Abstract-On the two hundredth anniversary of the Kildonan clearances, when people were forcibly removed from their homes, the Timespan Heritage centre has created a program of community centred work aimed at challenging pre conceptions and encouraging reflection on this important historical process. This paper explores the innovative ways in which virtual world technology has facilitated community engagement, enhanced visualisation and encouraged reflection as part of this program.An installation where users navigate through a reconstruction of pre clearance Caen township is controlled through natural gestures and presented on a 300 inch six megapixel screen. This environment allows users to experience the past in new ways. The platform has value as an effective way for an educator, artist or hobbyist to create large scale virtual environments using off the shelf hardware and open source software. The result is an exhibit that also serves as a platform for experimentation into innovative ways of community co-creation and co-curation.
These include showcasing the model at the Helmsdale Highland Games where visitors could explore the township of the past on stereo head mounted displays, or a Virtual Museum website that welcomes visitors from around the globe, as well as using Google Cardboard to allow visitors to explore Caen today, the virtual reconstruction of Caen simultaneously whilst on the site.
Th is paper presents refl ections on the theme of sociality from a mass-participation art event in the town of Huntly in north-east Scotland in 2009. Drawing on Alfred Schütz's notion of the 'consociate' and related concepts, our eff orts are directed towards understanding the nature of sociality that the event created for the people involved in it. We consider slowness as an actual experience through pacing and cadence, and also the tensions between experience and the requirement that art should have measureable impact.Keywords: sociality, art, slowness, Schütz, cycling, Scotland Th is paper presents refl ections on the theme of sociality from a mass-participation art event in the town of Huntly in north-east Scotland in 2009. Drawing on Alfred Schütz's notion of the 'consociate' , our eff orts are directed towards understanding the nature of sociality that the event created for the people involved in it. Two aspects should be noted: fi rstly, it was specifi cally a piece of art, and thus the involvement of art and aesthetics in sociality is of concern to us; secondly, it was art created on the move and through movement, and this encourages us to locate sociality in actual activity rather than in a pre-existing context or structure.A biographical note is needed to explain our collaboration in this paper. Anna Vermehren is a curator at Deveron Arts, the organization in Huntly which produced the artwork under discussion here. Vergunst is an anthropologist at the University of Aberdeen and carried out ethnographic fi eldwork focused on the event. Our working together comprises a contention that anthropology should not merely study art as if in a subject-object relation. Instead we fi nd that there are questions of common artistic and anthropological concern that are most satisfyingly addressed by sharing authorship, though not entirely combining our voices. Schütz's perspective on the signifi cance of co-presence in social relationships seems pertinent to our joint attempt to move beyond the usual modes of art criticism, and indeed anthropology, in which the critic/ researcher constructs a relationship of distance towards the objects of concern.We now turn to how the notion of sociality has shaped our work. As the introduction to this collection points out, scholars have tended to use the term to denote a concern
Abstract-Coastal erosion is causing the destruction of archaeological sites around the world. The problem is particularly grave in Scotland, where storms can cause many meters of land to be lost in a single event. Archaeological researchers from the University of St Andrews and the SCAPE Trust have worked with community groups to excavate sites before they are destroyed. Video was used to record the progress of the community rescue digs and interviews conducted with local group members. Additionally, photographs and artwork augmented the archaeological record, resulting in a wealth of information about the sites and the process of excavation.The data has been used to make reconstructions of the sites as they were in the past. Visitors control avatars to explore the virtual worlds and to access videos, photographs, laser scans, 3D models and historic documents. This innovative approach to heritage interpretation allows the public to see the evidence behind reconstructions and to learn about the process of archaeological enquiry. For example, clicking on a plate of food reveals a summary of the environmental report which provided the evidence for diet. This allows an archaeological site report to be presented in a 3D environment, with various layers of information accessible to the explorer.The group have set up their first installation in a dedicated room at Timespan Museum, Helmsdale. The evidence for the reconstruction comes from the sixteenth century Brora salt pan, excavated between 2007 and 2011 and destroyed in a storm in 2012 as well as the neighbouring township of Caen. Users manoeuvre the avatar either through a game controller or by body gestures recognised by a motion sensor. Multiple screens have been used to present a wraparound and immersive experience. The systems are built using OpenSource software and commodity hardware. They are designed to enable content to be augmented by non-technical specialists and allows cultural organisations and their participating audiences to create professional quality immersive environments at relatively low cost, and to develop their own interpretations of history and link them to wider narratives. In this way local communities are empowered to engage in the construction and transmission of their cultural heritage.
Abstract. This work discusses the methodology for the design, development and deployment of a virtual 19 th -century Fish Curing Yard as an immersive museum installation. The museum building now occupies the same space where the curing yard was over 100 years prior, hence the deployment of a virtual reconstruction of the curing yard in a game engine enables the museum visitors to explore the virtual world from equivalent vantage points in the real world. The project methodology achieves the goal of maximising user experience for visitors while minimising cost for the museum, and focus group evaluations of the system revealed the success of the interaction-free design with snackable content. A major implication of the findings is that museums can provide compelling and informative experiences that enable visitors to travel back in time with minimal interaction and relatively low cost systems.
Th is paper presents refl ections on the theme of sociality from a mass-participation art event in the town of Huntly in north-east Scotland in 2009. Drawing on Alfred Schütz's notion of the 'consociate' and related concepts, our eff orts are directed towards understanding the nature of sociality that the event created for the people involved in it. We consider slowness as an actual experience through pacing and cadence, and also the tensions between experience and the requirement that art should have measureable impact.
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