Into the medieval manuscript: what digital knowledge medium to « re-open » the book?

Abstract

In Edinburgh last March, we gave a brief presentation on the intermedial object that the medieval codex can represent, using the example of manuscript 1800 from the Méjanes library in Aix-en-Provence, the primary support for a digital escape game available from autumn 2023.

We have carried out interdisciplinary work combining literature and chemistry on this 15th-century illuminated manuscript, and we wanted to popularize the results and approach through an immersive investigation. The construction of the game and its initial results lead us to ask the following questions:

• How can the development of a digital game serve scientific communication? What does the digital medium enable? What does it facilitate? How is it perceived and understood by different audiences?
• In the other way, how can scientific research evolve thanks to the design of such a game?

We'll try to show that the ludic digital medium is a tool as well as a digital fiction; that it is also a means of questioning, which stimulates and refines research. Finally, it leads us to consider the digital medium as a solution for understanding and representing medieval manuscripts in all their complexity. Indeed, the development of knowledge graphes, of virtual and augmented reality, driven by traditional visions of reading, codicological and chemical analysis, and photography, can enable us to understand and represent medieval manuscripts in all their complexity.

Indeed the development of virtual and augmented realities based on traditional views as lecture, chemical and codicologic analyze and photography can help us to understand this medieval object as a witness and support of knowledge.