Derry City is full of history, often shrouded in politics, however behind the flags and banners are real people with a heritage of challenging lifestyles and events intertwined to the existance of the walls.
This project is a collaboration between the Academy of Irish Cultural Heritages (Dr James McConnel) and the School of Creative Arts (Justin Magee) It has the support of historins with specific and unique knowledge in the field from the academy.
In particular this project proposes a look at Pre-Siege times. Inside the Walls the original Protestant community reside, while on the surrounding boglands the catholic community survive. Neither community lived in luxury and some interesting stories have been told about life as it was then. There are several project approaches in this brief all of which based around the late C17th.
This suggested brief is called Digital Walls: Virtual cities which take many different forms have been emerging on the internet, influenced by computer graphics development in games, google earth e-business and phenomena’s like the SIMMs. 3D modelling provides a powerful method of bring history to life such as the Virginia University Institute for Advanced Technologies in the Humanities recreation of Rome. Some of these methods are very linear and are more representative of architectural visualisation rather than being a closer experience of the sounds, patterns, lifestyles of the time. Recently VR technologies have been used to simuate events for the Bloody Sunday Inquiry. In animation, film and theatre, time based sequences are particularly well coordinated to add atmosphere and build a sense of emotion. While in games design clever texture mapping give objects a historical context or story e.g. a rusted bucket with a gunshot hole and a burnt wooden handle has been most probably in an environment where conflict has taken part. The type of gunshot hole will differentiate it from an American farmers land in 1858 to the war fields of Poland in 1943. These surface features tell a little more about the background story. Your brief is to research and visualise in quantifiable terms either:
- The entire anatomy of the city (with texture examples and test based narrative)
- A localised area (with texture examples and including AV narrative)
- A specific building (completely textured and including AV narrtive)
You must create a 3D re-model as it might have beenin the C17th. It is very important to capture the personality of the city using appropriate visual and audio methods. Special effects or post editing may also feature to build atmosphere. The outcome can be a moving image piece or a series of still rendering for print. The visual solution may have a suitable stylised effect which emphasises the living conditions (perhaps influenced by illustration styles of that era) or may be photo realistic. You must consider, building materials, road construction, hygiene/ public litter, vermin, pollution type and affect on surrounding, transport and affect, population density, light penetration, light direction, climate etc. As part of your research you should describe your findings.
The project is supported with specic material including:
- Historical image material (links to come)
- Reading list (links to come)
