He believes that it will be faster and more efficient for students to obtain information from the Web than from the College Reserves in Butler Library or from photocopied packets of text. However, Maurice Luker, a doctoral candidate and executive producer and managing director of the Amiens Project, claims that the Web can go beyond simply delivering conventional information. That is not the most effective use of the technology. We are trying to put things on the Web that are not available through other media, like Apple's QuickTime Virtual Reality software, which will allow students to see three-dimensional simulations of works of art, including the interior space of a cathedral, on their computer screens. Artists and educators have long manipulated new imaging technology to change fundamentally how we envision and understand our world.
New technology makes possible a new way of seeing.
The Amiens Project enables students to examine every aspect of Amiens Cathedral. While it may never be known if the space within the walls of Amiens Cathedral inspired Verne to stretch his imagination into the future, it did inspire Murray to attempt to digitally recreate the transcendent affects of the medieval cathedral. The high-tech resonates with the medieval cathedral. For example, just as the clergy made Latin and the Benedictine Rule the single international discourse during the Middle Ages, today the single discourse that is emerging throughout the world is Hypertext, the language of the World Wide Web. And just as the architecture of Amiens Cathedral became the medium to augment the affects of religion, technology has offered us the proper media to recreate the physical affects of the cathedral.