Layered Histories:
The Wandering Bible of Marseilles

Cynthia-Beth Rubin: visuals, narrative
Bob Gluck: music, programming

a viewer responsive interactive installation
also available as a linear video

exhibtions linear screenings installation views press contact français index


Layered Histories tells the imaginary story of an actual 13th century Spanish illuminated Hebrew Bible. Fleeing Spain with the 1492 Expulsion, the Bible was known to be in Safed until the mid 16th century, but then apparently disappeared until it was discovered around 1888 in the Bibliothèque Municipale in Marseilles.

Layered Histories represents an innovative approach to the use of new media as a means to engage the viewer in a personal investigation of a non-linear narrative based on the known and unknown wanderings of the Marseilles Bible, and reflecting on the experience of culture as a phenomenon evolving from influences of place and cross-cultural contact. Both the sources for the cascading moving imagery and the diffusion of sound were highly mediated by the artists, but in the installation they are triggered and guided by a visitor's reading pointer movements around the surface of what appears to be an illuminated manuscript. As in a public reading, all visitors to the space share in the experience of collectively viewing and listening.