The Old Times

Nick Gellatly

Week 4, Part 2: Projection, play and the phygital

Immersive Storytelling workshop, 15 October 2026

What happened

Part 1 covered Bare Conductive and SUE’s foot. The earlier session – as well as apart of the afternoon – looked at two overlapping ideas: projection mapping and the “phygital”.

Projection mapping, also called spatial augmented reality (Bimber and Raskar, 2005), turns real objects into screens. Software maps digital content onto an irregular surface, so a building, a car or a dinner plate seems to move, change or dissolve.

I am familiar with the use of Projection Mapping through the work of the pressure group, ‘Led by Donkeys’ which has used this medium effectively – notably using the white cliffs of Dover as a backdrop:

As you can see in this video, with Projection Mapping, unlike VR, no headset is needed, and a whole crowd can share the illusion at once.

“Phygital” joins physical and digital. It describes experiences where tangible things and digital interaction work as one journey: a QR code on a clothes rail, a stadium app that brings food to your seat. Projection mapping is one of its most powerful tools.

We then looked at alternative controllers. These are game inputs that aren’t a joypad, from arcade dance mats to the Wii remote, and I’d argue the wiggly-wire game at a village fete belongs here too. Shake That Button showed what this looks like as installation art, with Trees of Life and Hi-5 Heroes. Makey Makey, developed at the MIT Media Lab (Silver and Rosenbaum, 2012), and SPOKE boards from Media Services let us turn everyday objects into triggers using crocodile clips and the body’s own conductivity. The theremin made a guest appearance as the original touchless instrument. The session’s motto was “thinkering”, thinking through making, and Emily’s instruction was clear: don’t expect polished outcomes. See Part 1 of this week’s post for my attempt at an alternative controller: https://theoldtimes.co.uk/2026/10/15/immersive-storytelling-week-4-part-1/

The afternoon brought ARU’s placements team. They talked about internships, enterprise placements through the Anglia Ruskin Enterprise Academy, and job platforms including Handshake, Higherin and Bright Network.

So what?

I’m not a gamer, and I’ll admit the alternative controllers felt foreign at first. But “thinkering” is close to how I already work. Ingold (2013) describes making as a correspondence between maker and material rather than a plan imposed on it, and Resnick and Rosenbaum (2013) argue that tinkerable materials invite people to explore rather than follow instructions. For an analogue creator that’s reassuring: the crocodile clip is the gateway drug.

The real value was seeing how these tools could serve In the Beginning Was the Word rather than distract from it. Three ideas stood out:

• A touch-to-play rock. A Makey Makey wired to a replica fossil or handling specimen (never a real one) could trigger Crystal Formation’s entrance. Visitors would literally make contact with the past, and the act of touching becomes the story’s first beat.
• Hi-5 for the in crowd. Hi-5 Heroes suggests a conductive high five between two people. Two visitors wearing green carnations could complete a circuit together and unlock hidden content. It’s the queer dress code turned into a game mechanic, and it’s consensual and deniable, which matters for people who don’t want to be outed.
• A glimpse of projection. Even a small projection onto a mineral or a label could show the “left ear, right ear” idea visually, with the official label dissolving into the private life behind it. That may be beyond this prototype, but it’s worth sketching for the pitch.

One small moment made me smile. The placements adviser wore a rainbow badge, an everyday example of exactly the kind of quiet signal my project is built on. Codes are all around us once you look.

Experiment: Mary, Queen of Scots at Peterborough Cathedral

In the spirit of “don’t expect polished outcomes”, this week I also made a short film of Mary, Queen of Scots: The Exhibition at Peterborough Cathedral, where Mary was first buried in 1587. The videography is rough, but as an experiment in storytelling it taught me a lot.

I provided the footage, the visit, the editorial direction and the narration. ChatGPT helped with footage selection, sequencing, script development, stabilisation, sound mixing and subtitles.

The key decision came when I reviewed the first draft. It followed my route through the door, so it recorded my visit rather than Mary’s life. I asked for a chronological structure instead, which turned a travelogue into a historical narrative. That taught me to judge an edit against its purpose rather than accept what the AI handed back.

My queer and progressive Christian perspective shaped the script. I wanted to acknowledge the misogyny and religious prejudice Mary faced while recognising her agency and how contested the evidence about her is. Documentary is full of ethical choices about language, emphasis and representation, and those choices are the same ones I’m making about the queer lives in the Sedgwick.

Recording my own voice gave the film a personal warmth. Removing my countdown, reducing camera shake and adding subtitles showed how technical choices shape accessibility. The AI-generated, Renaissance-style music gives atmosphere, not historical evidence, and I’ve labelled it that way. The collaboration let me make something beyond my current editing skills, but the responsibility stayed with me: choosing the perspective, questioning drafts and judging whether the finished film said what I meant.

Now what?

• Ask the Sedgwick on Monday whether there’s a handling specimen or replica I could wire up.
• Keep ‘thinkering’. Polish can come later; the ideas come from making.

References

Bimber, O. and Raskar, R. (2005) Spatial Augmented Reality: Merging Real and Virtual Worlds. Wellesley, MA: A K Peters.

Ingold, T. (2013) Making: Anthropology, Archaeology, Art and Architecture. London: Routledge.

Resnick, M. and Rosenbaum, E. (2013) ‘Designing for tinkerability’, in Honey, M. and Kanter, D. (eds) Design, Make, Play: Growing the Next Generation of STEM Innovators. New York: Routledge, pp. 163–181.

Silver, J. and Rosenbaum, E. (2012) ‘Makey Makey: improvising tangible and nature-based user interfaces’, Proceedings of the Sixth International Conference on Tangible, Embedded and Embodied Interaction (TEI ’12). New York: ACM, pp. 367–370.