SVAD Students Collaborate on Digital Piranesi Project

July 2, 2019

Two of our students have spent their academic year working on an ongoing digital humanities project that integrates art history with applications for new media technologies. 

The Irvin Department of Rare Books and Special Collections at UofSC has one of very few full sets of Italian engraver Giovanni Piranesi’s complete works. The Digital Piranesi shares this rare historical material by using aspects of digital media that Piranesi’s works seem to predict. Chris Terry, a media arts major, and Jessica Atkins, an art history major, have worked all year to create immersive digital environments (virtual reality), webpages, essays, and detailed metadata.

The Digital Piranesi has been supported by an ASPIRE grant from the Office of the Vice President for Research, the Center for Digital Humanities, the Irvin Department, and the Magellan Scholars Program at the University of South Carolina. The Digital Piranesi has also just been awarded a $330,000 grant from the NEH’s Division of Preservation and Access for 2019-2021. Thanks to this support, there will be many student jobs for the next two years!