Coordinated by the Institute of Heritage Science of the national Research Council (ISPC-CNR) and the University of Tor Vergata in Rome in collaboration with Bibliotheca Angelica, Codex 4D is a multidisciplinary project that includes and interconnects several disciplinary approaches under the banner of a global methodology aimed at increasing knowledge of ancient manuscripts through the use of virtual reality environments.
Using innovative methodologies, Codex 4D brings together, in a single application, material and intangible, visible and invisible, historical-artistic, diagnostic and conservative aspects. The project goes beyond the mere digitalization of the codex contents and focuses on the conception of new models of narration and virtual representation by using visualization and scientific investigation tools as well as different languages.
The team of researchers have created an open and editable Web App that, being conceived as a mixed-reality environment, works like a small theatre: a narrator played by an actress acting against a green screen, lives among the parchment pages and the miniatures and tells about that world from the inside. In this way, scientific communication will be able to arouse emotion and motivate the audience to learn, improving the processes of interaction and sharing between research groups.
The manuscripts examined were: De Balneis Puteolanis (Ms. 1474, 1258-1266), La Divina Commedia (Ms. 1102, 1325-1350), the Libro d’Ore (Ms. 459, beginning of XV century) from the Bibliotheca Angelica, Roma.
