Starting to make the stones at Virtual Avebury
Our Immersive Partnerships project (Virtual Avebury) has officially started! Virtual Avebury is an AHRC/EPSRC funded project under the 2017 Immersive Partnerships call. It is a partnership between BU (Principal Investigator Liz Falconer in CEL and Co-investigator Professor Kate Welham in Archaeology, Anthropology and Forensic Science) and external developers and stakeholders. We are pleased to announce that we’ll be joined on 1st March by our new research assistant, Neil Slawson, who has come to us from the BU Learning Technology team in Faculty of Management. Neil brings a wealth of learning technology and archaeology expertise, so we are delighted to welcome him to the team.
One of our first activities will be to create our web presence and blog, where we can report on how the project is going and demonstrate the exciting developments in the first phase – the creation of a 3D, immersive simulation of Avebury Henge, as it may have appeared circa 2,300 BCE. The picture above shows some examples of 3D model stones, as Daden Ltd begin to build the landscape of Virtual Avebury and Satsymph begin to build soundscapes. The second phase, from 1st June to 21st August this year, will be to test the simulation with public visitors to Avebury itself, to investigate how people interact with the virtual environment and with other visitors they will meet there in real time, and how experiencing Virtual Avebury in 2,300 BCE affects their reactions to physical Avebury in the present day. The final phase will be from September -November when we’ll be analysing the data and writing reports and papers.
If anyone would like to get in touch about the project, or would like to explore ways to become involved, please do let me know at efalconer@bournemouth.ac.uk.
I am Chair of the Stonehenge and Avebury World Heritage Site and would love to support this project. I hadn’t heard of it but it fits with our own ambition and plan so would be happy to discuss how we can help.
Wonderful to hear from you Alistair. It would be great to meet up and discuss this – I’ll drop you an email and we can take it from there
Would love to be kept informed of progress.
We’re look at something along these lines – but for people to walk around (Scheduled Ancient Monument) sites (Bokerley Dyke, Dorset Cursus, Iron Age camps etc) – and see them as they may have looked and been used (on the ground when they are there) with tablet or mobile camera (overlaying virtual on current landscape).
We want to look at how this type of technology encourages visits by a wider audience and non-traditional users (improving engagement and greater visits to heritage and nature sites close to where they live – and for a small percentage of new users the catalyst for lifestyle change – confidence & interest in visiting natural/cultural heritage sites).
Hi Roger, Great to hear from you. We’re just about to start up our project blog and I’ll send you the link as soon as it’s ready. If you’d like to meet up sometime to talk about how we might work together on projects that would be great. Just drop me a line at efalconer@bournemouth.ac.uk and I’d be happy to meet somewhere convenient for you.