UNESCO to Web: Go to Hell (US)
by Joyce Slaton
3:00 a.m. 14.Jan.2000 PST
A new multimedia project allows visitors to explore Dante's
700-year-old
vision of Hell, purgatory, and Paradise.
Sponsored by the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and
Cultural
Organization, more commonly known as UNESCO, the project
features 120
original illustrations from a French translation of
Dante's master work.
Artist Vladimir Liagatchev spent more than 10 years creating the
images
for a book before he decided to approach UNESCO with the work
and his ideas
for a digital project.
"I tried to create a concrete image of what Dante imagined:
infinite
complexity hidden behind a single image," Liagatchev said in
an
email interview. "The Divine Comedy resonates today because
the
complexity of this encyclopedic work doesn't preclude the
singularity
and precision of each detail -- just as the computer is complex
and
precise."
UNESCO's navigational system is just as complex -- users begin their
tour
through Dante's world with a single image. They can then choose
to navigate
Dante's work step-by-step or head straight to Heaven,
Hell, or purgatory.
"The complexity of Dante's world can be very well presented on the
Web,"
said Axel Plathe of UNESCO's information and informatics
division. "You can
really make a journey through his world in a way
you can't do with a book."
It isn't the first site to exploit the Web's capabilities to
illustrate a
complicated text work. Works from T. S. Eliot's The
Waste Land to The Bible
to Shakespeare's Midsummer Night's Dream have
been presented in a hypertext
format.
The UNESCO site isn't the first Dante hypertext either. Digital
Dante, a
project of Columbia University's Institute for Learning
Technologies, has
been online for six years.
"Dante is so suited for multimedia," said Jennifer Hogan, the
creator of
Digital Dante. "The text is so visual. In his original
manuscript there are
lots of little pictures and maps and readers
can't help visualizing the work
even while reading it."
Hundreds of artists from Botticelli to Blake have produced
illustrations
for Dante's work, many of which are reproduced on the
Digital Dante site.
"To some, projects like this may seem to be simplifying a very
complex
work," Hogan said. "But the images themselves are instructive
metaphors and
the Web presentations can engage learners in a way the
text can't."
But UNESCO will be satisfied if its project turns on Web-heads to
the
existence of copyright-free public domain works.
"We could use Dante's work because it's free to all, the copyright
has
passed into the public domain," Plathe said. "We wanted to
reinforce and
publicize the idea that many works are free from
copyright and can be put on
the Internet for educational purposes
that benefit everyone."
Ironically enough, recent US laws have extended the length of
copyrights
just as the Web is making wide distribution of works
possible. The 1998, The
Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act
extends copyright protection for most
works from 50 years after the
author's death to 70 years.
"We don't want to see public domain rights endangered," Plathe said.
"We
want to encourage UNESCO's member states to bring on public
domain
information on the Web, encourage libraries to digitize
holdings, [and]
encourage artists to put work on sites."
Current law mandates that excerpts of almost any work can be used
for
activities such as criticism, reporting, scholarship, research,
and teaching.
UNESCO's Dante site will be up for the foreseeable future. UNESCO
is
seeking volunteers to translate the French text into English and
other
languages.
Links:
http://eliotswasteland.tripod.com/
http://www.auckland.ac.nz/acte/pmb/
http://quarles.unbc.ca/midsummer/midsummer1.html
http://www.ilt.columbia.edu/projects/dante/index.html
http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d105:s.00505:
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