The Talking Walls - Beaulieu Abbey Launch 2010

On Wednesday 19th May, at Beaulieu Abbey, the launch of The Talking Walls - Beaulieu Abbey multimedia kiosk application took place in front of a large group of invited guests. This was the culmination of several months of organisation between myself, a group of Southampton Solent University's MA Marketing students and Beaulieu.


The event was perceived as a success, according to feedback. The guests showed considerable interest in the application. They were interested in how it would eventually evolve to mobile handsets, the way that adults, professionals and children would be able to access information at their own level in successive versions, and how additional content would be added to continuously engage these groups.


Mary Montagu Scott introduced The Talking Walls, explaining how it would help visitors to learn more about the abbey from the characters that lived and worked at there over it's lifetime. Lord Montagu watched as I demonstrated how to navigate through the rich multimedia content - 9 characters each with their own 'twist' on the animated tours of the abbey. The feedback from Mary and the Bealieu team was very positive. Mary is particlarly pleased with the depth of the information that can be explored, whilst at the abbey or once back at school / home. A great success as far as fulfilling the brief is concerned, I think.


Susan Tomkins, the archivist is also pleased and looks forward to seeing this working on mobile handsets. In the future it is hoped that the visitor will be able to access areas of the application on their own smartphones and explore how the abbey looked whilst standing in the ruins, or play with the educational games whilst sitting in the grounds.

Several of the feedback questionnaires completed requested more than one kiosk, having had to queue to explore the virtual abbey and it's characters. The mobile application would solve this, as people would then be able to access the content on their own devices. Another response was how they would like to see the content for the different groups mentioned above (the current version is a generic age group). This is planned for a future version, with content gradually building and being separated as it grows.


I would like to thank all the guests who came to the launch and for everyone involved in helping make the launch a great success. If you would like to watch a 3-part video on YouTube of the launch speeches, please follow this link for part 1a, part 1b and part 2.

The kiosk is permanently installed in the Abbey museum, visitors to the abbey will be able to visit and explore the virtual abbey and characters during their visit and afterwards on the website: www.thetalkingwalls.co.uk/Beaulieu

Further Developments

Since October several things have happened which have kept me really quite busy. I am now enjoying life as a full-time Senior Lecturer in the Faculty of Arts at the University of Winchester (started end of Jan 2010). It has helped considerably by having already taught part-time on the course last semester, so it is not too much of a 'new start' but more a continuation and extension of what I was already doing.

In this role, I am involved in the single honours programme - BA / BSc Digital Media Design & Development, of which Mike Seignior is the Course Leader, and a new MA Digital Media Practice degree, for which I am Course Leader, starting in October 2010. A reasonable amount to be getting on with, and a challenge to ensure it works well and becomes successful.

The undergrad degree is approaching the end of its first complete run through of students, having only started 3 years ago, becoming more popular each year, so we now have 14 students ending their first year this summer. It will be interesting to see how the MA Digital Media Practice is received by prospective students in October. The MA (full and part-time)will be an excellent opportunity for those already practicing digital media and who would like to convert their knowledge into a Masters qualification, at the same time improving and learning new skills.

A new course website is currently being designed to showcase current BA/BSc students' work and provide a 'meeting place' and information portal for everything relating to both degree courses and their students. I will post the url as soon as it is in place.

As well as all of the above, The Talking Walls - Beaulieu Abbey application is being launched on the 19th May 2010, with a demonstration of how the application works. This will be on a new kiosk recently installed specifically for the Talking Walls-Beaulieu Abbey application in the Domus Undercroft at Beaulieu Abbey. It is quite exciting seeing the development of this product finally come together. It is even more exciting knowing that visitors to Beaulieu Abbey will be able to explore the history of the abbey and see / hear about the different characters that lived there in the 13th - 16th centuries over the years to come.



We have a group of excellent MA Marketing students (Southampton Solent University) working on the launch with me, ensuring that we have various press officers attending, suitable press releases and managing the guest list's rsvps. A great deal of work has already gone into organising the event, with many thanks to Beaulieu in assisting us with this and making it possible.

We will also be trialling the use of mobile handsets at the event so that guests will be able to walk around the abbey grounds and explore in their own time and in the spaces they want to explore. Digital Media students from Winchester and Marketing students from Southampton Solent University will be able to test the application and give feedback on usability / content of the app on both the kiosk and handsets. Guests might also like to provide feedback, allowing us to explore how well (or not!)the design works and which method of use is the most popular.

If you would like to be included in this event, please contact me at: launch@thetalkingwalls.co.uk and we will send you an invite or discuss how you may be able to help.

Steventon Rectory (Parsonage) rebuilt

The above is a cel shaded anim of just the Rectory (Parsonage taken from the original 3D file of the demo and passed through Swift 3D. Initially with the idea of creating an interactive Papervision3D file so that users can rotate it and explore the building. Unfortunately, due to the building having been created in Autodesk Revit Architecture and then exported to Autodesk 3DS Max as an .fbx file, there are too many faces and Papervision struggles to show them all. A rotation only was then decided on, until more time can be allotted to simplify the 3D model.

The small amount of research committed on this so far brought to my attention that there seems to be a discrepancy on what the building actually looked like due to conflicting sketches. The fact that the building no longer existed made it a prime consideration for being the first of Jane's homes to be re-built in 3D, discovering the uncertainty in how it looked made it more of a challenge.

Below are the sketches in question:



The two images above show a much smaller building than the two below, although each image states that it is Steventon Rectory (Parsonage).



These two images although on first look appear similar, the chimney placement is very different. There is a central chimney in the lower image, and not in the one above, although they both have a side chimney, which is not visible in the top two images.

There is a theory that the lower images are actually depicting Ibthorpe House, you can see the likeness to this building in the image below. Certainly the top of the second set of images above looks very similar - except for that central chimney.


I puzzled over this for a while and read various articles from Jane Austen experts such as Linda Robinson Walker in order to come to a decision as to how I portrayed the building. Within Linda's document Why Was Jane Austen Sent away to School at Seven?
An Empirical Look at a Vexing Question there was this image of the land around the house which helped considerably in making that decision along with the logical explanation / view given by Linda Robinson Walker:


This image certainly helped place the building in the surrounding landscape and provided very useful information in regard to the outbuildings and garden. There may be further information available from the Jane Austen Memorial Trust and / or other organisations that would clarify this further, as it stands the look of the animated building has been created from the information found only on the web.

Many thanks to the organisations / people who have posted this information on the web, the sources mostly used were:

Jane Austen Society of the UK
Jane Austen Society of North America
Astoft
Jane Austen
Hantsweb
Pemberley

Jane Austen 'themed' Talking Walls application

This is an idea we have had since before Christmas, and at long last have found some free time to work on it. The demo has taken barely a week to produce from initial research through to the final editing of all the different elements. It always takes longer than you think it is going to, this time mostly due to research and putting some finer details in to make it that much easier to watch.

The general concept is to create a Famous People 'themed' Talking Walls series, covering the homes in which they lived, their family, friends and their work. Jane Austen is planned to be the first of these. The series could include famous figures such as William Shakespeare, Henry VIII, The Bronte Sisters and Charles Dickens, building a rich architectural, heritage and digital storytelling resource.


We hope to receive funding from interested parties to develop this project into a full Talking Walls application, exploring the buildings over their lifetime, pulling in the work they created there and their stories whilst living there.

The raw Revit file before taking into 3DS Max.

The application (as in all Talking Walls applications) would be available for iPhones, smartphones, handhelds and kiosks, accessed via The Talking Wall web server so that you would be able to visit any one of the homes, viewing the real space and exploring the virtual with your phone or provided handheld, continuing over the web once back in your own home / country.



The demo above has been greatly reduced in quality to fit within the guidelines for uploading video on this blog, nonetheless it still gives a good idea of Steventon Rectory, how it was positioned and its closeness to the church. This has been modelled based on several hours worth of research over the web. A better quality version can be seen on our website www.thetalkingwalls.co.uk. The images it is mostly based on are shown below:



More images will be placed on The Talking Walls website soon, with information gleaned albeit mostly on the rectory. If you have any information that may help with this project, please contact me, I would be grateful for any help clarifying the structure of the building. Thankyou

Events

In the last month I attended a couple of events where I was able to talk about The Talking Walls and the research I have undertaken within my PhD.

The first was SEMN's Commercialising Innovation and pitching event held at the University of Surrey, Guildford. As with all SEMN events I have been to, it was very well organised, with an interesting mix of people attending. We were shown the research areas at the Guildford campus with explanations of some of the amazing research that is taking place there - on the agenda for the day it was entitled 'Advancing the State of the Art', what we were shown was certainly doing this. For me with the areas I work in, it was fascinating.

In the afternoon, I took my turn in the company pitching presentations. The two before me were also in the area of 3D, but in a completely different field. There was Atom Fire Productions pitching 'games expertise on multiple platforms and devices' by Dominic Mason and Drive pitching for collaborative projects using their 'digital modelling and CGI visualisation techiniques' by Chris Longmore. Both were established companies giving very polished presentations, which although great to listen to and watch, made me feel anxious about my own presentation that would follow.

My pitch was for a 'technology partner to provide hardware, network connectivity and web server information hosting for mobile, kiosk and handset installations at heritage sites'. This is something that would really benefit The Talking Walls, allowing us to approach sites with a complete solution. The pitch seemed to go well with several people coming to talk to me afterwards saying how much they enjoyed it, with contacts of people who may be able to help. I am still in the process of following these up, if anything comes from this I will let you know.

I would particularly like to thanks the organisers at the University of Surrey and Kay Henning of SEMN for inviting me to pitch at this event and for making it such an interesting day.

The second event was more about the PhD research. This was the LASS PGR Conference - Human 2.0, held at the Turner Sims, University of Southampton. It is an annual event for research students to put across where they are with their research, display posters and present papers. This is the first of its kind that I have attended and was quite nervous in the build up to it. I had been placed first to present. Having not attended one before, I was quite anxious as to what was expected and being first, I would not able to adapt to anything that would have gone before.

Nonetheless, once I started talking, the nerves abaited, heart was still racing but I managed to think about what I was saying and not 'waffle' and go off track. For me, that was quite amazing! The other speakers were as nervous I think, and gave some really interesting presentations and discussion. It was a shame that there were not as many people attending as expected by the organising team, but there were certainly enough there to make you want to do your best and give them an understanding of your research. Again, many thanks to the conference team in doing such an excellent job of getting us organised, the venue and attendees.

For those that may be interested, posted below is the abstract of my paper submitted for the conference. The other speakers' abstracts can be found on the LASS conference website.

'My thesis aims to investigate methods of capturing user-experience at ‘cultural heritage’ sites with multimedia applications on mobile devices, their interaction with the site, and family / friends, using a case study of a pilot application ’The Talking Walls®’ at a cultural heritage site, which encompasses story-telling and visual narrative.

Through qualitative study, data collected will include observation and interview notes, audio, video, field notes, documents produced by the visitor (s), photos, visual images, mood boards and individual / group reflections, both the observer(s) and visitor(s).

The research will investigate the meaning(s) of ‘cultural heritage’ for the user(s) and for the cultural heritage site owner(s) / organisation, and why people visit cultural heritage sites. In order to measure and understand methods of capturing user-experience, it will be important to understand what ‘experience’ is and what may form a ‘good’ or ‘poor’ user-experience with a mobile device at a cultural heritage site.

This study will then explore how technology might be used to link these areas together and capture user-experience, how it is being adopted at cultural heritage sites for visitor use and how this may impact on the methodology for designing a multimedia cultural heritage application for mobile devices.

Keywords: user-experience, cultural heritage, mobile devices, digital story-telling, multimedia'

Deborah Wilson - PhD student, Winchester School of Art, University of Southampton

About to go live....

'The Talking Walls - Beaulieu Abbey' application is almost ready to go live. We are just waiting for final approval from Beaulieu and then we can make the website live, such good news.

It has been almost a year of part-time hours in the making, fitting in the commercial training, PhD and normal day to day life. A very full year.

I have a lot of thanks to give to all my very patient friends who have hardly seen me over the last couple of years (took almost a year to develop the funding application for the Micro Project from FSE/SEEDA!), obviously my family for the same reason and then there are the 'helpers' who have helped create this application. They are:

Alex Hogg - for six of the characters voices
Rebecca Furse - for some of the character illustrations and proof reading
Seanine Joyce - for the music
Sandy Whitehead - for some of the illustrative 3D models and some of the characters
Kim Potter - for producing the web structure that pulls all the content together
New Forest Post Productions - for the use (and help) of the recording studio for the voice overs.

Without their added help, I think I would have been up every night til 1-2pm, as opposed to only half. The music is fantastic, something I would not have achieved on my own and adds so much to the whole, and Alex's voice overs, watching him change the way he spoke for each character and sustain that for half an hour at least was amazing, I struggled for just two, but six, no way. Kim used to work with us years ago with Clear Thinking, the fact that she was back in England and able to help us with the code needed to pull everything together for the web was fantastic, so conscientious, knowing what we needed, how we wanted it to work and producing on time - thanks Kim.

There have been a lot of other people whose confidence and support over the development of 'The Talking Walls' right up to the Beaulieu Abbey project, including Beaulieu, have made this possible, thankyou all. Finally, thankyou FSE / SEEDA, without the match funding through the Micro Project scheme, this just would not have been possible.

Once the site is made live, I will post the link here and spread the word online as well as through traditional means. The site will have free access for 4-6 months and then the 'Interactive Abbey' part will be completed and membership to the site will be active. So please make sure you visit the site within this time and explore. Your thoughts and feedback will be very welcome, and will help provide an insight into how the design bears up to use, and what may need changing / adding / adapting.