Category — Art

In this video, lead­ing British folk musi­cians Coope Boyes & Simp­son pro­vide the music in their unique and mov­ing acapel­la style with the song “Only Remem­bered”, as we view aspects of the unique exhi­bi­tion by the Uni­ver­si­ty of Oxford’s First World War Poet­ry Dig­i­tal Archive in the immer­sive 3D vir­tu­al world of Sec­ond Life.

The exhi­bi­tion sim­u­lates aspects of life in the trench­es on the West­ern Front dur­ing the 1914–1918 war and presents work by the “War Poets” of the period.

As vis­i­tors explore the sim­u­la­tion, they can lis­ten to the voic­es of vet­er­ans recount­ing their expe­ri­ences of the war, view orig­i­nal film footage and pho­tographs from the time, and learn about life on the West­ern Front, encoun­ter­ing some of the most pow­er­ful poet­ry in Eng­lish lit­er­a­ture by see­ing the orig­i­nal man­u­scripts, turn­ing the pages of the poets’ war diaries and let­ters, and lis­ten­ing to readings.

The video is tak­en from the 10 Novem­ber 2009 episode of the TV series Design­ing Worlds, a week­ly live show cov­er­ing design and design­ers in vir­tu­al worlds, pro­duced by Prim Per­fect mag­a­zine and Treet.TV.

“Only Remem­bered” (Bonar/Sankey/Tams Voice Pub­lish­ing) is used by per­mis­sion and is tak­en from the album Pri­vate Peace­ful The Con­cert (No Mas­ters NMCD24) by Coope Boyes & Simpson.

For more infor­ma­tion, read this arti­cle on The First World War Poet­ry Dig­i­tal Archive in Sec­ond Life.

I’d like to draw your atten­tion to the fol­low­ing press release regard­ing the open­ing of the Sec­ond Life pres­ence of Oxford Uni­ver­si­ty’s First World War Poet­ry Dig­i­tal Archive. I was involved in record­ing some of the audio for this project, includ­ing sev­er­al poet­ry read­ings, tuto­ri­als and the intro­duc­tion and epi­logue to the instal­la­tion. More details here; video at foot of this article.

An excit­ing new project in inter­ac­tive edu­ca­tion will launch on 2nd Novem­ber 2009, draw­ing togeth­er the resources and exper­tise of the Uni­ver­si­ty of Oxford, and the pos­si­bil­i­ties for immer­sion and inter­ac­tiv­i­ty offered by the vir­tu­al world of Sec­ond Life.

The First World War Poet­ry Dig­i­tal Archive and the Learn­ing Tech­nolo­gies Group at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Oxford have col­lab­o­rat­ed to bring togeth­er a wealth of digi­tised archival mate­r­i­al from the First World War into an envi­ron­ment that allows this pow­er­ful mate­r­i­al to be explored and expe­ri­enced in a rad­i­cal­ly new way.

“The aim of the ini­tia­tive is to place the poet­ry of the Great War in con­text,” explains Stu­art Lee, Lec­tur­er in Eng­lish at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Oxford, “It allows the vis­i­tors to the exhi­bi­tion to visu­alise archival mate­ri­als in an envi­ron­ment that fos­ters deep­er under­stand­ings. Vis­i­tors also have the oppor­tu­ni­ty to take advan­tage of the social and inter­ac­tive aspects that the envi­ron­ment offers.”

The project has import­ed into the Sec­ond Life envi­ron­ment a range of digi­tised archival mate­ri­als from the major poets of the First World War (includ­ing poet­ry man­u­scripts, let­ters and diaries) along with con­tex­tu­al pri­ma­ry source mate­ri­als.  These have been posi­tioned with­in an envi­ron­ment which has been mod­elled to rep­re­sent areas of the West­ern Front, 1914 — 1918.

The mate­ri­als have been sup­ple­ment­ed with new inter­pre­ta­tive con­tent and a spec­trum of inter­ac­tive tools and tuto­ri­als, stream­ing video and audio effects to cre­ate a vivid immer­sive expe­ri­ence that is, accord­ing to vis­i­tors, deeply moving.

“I had, of course, read about the First World War, and seen archive news footage too,” says Saf­fia Wid­der­shins, a Sec­ond Life res­i­dent.  “But to have the feel­ing of walk­ing along nar­row trench­es on duck­boards half cov­ered in mud, to see the dugouts, or to stand in a dress­ing sta­tion, hear­ing the voic­es of peo­ple who had been there describ­ing their own expe­ri­ences – this is all incred­i­bly powerful.”

There will be a Sec­ond Life Press Launch at 4.30am SLT (12.30 UK time) and again at 2pm SLT (22:00 UK time) on Mon­day 2nd Novem­ber. Come to the land­ing point at: http://slurl.com/secondlife/Frideswide/219/199/646/ and take the TP to Theatre.

The instal­la­tion will be open for explo­ration from 2am Mon­day 2nd Novem­ber 2009.  We ask vis­i­tors to pre­serve the atmos­phere of this envi­ron­ment by wear­ing the cloth­ing pro­vid­ed at the land­ing area.

This week­end I had the plea­sure of spend­ing a day with a col­lo­quy of friends in the ven­er­a­ble Uni­ver­si­ty city of Oxford, cen­tred around a vis­it to the Muse­um of the His­to­ry of Sci­ence to see their Steam­punk Art exhi­bi­tion.

I’d been past this build­ing before – it’s the orig­i­nal home of the Ash­molean – but nev­er inside. Turns out it’s a won­der­ful lit­tle muse­um on about three floors and a ver­i­ta­ble store­house of ancient sci­en­tif­ic instru­ments of all shapes and size, with an empha­sis on brass and the odd bit of mahogany.

The muse­um would be worth vis­it­ing at any time just to take in the devel­op­ment of sci­en­tif­ic and tech­no­log­i­cal instru­ments over the last few hun­dred years – there are micro­scopes, tele­scopes, astro­labes, elec­tri­cal machines and a great deal more – but it also made the per­fect loca­tion for the first UK muse­um exhib­it of Steam­punk Art, which runs until Feb­ru­ary 21, 2010. I would rec­om­mend a vis­it if you’re in the area or can arrange to be.

Steam­punk, one could say, is a genre that imag­ines what might have hap­pened if the tech­nol­o­gy of the 19th cen­tu­ry had not been eclipsed by that of the 20th. It’s Jules Verne and H G Wells’ vision of tech­nol­o­gy; you also get a cer­tain feel­ing of it from Oxfor­dian Philip Pull­man’s His Dark Mate­ri­als trilogy.

Thus the base­ment of the Muse­um is cur­rent­ly filled with all man­ner of mys­te­ri­ous con­trap­tions with glow­ing incan­des­cent fil­a­ments, whirling (or poten­tial­ly whirling) mech­a­nisms, and mechan­i­cal pros­thet­ics. Some of them are shown in the accom­pa­ny­ing photographs.

I was joined by Oxford res­i­dent Pol­ly (with whom I work on Design­ing Worlds), Lynne (my col­lab­o­ra­tor on the iPhys projects for Sun­der­land City Col­lege) and her hus­band Richard, and also, at least for part of the day, by Ann and Knick who it was love­ly to see again and kind­ly put me up for the weekend.

L to R: Lynne, me, Richard, Pol­ly (pho­to by Knick)

After the exhi­bi­tion and some refresh­ment, we took in the last full day of a fas­ci­nat­ing exhi­bi­tion on book-bind­ing at the Bodleian, fol­lowed by the open-top bus tour of the city, which is worth the effort. Mid-after­noon we end­ed up at Black­wells’ where we all seemed to acquire a set of John Grant’s series of sci­ence books, Dis­card­ed, Cor­rupt­ed and Bogus Sci­ence. We then retired to the cof­fee shop upstairs to dis­cuss falling stan­dards in British sec­ondary and fur­ther education.

In the evening, an excel­lent din­ner at the Trout in Wolvercote.

More pho­tos on Face­book.

As read­ers may know, one of my sev­er­al activ­i­ties is audio pro­duc­tion, both voice-over work and the pro­duc­tion of com­plete pack­ages with voice, music, effects and so on.

Recent­ly many of these pro­duc­tions have been par­tic­u­lar­ly asso­ci­at­ed with edu­ca­tion­al pro­grammes, clients includ­ing the British Library and City of Sun­der­land Col­lege. Inter­est­ing­ly, all these projects have result­ed from meet­ing peo­ple in the vir­tu­al world of Sec­ond Life. (Par­tial­ly as a result, inci­den­tal­ly, I do not have a great deal of time for peo­ple who crit­i­cise me for “play­ing” in SL or try to con­vince me that noth­ing sig­nif­i­cant will come of it.)

I have a teach­ing qual­i­fi­ca­tion myself, and I’m par­tic­u­lar­ly inter­est­ed in the edu­ca­tion­al pos­si­bil­i­ties of vir­tu­al worlds: Sec­ond Life is by far the most pop­u­lar and wide­ly-used of the vir­tu­al worlds cur­rent­ly avail­able, although there is increas­ing activ­i­ty in “Open­Sim” vari­ants using essen­tial­ly the same technology.

Most recent­ly I was intro­duced to some of the staff of the First World War Poet­ry Dig­i­tal Archive, based at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Oxford. They are on the point of launch­ing (on 2 Novem­ber) a new region in Sec­ond Life (named Frideswide after the patron saint of Oxford) which is home to a painstak­ing­ly-built envi­ron­ment designed to shed light on aspects of the life of sol­diers in the trench­es along the West­ern Front dur­ing the First World War. Stu­dents can vis­it the site and learn not only about the con­di­tions endured by infantry­men dur­ing the Great War but also hear poet­ry from the ‘War Poets’, along with inter­views and tutorials.

Here’s how they describe the installation:

This tour of a stylised ver­sion of the trench sys­tems in the West­ern Front has … two objectives:
• to show you the phys­i­cal con­text of the trench systems
• to expose items held in the First World War Poet­ry Dig­i­tal Archive in a three-dimen­sion­al environment

…This [is] not an attempt to give you a real­is­tic expe­ri­ence of what it was like to be on the West­ern Front. The phys­i­cal depra­va­tion, or the chance of seri­ous injury or death, can­not be repli­cat­ed, and this should always be remembered.

More impor­tant­ly per­haps, this is but one view of the War – and it would be safe to say this is a view open to dis­cus­sion. …we have pre­sent­ed rain-sod­den trench­es, infest­ed by rats, in gloomy sur­round­ings. But this was not always the case. The open­ing day of the Bat­tle of the Somme, for exam­ple, was a beau­ti­ful sum­mer’s morn­ing in stark con­trast to the depic­tions we often see of the mud­dy hell of Paaschendaele.

Chris Stephens, who has been instru­men­tal in putting the sim­u­la­tion togeth­er, com­mis­sioned me ini­tial­ly to pro­vide an audio ver­sion of an A‑level/U­ni­ver­si­ty-lev­el Tuto­r­i­al on “Remem­brance” along with four poems: Anthem for Doomed Youth by Wil­fred Owen, Does It Mat­ter? by Siegfried Sas­soon, plus Louse Hunt­ing and Dead Man’s Dump by Isaac Rosenberg.

I’ve now record­ed some addi­tion­al poet­ry read­ings – Repres­sion of War Expe­ri­ence, After­math, and On Pass­ing the New Menin Gate, all by Siegfried Sas­soon; plus 1916 Seen From 1921 and Can You Remem­ber by Edmund Blun­den – and an intro­duc­tion and epilogue.

These poems have a great deal to tell us about the feel­ings of their authors, and many of them are pow­er­ful­ly mov­ing. Dead Man’s Dump in par­tic­u­lar is full of vivid, detailed imagery.

The tuto­r­i­al, on the oth­er hand, encour­ages us to ask a num­ber of ques­tions about our con­cep­tion of what the Great War was like, and uncov­ers where much of our infor­ma­tion has come from. It also chal­lenges some of our assump­tions about the con­flict. At the time of writ­ing, there are only three vet­er­ans of the First World War left alive, so we rely increas­ing­ly on indi­rect sources.

In the Sec­ond Life rep­re­sen­ta­tion, you start off at an army camp and then pro­ceed to the trench­es via a float­ing bub­ble, dur­ing which you hear the intro­duc­tion to the installation.

Once at ground lev­el in the trench­es, you can walk around and vis­it dif­fer­ent aspects of the trench net­work. Along the way, images of sol­diers flick­er into view and you might hear an inter­view or a piece of poet­ry. The tuto­ri­als are accessed via a “HUD” (Head-Up Dis­play) enabling you to pro­ceed through the mate­r­i­al and exer­cis­es at your own pace. Addi­tion­al audio extracts are ini­ti­at­ed by click­ing on loud­speak­er symbols.

A scene from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Oxford’s First World War rep­re­sen­ta­tion in Sec­ond Life. The vis­i­tor is able to walk around in the trench­es and ulti­mate­ly climb a lad­der up on to the bat­tle­field itself; the cubes with a loud­speak­er sym­bol on them enable play­back of audio mate­r­i­al such as poet­ry read­ings and inter­views. The green-tinged cloud and float­ing text ahead are part of a sec­tion on the use of poi­son gas dur­ing the War. 

Over­all, the Sec­ond Life rep­re­sen­ta­tion is quite an intense and pow­er­ful expe­ri­ence, and I can imag­ine it will be a par­tic­u­lar­ly effec­tive edu­ca­tion­al tool.

The chal­lenge for an envi­ron­ment like this is that there is a fair­ly steep learn­ing curve before vis­i­tors can ful­ly expe­ri­ence what a vir­tu­al world like Sec­ond Life can offer – before you can expe­ri­ence an instal­la­tion like this you have to learn how to move around, acti­vate things and gen­er­al­ly oper­ate suc­cess­ful­ly in the envi­ron­ment. How­ev­er in this case you real­ly need to be able to do lit­tle more than walk around and click on objects, so most peo­ple will require no more than a few min­utes of train­ing to be able to get the most out of vir­tu­al re-cre­ations like this.

I wish the First World War Poet­ry Dig­i­tal Archive every suc­cess with this project and am very pleased to have been able to make a small con­tri­bu­tion to it. This instal­la­tion will also be fea­tured in the 10 Novem­ber edi­tion of the Design­ing Worlds show on Treet.TV.

*“…And each slow dusk a draw­ing down of blinds.” is the final line of Anthem for Doomed Youth by World War I poet Wil­fred Owen – one of the WWI poems I’ve record­ed for this project. Pho­tos cour­tesy of First World War Poet­ry Dig­i­tal Archive.