Japanese Handscrolls and Digital Explorations: Materiality, Practices and Locality

• Applicant: Professorin Dr. Melanie Trede
• Subject Area: Art History ; Asian Studies
• Term: from 2019 to 2023
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 421470689

Within the framework of the “the Digital Image,” this project offers a culturally and materially diverse case study to enrich discussions relating to the epistemological revolution of the digital image. Based on Japanese materiality and practices of viewing as well as hermeneutics, this project critically assesses the state of the field and offers innovative and unique perspectives in advancing a multi-perspectival engagement with digital tools. Potentials of distant viewing (Bender, 2015), and quantitative approaches have been discussed (Manovich, 2015). By contrast, only few publications address issues of image appropriation in digital displays (Doulkaridou, 2015). Rarely, digital representations of Japanese materials are reflected on (Yang ed., 2013). By scrutinizing digital projects of Japanese handscrolls, this PhD thesis critically reflects on the mediating power of the digital image. New modes of digital representations of Japanese handscrolls shall be explored in three areas of inquiry: 1) Materiality refers to the material qualities of the artefact and the handscrolls’ horizontal format. The aim is to explore the possibilities and limits of digital technologies to convey and inform the user with what is “unpresentable” in digital forms. The tactile information (weight of the artefact, its smell, the distinct paper quality, etc.) is left out in the flattened ocular representation of the digital image. Further, the material conditions of the objects and the environment are paramount in deciding people’s behavior (Schatzki, 2016). Consequently, the format of the handscrolls with up to thirty meters, requires special attention. 2) Practice concerns the way in which handscrolls are handled, viewed, and how a digital representation retains, augments or transforms the original experience. The material configuration of handscrolls results in a distinct, non-static viewing experience of rolling and unrolling, thus individually changing the frame to reveal the written and painted narrative that proceeds from right to left.The PhD addresses these conflicts and investigates experiments with digital solutions: to incorporate overlapping layers and functions that can be turned on/off, and multiple interfaces of representations that can be accessed. 3) Locality includes both the location of production and the current residence of an artefact. It is also concerned with a) networks between the locations of related objects, b) the socio-political significance of the artefacts within these networks, and c) the mobility of the artefacts, and the subsequent changes of such networks across time. The thesis will examine various possibilities of mapping such networks with digital tools. The PhD thesis investigates versions of fifteenth- and sixteenth-century unresearched Tenjin scrolls, and reflects on how digital tools facilitate and enrich new understandings of Japanese handscrolls.

• DFG Programme: Priority Programmes
• Subproject of: SPP 2172: The digital Image