Spots of Time
August 2012 -

Participants
Gary Priestnall
James Goulding (Horizon Digital Economy Research Institute
Jeff Cowton, Curator, Wordsworth Trust

Funding
Part funded by an EPSRC pump priming grant [more] and a Centre for Advanced Studies, Nottingham grant [more]

Project Overview
‘Spots of Time’ is the first museum-based installation based upon the Projection Augmented Relief Model (PARM) technique, and was installed at the Wordsworth Trust, Grasmere, Cumbria in August 2012. The Wordsworth Trust museum exhibits a range of archival material related to William Wordsworth (1770-1850), including connections to other poets, artists and importantly the landscape itself. After detailed discussion with the curator Jeff Cowton a focus for the installation became ‘Spots of Time’, key events in Wordsworth’s childhood that had connections with specific places in the landscape but which also related to poetry created in adulthood, notably ‘The Prelude’. The aim was to raise awareness of the importance of place and memory in Wordsworth’s work, but also to encourage visitors to study the original manuscripts on display elsewhere in the gallery space. The installation allowed visitors to select from three sequences via a touchscreen, each of which presented an extract from the manuscript synchronised with an audio narration along with animated map and image sequences projected onto the physical landscape model of the central Lake District.

The image above shows the installation (left), and snapshots from an animated text sequence (upper right) and animated map projections (lower right). Through observations of visitor’s interactions with the display we are gaining an understanding of how to design for multiple display systems (bringing in the ‘display ecologies’ expertise of Stuart Reeves) where physical relief models are central, offering unique capabilities for presenting patterns in space and through time into their landscape context.

Research Outcomes
Priestnall, G., Gardiner, J., Durrant, J., and Goulding, J. (2012) Projection Augmented Relief Models (PARM): Tangible Displays for Geographic Information, Proceedings from Electronic Visualisation and the Arts (EVA) London, 2012. [PDF]

Related Links
Wordsworth Trust Web Site