Japanese Handscrolls and Digital Explorations: Materiality, Practices and Locality
Asian Studies
Final Report Abstract
The Project “Japanese Handscrolls and Digital Explorations: Materiality, Practices and Locality” examines the reproductions of illuminated handscrolls (emaki) and focuses on a group of handscroll sets called the Karmic Origins of Tenjin (Tenjin engi). Centering on a 1538 version in the collection of the Guimet Museum in Paris, it investigates a cultural biography of related sets of Tenjin scrolls from their creations in the local sociopolitical contexts to their reproductions as art historical objects in museums and publications; and in such understanding of artwork reproductions as both the medium and means for art historical investigations, the project contemplates both the mediating and facilitating powers of the digital image in the practices of emaki digitization. Conducting close visual analysis, philological comparisons, and archival research, the dissertation of the Project Staff examines how the late Medieval versions of Tenjin scrolls were re-/produced within the local artist and shrine networks. Continuing the inquiry into their provenance and research history of these sets, the doctoral research demonstrates the shifting significance of these devotional artifacts since they were dislocated from the local shrines into the modern institutions of museums and libraries. By investigating their reproductions in the early modern old records and the late nineteenth-century auction catalogs and art historical journals, the dissertation demonstrates not only the challenges of reproducing emaki as a specific East Asian format but also the diversity of reproductive media and approaches before and beyond photography. Eventually, with such an expanded understanding of the materiality and practices of reproductions, the project research examines how the aforementioned handscroll sets have been handled, digitally reproduced, and re-/presented by their current cultural custodians within the larger context of digitization and museum practices. The project’s inquiry into the diverse media and practices of digitization also broadens the horizon of digital humanities scholars and sheds light on the further potentials of the digital image. The project considers digitization not as standardizable, finite, individual projects but as plural, diverse, and ongoing processes that require conscious, informed, and intentional decisions of human agents. The focus on East Asian materials and practices manifests both the flexible applicability and restraining specificity of digital tools and solutions. If the agency-granting question of "What does an object want?" evokes reflections on how digitization and museum practices can do justice to an object's specific materiality, uses, and cultural "career," what the issues of artwork digitization essentially revolve around is the human agency involved in such processes—what do the researchers, curators, and viewers want?
Publications
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“Japanese Handscrolls and Digital Explorations: The Problems and Challenges of Re-/Presentation.” International Journal for Digital Art History E1 (2021): 8–21
Wang, Fengyu & Melanie Trede
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“Post-Digital Print” (Project Blog). Das digitale Bild. June 3, 2020
Wang, Fengyu
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“The Other Digital Images: Vector, X-Ray, and Near Infrared” (Project Blog). Das digitale Bild. June 17, 2021
Wang, Fengyu
