We come in....pieces?

This semester our big group project for our Digital History class is somewhat of a digital experiment with an overall exhibit theme of "The Sky", the website for which will be coming in April, 2008. My group is based on archaeoastronomy and will be a model of ancient Stonhenge with an interface that will allow the viewer to interact with various aspects of the model. There will be information on the Neolithic culture that constructed Stonehenge, the various theories of its usage, history of the structure, as well as various facts about other megalithic sites in Britain and Europe that will provide more contextual information.

Last weekend, my group and I finished moulding the clay stones that will come together as Stonehenge (hopefully). Moulding the clay was both fun and interesting as we all got our hands dirty playing with air-dry clay and seeing all the pieces come together. The task and greater challenge now before us is the configuration of the electronic and digital components. Apprehensively, I volunteered to work on the digital side of things along with Adam Crymble. Adam has been very helpful in suggesting different programs we could use and with showing me how to use some of them. One of the ones we will definitely be using is a program called Bryce, which is a 3D model, landscape and animation package. Adam has already made an amazing animation of the solstice sunrise at Stonehenge, and has kindly started showing me to use the program as well. I will be attempting to make an animation of Dromagorteen, another stone circle in County Cork, Ireland that is also believed to be aligned with the solstice sunrise.

This here is an image of what Dromagorteen looks like now along with the sign that explains about the site and its astronomical significance:








I took these photos last summer in Ireland in a relatively unmarked off-road historic site that was filled with many interesting archaeological remains.

And here is my attempt using Bryce to digitally reconstruct it:








My group and I are also trying to figure out a way to present all the information about Stonehenge and other megalithic sites in an engaging, interactive way. One program that has potential is Python, an object-oriented programming language that has a huge selling point of being relatively user-friendly. Having absolutely no programming experience I am excited to learn using a program that is more understanding of us less computer-oriented people. Reading through the guide last night I still felt like this might be something a little out of my league. So far I have not even been able to install it successfully on my computer. Not a good sign. Once I do get it working, it will be interesting to see how I fare getting it to work.

While we can not hope to match the overwhelming accomplishment of the people who originally built Stonehenge, I am excited to see how our scaled-down version will work with all of the electronic and digital interfaces that we will be using. The pieces of the past few months are all coming together. Let's see what we can accomplish.