The Maryland Institute for Technology in the Humanities (MITH) and the Department of Theatre are pleased to announce the receipt of an NEH Level 2 Digital Humanities Startup Grant for CAMP, a Collaborative, Ajax-Based, Modeling Platform. Development will be overseen by Doug Reside, Visiting Assistant Professor of Theatre and Assistant Director of the Maryland Institute for Technology in the Humanities, and Frank Hildy, Professor of Theatre. This the fourth Digital Humanities Startup for MITH in two years.
As the name suggests, this tool is an open source, collaborative, 3d modeler that will allow users with very little experience to generate a 3-dimensional model in their web browser which they can then allow other users to both view and edit. The tool will initially be used to construct an international database of pre-19th century theater buildings, but will be intentionally generic so that scholars interested in structures of any sort can easily port it into their own projects. CAMP will initially be used as a component in the Comprehensive World Wide Digital Archive of Existing Historic Theatres– a collaboratively edited, peer reviewed, online database of historic theatre architecture from the Minoan “theatrical areas” on the island of Crete, to the last theatre built before 1815. The Comprehensive World Wide Archive of Existing Historic Theatres is an attempt to create the necessary finding aid for these buildings and provide a consistent body of relevant data, most especially digital reconstructions at a consistent scale, about them.