How to preserve inspirational environments that once surrounded a poet? Immersive 360° video and the cultural memory of Charles Causley's poetry

Abstract

Cultural memory of local artists and poets is typically cultivated through festivals devoted to these people usually by way of commemorations on the anniversaries of their deaths, and are held in places in which they lived and worked. These methods, however, are intangible and if not passed to next generations may be lost or forgotten. What is more, they do not help to protect from oblivion the environment which once surrounded an artist and was a source of inspiration for their work. This paper uses a case study of Charles Causley, a Cornish poet, to propose a new method for preserving his memory, as well as his hometown of Launceston where he spent most of his life. As poems written by Causley were loco-descriptive (topographical) and described various objects and places in Launceston, the approach proposed in this research relies on this paradigm. Loco-descriptive poems provide a basis for the spatial exploration of the town with interactive narratives based on traversing multiple trajectories. Causley's inspirational environment was recreated by 360° images taken in his home and in various locations in the town and also 360° videos were recorded between these locations to allow movement along paths which the poet walked on a daily basis. The approach adopted in this project borrows the concept of traversing from surveying and applies it to the movement between different locations in loco-descriptive narrative that has its roots in polychronic narrative and uses Kinoautomat paradigm when presented in the panoramic immersive environment (360° screen). The project described in this paper was presented on multiple screens for a large audience and is also available on-line for a single user (panoramic virtual environment).