Nick Gellatly
Multi-sensory Storytelling – Scanning Workshop
The morning began with a 3D scanning workshop. It produced some fascinating images, and it’s not a tool I’d ever imagined using. In a museum project, though, I can see real possibilities. It could bring dinosaurs, Fenland hippos and even the human characters to life in a way that’s fun and engaging.
If I am completely honest, the thing that would put me off using this facility is the prospect of having to remove and replace 72 lens covers on the device’s cameras.
Back in Base Room, we tried some 3D scanning ourselves using Polycam, an AI-powered app that turns a series of photos or a video taken on your phone into a 3D model. I started with my coffee cup. Strictly speaking, the result was not a triumph. The app likes objects with plenty of texture and detail, and a plain cup gives it very little to work with. But I’ve grown rather fond of the outcome. The video above has an odd, half-formed beauty to it, somewhere between a scan and a dream. Not what I set out to make, but I’ll take it!
Emily showed us a project they’d worked on with The Culture Trust in Luton, a town so steeped in millinery that its football club is still called The Hatters. Using Snapchat filters, exhibition visitors could try on hats from the collection without anyone having to worry about hairspray, head lice or the gift shop’s breakages policy. I had never used Snapchat before, but I have always had a weakness for a good hat. The results are below. I think you’ll agree that I wear every one of them with a sense of joy not entirely betrayed by my expression.
Making Sense of the Story
Week 2 of Immersive Storytelling moved from asking what story we want to tell to considering how an audience might experience it. The focus was sensory storytelling and 3D scanning, alongside the introduction of our Sedgwick Museum brief, No Stone Left Unturned.
Immersion can involve much more than looking at a screen or listening through headphones. Touch, movement, vibration, wind, smell and even taste can contribute to a sense of presence. Each offers a different way of bringing an audience into a story.
The examples in our teaching materials demonstrated how closely a physical sensation can connect with a subject. Birdly combines virtual reality, bodily movement and wind to simulate flight. In Pursuit of Repetitive Beats uses haptic bass to help evoke the atmosphere of an acid-house rave. Other projects explore empathy through synchronised touch, or relationships with the natural world through breath, scent and movement.
What I take from these examples is that sensory choices need a purpose. Feeling bass through the body makes sense in a story about dancing. The creative challenge is to identify which sensation helps an audience understand or connect with the particular story being told.
Our morning visit to the 3D Imaging Studio made the possibilities of scanning more tangible. Cameras, lighting, poses and the resulting images offered an introduction to how physical subjects can become digital representations. The suggested workflow: scanning an object, editing its model in Blender and potentially developing an AR experience in Lens Studio, opens up further possibilities to investigate.
The Sedgwick brief gives these experiments a direction. We are asked to select an object, theme or hidden story, research it and develop an immersive prototype that changes how visitors engage with it.
For my developing Complemental concept, this raises useful questions. How might listening help visitors encounter different voices around Darwin’s barnacle research? Would a digital model encourage closer attention to an object? How can alternative formats make the experience accessible?
My next steps are to develop the concept board, record my research and experiments on the blog, and examine one multisensory project more closely. I want to keep testing a straightforward question: what does each creative choice help the visitor notice?
I’ll come to the Sedgwick Museum visit in Part 2 of this post.
Leave a Reply