This week, I have chosen to reverse engineer the DH project John Ashbery’s Nest. The project was built by a collaboration among the Yale University Digital Humanities Lab, Yale ITS and VRH and showcases John Ashbery’s Hudson House and its collections. The site utilizes virtual reality to display not only art, objects, and books, but also allows people to hear Ashbery read from related poems and talk about things that have played in his creative life.
Sources
Josh Ashbery’s Nest used a number of different sources. John Ashbery, David Kermani, Open Road Media, and The Poetry Foundation provided photographic materials, readings, excerpts from interviews, and short films.
Processed
The virtual tour has 3 ways to explore: still and 360 photography, audio and additional text, and poetry. In addition to the virtual tour, there is also a visual timeline for Ashbery’s publications and the history of the Hudson house. The different components of the process can be divided each group that worked on the project: VRH Solutions Inc, YaleSites Team, and Yale Digital Humanities Lab.
Although the project is not very detailed in its process, there is still some information shared. VRH Solutions Inc. was responsible for the 360-degree virtual tour implementation. This group was responsible for all of the VR photography as well as documentation of Ashbery’s art and collections. VRH Solutions had a photographer create the 360s of each room and then used digital software to develop VR experiences for the final tour.
The YaleSites Team worked on developing the Drupal website that host’s John Ashbery’s Nest as well as site-wide user testing. This team built a content management system which integrates with the VR experience and acts as an online repository of scholarly writing on Ashbery and the Hudson house.
The Yale Digital Humanities Lab was in charge of user experience and visual design as well as supported digital content production. Although the Yale DH Lab does not document the process, I would assume that the members of this team began with wireframes of what they wanted to ultimately design. They possibly translated these wireframes into real images using Adobe software and then uploaded them to the site. In addition to the visual design of the virtual tour, one member also utilized the datasets from the original sources to build visual timelines for Ashbery’s publications and the history of the Hudson house. The timelines are interactive and very visually appealing.
Presented
The final presentation can be divided into two parts: the virtual tour and an accompanying website. The virtual tour fills the screen and uses 360 video as well as audio to recreate a fully immersive and interactive experience. Each room includes 360 photography, panoramas, and still photography. Viewers are able to interact with the room by clicking on various information symbols and dragging to move around the room. They are able to view objects closely, listen to audio of John Ashbery and David Kermani discuss the provenance of objects, read additional details, learn more about Ashbery’s background, and explore further links.
The rest of the project is a regular website with a table of contents bar running horizontally at the top of the screen.