John Ashbery’s Nest is an interactive virtual tour that showcases a collection by the famous American poet. The project is a collaboration between members of the Yale University Digital Humanities Lab, the Yale ITS, and the VRH Solutions Inc. The house the tour is set in is known as the Hudson house, a classic Victorian home that serves as a connection between what John Ashbery physically owns and his poetic imagination. The tour opens up into John Ashbery’s entrance hallway that contains antiques and artifacts. Unfortunately, the virtual tour does not contain all of the rooms in the house, but there is a page in the site that describes each room. Users can click on objects to see its information and listen to John Ashbery talk about its importance.
A screenshot of the virtual tour in John Ashbery’s Nest displays the many interactive features of this project. Each clickable information pin has either a gallery of still pictures or 360 image; all of which includes vocal commentary by John Ashbery.
The sources behind the information is from John Ashbery and David Kermani, as they provided photographic materials, readings, and interviews. Some of the information are from John Ashbery’s published and unpublished materials.
All the information is collected in a timeline and is organized by the placement of interactable object within the tour. By clicking on these objects, the user is able to see all relevant texts and images as well as any related verbal accounts. The site also contains a dropdown menu that directs users to different website pages for additional information, such as, more information about the house, the poet, and his collections. One of the links in the website leads to an interactive timeline, which will show chronological information about the poet and his relation to the Hudson house. Another link includes a timeline as well about his books and when they were published.
The site provides all the information through interactive means. For the virtual tour, users are granted a panoramic view of the house. The majority of the information are visualized with John Ashbery’s pictures of his family, collection, sketches, publications, and the house.
The importance of this project was to help create a visual biography of John Ashbery. This connects the viewers to the poet in order to understand his works and thoughts. This site is like a digitized time capsule to honor John Ashbery’s art and legacy, as it contains his essays about his house, some of his poems, and his own voice to talk about his collections.