RESEARCH

What do we experience when we visit a virtual museum; when we hold in our virtually hands the rusty iron shackles once used to bind a person? Or an unexploded 20th century land mine? Or when we virtually use a stone tool, last used 5 thousand years ago? And how do we best communicate our own stories in these new virtual worlds? Can we reach new audiences? What's comfortable, desirable or even possible?

As a research fellow at the University of Bristol, my focus is on the use of digital 3D technologies within cultural heritage. This might be building Virtual Reality museum, laser scanning abandoned sites or 3D printing artefacts.

In some ways this is a natural extension of my own hauntological art practice, but it’s also very much coproduction with each institution's community of users.

Recent projects have included a series of workshops for Spike Island, helping the team from Bristol Museums create their first VR exhibition space and running some digital 3D workshops for the Royal West of England Academy.

My last major project was AHRC-funded and involved the development of a permanent, virtual museum for the University of Bristol. The Uncertain Space is now open for business and is being used to showcase collections & archives. The Uncertain Space project was coproduced with a group of secondary school students from the South West.

I’m current working on an RLUK & AHRC-funded fellowship to build a (virtual) BBC Natural History Unit to house a collection of archival audio recordings. This project is coproduced with a group of my fellow autistic creatives.

If you’d like to discuss hosting a real world workshop, or developing an online session, please get in touch.