Exploring Heritage through time and space supporting community reflection on the highland clearances

Abstract

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.

The Making and Evaluation of Picts and Pixels: Mixed Exhibiting in the Real and the Unreal

“…The collaboration between the University of St Andrews and the Timespan Museum and Art Gallery has developed a suite of digital interpretation [ [11]] of historic content. This includes an immersive 3D interactive room [ [17]], a digital trail mobile application [ [11]] and virtual cross reality workstations [[10]]. Investigation of cross reality exploration of historic sites addressed the relative benefits of fixed point and free exploration of digital scenes that represented the past.…”

Virtual Worlds and the 3D Web – Time for Convergence?

“…Preliminary research by the Open Virtual Worlds group [55] has shown that it is possible to capture OpenSim texture packets and convert them to Unity 3D which can then be delivered to Firefox or Chrome via WebGL. Educational projects originally hosted in OpenSim/Second Life such as the Laconia Acropolis Virtual Archaeology (LAVA) [56] and Timespan Longhouse [57] have been transformed into Unity 3D. A performance study of two web versions of the Timespan Longhouse in Chrome is presented in Section 5.…”

Mobile Cross Reality for cultural heritage

“…Collaborations between computer scientists, educationalists and historians led to the creation of the St Andrews cathedral reconstruction [15], [16] and have also led to the creation of reconstructions of; a 6th Century Spartan Basilica [17], [18], Virtual Harlem (1921), Linlithgow Palace (1561), Brora Salt Pans (1599) [19], [20], Fethaston Fishing Station (19th century), Eyemouth Fort (1610), an Iron Age Wheel House and Caen Township (1815) [21]. These reconstructions provide a platform for interactive historical narratives, a stage for visitors to play upon and engage in both serious (and not so serious) games both alone and with other users, and serve as a focal point for educational investigations into local history and culture [7], [22].…”