From physical library to virtual reality
Image by Laura Bridges
In our second Living Libraries blogpost, we hear from Laura Bridges, writer and director of our collaborators, Seadog Theatre, on how Covid-19 disrupted their plans to engage the public with Living Libraries’ research, and how they found themselves having to respond nimbly to the challenges presented by the pandemic.
As the country went into lockdown, sound designer Lucy Harrison, scenographic designer Ele Slade and myself, met to discuss our project, which now looked wholly untenable – an art piece that moved around the country, visiting public indoor spaces - public libraries, designed primarily for people to touch.
While work on this website was already in progress, we were keen to see how we might be able to preserve the sensory and interactive elements of our planned installation. We reached out to web developer, Matt Stevens, to discuss possibilities, and decided that the best option - given the resources we had – was to create a 'world' inside an existing platform. In this case, Sinespace: a free-to-play, multiplayer, online platform, where users create and/or explore 3-D worlds with 3-D avatars.
Since that first meeting, less than 8 weeks ago, we have all been on a massive journey. We have been by turns amazed, confounded, frustrated and delighted by the opportunities this enforced innovation has given us. Joined by 3-D artist, Ragnhild Drøssung, the five of us have built a brand new sensory world, alive with light, sound, movement and colour.
If you are willing, we are running a live testing period from now until 31st July, and we’d welcome your involvement.
You can take our video tour of the Living Library, or download and explore the library for yourself. If you’d like to add your story to the virtual Living Library, you can leave us a comment below this post, and we will upload your story to one of the figures that appears in the final space.
Tell us why libraries are important to you. It could be:
what the library means to you right now
how a library has mattered to you in the past, or
your hopes for libraries in the future.
Finally, we would very much appreciate your feedback on the content and the format of the Living Library.
Thank you in advance!
We look forward to the day when we are able to present this virtual reality on a screen in a physical library. Then, now, always, support your public library.
#MyLibraryByRight #LibrariesFromHome
-Laura
Thank you, Laura. Please check out the Living Library, and find out how you can experience it for yourself. As Laura mentioned, if you’d be happy to give us feedback during our current live testing period, we would be extremely grateful. You can leave your feedback here, or send us a message. Many thanks.
And, as mentioned above, please do feel free to leave us comments below this post, which we can incorporate into the virtual Living Library world.