Abstract:

Narrative is a powerful and well established way to communicate, educate and share our history and ideas. If combined with virtual environments (VEs), it could create new interactive art forms that engage and enrich users’ experience of immersion.
In this paper, we present the Narrating the Past research project. It aims to interconnect three heritage sites in Nottingham, UK – the Green’s Mill, Nottingham Castle and the National Centre for Citizenship and the Law (NCCL) Galleries of Justice, – through a narrative-rich, knowledge driven, 3D virtual environment based around the events of the 1830s Reform Bill riots. We seek to challenge conventional approaches to virtual heritage reconstructions, to engage a wider audience as well increase the accessibility for the public. Finally it aims to provide a platform for dialogue and knowledge transfer amongst heritage sites, cinemas, media centres and academia. The outputs of this research will be also applied to performance and installation art, film based-media and theatre.

Keywords:

interactive storytelling, virtual heritage environment, 3d reconstruction, public.