Heroes: At some point in time, someone viewing a work of western art will be stumped by that work’s subject. Though generically clear as a religious or mythical figure, the specific identification may elude recognition. Artists leave clear signs of identity in the form of attributes, such as a palm branch, a winged shoe, or a thunderbolt, but our modern knowledge of these indexical signs and symbols may be lacking. While many handbooks exist explaining these symbols and signs, this website, developed by Hannah Shockmel, offers a first-ever convenience for twenty-first viewers: direct access on mobile devices.
Bip[Art]isan: Hosted by Caroline Paganussi and Bart Pushaw, this podcast features the two engaged in a conversation about topical subjects and their relation to the world of art. A fascinating and energetic 15 minutes, the first episode is “Boats.”
The Art of Making Testudo: Adopting a “man-on-the-street” interview style, this video, created by Ali Singer and Nicole Riesenberger, explores campus member’s attitudes towards, and knowledge of, Testudo, particularly as a work of art with a ritual focus. This different exploration of the popular statue of a Diamondback Terrapin that informs and inspires contemporary conceptions of the University Mascot will have you rubbing his nose next time you walk into McKeldin Library.
Riversdale House Museum: Using as a platform Augmented Reality, members of the D.I.G. (Caroline Paganussi, Nicole Riesenberger, Quint Gregory) built a number of visitor enhancement interventions to complement the physical exhibition at the Riversdale House Museum of the 200th Anniversary of an exhibition there of an important collection of European art that was stored for safekeeping in the house during the Napoleonic Wars.
2014-2015
In 2014-2105 the members of the DIG explored a wide range of the capabilities of Omeka + Neatline in a number of sites, links to which are below. A few of the GAs have documented their process of developing Omeka + Neatline sites in order to shorten the learning curve for those who follow, which one can access here. In addition to having as their basis Omeka + Neatline, all of these projects share another thing in common: they are hosted here at artinterp.org.
Fifteenth-Century Italian Art: This site, conceived by Nicole Riesenberger as a platform for teaching the history of quattrocento Italian art, incorporates maps, aerial views of cities and monuments, and timelines to contextualize individual works of art.
Streams of Being: An online companion (developed by Cecilia Wichmann and Grace Yasumura) to an exhibition of works from the AMA (Art Museum of the Americas) that graduate and undergraduate students from the Department of Art History and Archaeology at the University of Maryland, working with Dr. Abigail McEwen, curated in March 2015 at the Art Gallery.
Flowers in a Glass Vase: Omeka forms the necessary base for Hannah Schockmel’s wonderful exploitation of Neatline’s capacity for mapping, in this case the blooms in Ambrosius Bosschaert’s Flowers in a Glass Vase, 1621 (National Gallery of Art). Ever wondered about the identity of each flower? Now you’ll know.
Marlene J. Mayo Oral Histories | Gordon W. Prange Collection: This collaborative project between the Michelle Smith Collaboratory for Visual Culture and The University of Maryland Libraries’ Gordon W. Prange Collection, aims to enhance accessibility to valuable first-hand accounts of the Occupation of Japan on the University of Maryland campus and beyond.
The impact of DIG projects and activities is advancing experimentation in the classroom. During spring 2015 students in a graduate seminar taught by Professor Jason Kuo on the artist Lo Ch’ing, a contemporary artist, curated an exhibition of the artist’s works that is entirely online, built on the Omeka platform and hosted at ArtinTerp. Lo Ch’ing: The Poetry of Postmodern Landscape, contains not only a selection of the artist’s works, but scholarly essays, and a transcription of an interview with the artist.