Background
On my first day in Edinburgh, I was struck by the depth of its history and culture. The historic buildings and interesting or macabre legends were fascinating. So I was very interested in the subject of ‘place’ and strongly wanted the concept of our work to be relevant to the local history and cultural attributes of Edinburgh.
I communicated with ChatGPT about the places which have unique historical stories or tales, and how to combine the historical element with modern technology. It presents me with a lot of places, like Edinburgh Castle, Princes Street graveyard, and The Mary King’s Close. As for the second question, it gave me an example called dynamic earth, which is an interactive science center. The center offers an immersive experience called “The Time Traveler” where visitors can travel through time in a virtual time machine and explore the Earth’s history in an interactive way.
https://www.dynamicearth.co.uk/visit/what-is-dynamic-earth
I was inspired by it and would like to use lidar technology to record several historical places, use Cloud Compare to stitch them together like a museum, then make them into interactive installations so that the audience can learn about the history and tales of the place as they interact with it.
place(s):
The original idea was to show some of Edinburgh’s historic locations(like The real Mary King Close, Prince’s street graveyard, and castle, etc. ), combine them with the tale of this city, and add some simple narrative, using visual and sound effects to demonstrate it.
The real Mary King’s Close
Image: Luigi Di Pasquale
https://www.realmarykingsclose.com/
https://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/scotland-now/edinburghs-real-mary-kings-close-22944025
This hidden warren of 17th-century streets and houses was buried beneath the Royal Exchange in the 18th century. It said that it was buried because of the black death and haunting. People saw eerie lights and heard terrible crying there, some even felt something was dragging their legs or arms.
narrative：pointing at the dolls to trigger
visual : the point turn to blue or grey, get larger to express a sence of Infectious diseases，the shadow of people appear ( to imitate the ghost of patient ), then turn some point into very vibrant colours to imitate eerie lights.
sound : the sound of patients’ moaning、 baby crying or a little girl’s creepy laughing appear.
Prince’s street graveyard
photo by Tanya Raj
https://www.pinterest.com/pin/ancient-graveyard-at-princes-street-edinburgh–267330927854667793/
A large ancient graveyard in Edinburgh. It is said that soldiers who died in the war were buried here and that passers-by heard their roar on the battlefield.
narrative: pointing at the biggest tree
visual: the points turn black and background turn red ，also use the shadow of people to imitate they are in a war
sound: the roar of warrior，the sound of gun shot
Edinburgh Castle dungeon
Photo: Debby Taylor Photo: mbell1975
https://www.fanpop.com/clubs/castles/images/1574193/title/edinburgh-castle-photo
https://flickr.com/photos/mbell1975/6159219597/in/photostream/
A large number of prisoners of war from different cultures at different times were held here, including some skilled craftsmen. The prisoners made their own recreational tools and crafts, which are still in good condition today.
narrative: pointing at a recreational equipment made by inmates
visual: ghost shadow seating on every where， crowded
sound: the sound of chatting，dripping water on the ground，throwing the dice
Follow up and additions
After several meetings, I heard some other really good concepts like inputting a timeline narrative in Mary King Close’s (from Yuxuan), the mirror world (from David), and the backroom kitchen —- a confusing and repetitive fictional space（from Allison), so I‘m thinking about if we can combine them together(as the picture shown), then there will be the places not only have realism historical story but also abstract fictional story. If there is too much work to do to represent so many places, I’m also down for focusing on fewer or even one place(s).
visual and interactive:
It will be A space stitched together from different places, connected by a museum corridor. There will be a big screen showing the whole museum at the beginning. The movement sensor will assist audiences to choose the room they want to see in detail by pointing at the specific room. They can also change direction and different angles of the room through movement. If they point at some particular object(eg. The dolls in Mary King’s Close), the narrative will be triggered and there will be some change in visual and sound, like the change of color of the points and the appearance of some sound effect.
sound elements:
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Ambient sound, since the environment sound is an important part/element of the place itself
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Sound effects lead or assist the narrative, for example, the sound of patients’ moaning、 baby crying or a little girl’s creepy laughing in Mary King’s close. （those sound effects can be processed by the IR data of places）
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Interactive sound effects (if necessary)
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Some ambient/drone music pad (I think the idea of generating music by movement or visual from David is very cool, and Yijun said ChatGPT can achieve that).
Technology:
- 2.0 or 5.1 channel sound
- movement sensor
- lidar
