Contested Memories: The Battle of Mount Street Bridge (BMSB) is a long-term research project that utilises 3D technologies to explore one of the key battles of the Easter 1916 Rising in Dublin, a week-long insurrection with the goal of attaining Irish independence from Great Britain. Begun in 2013, the project was designed to answer a specific research question: how many casualties did the British troops sent to quell the insurrection suffer during the battle. The BMSB team met its goal which was reported in the Journal of British Military History. Yet, we were dissatisfied with the research team being the only ones who were able to gain insights from the 3D models created, as typically is the case with so much 3D scholarship. Thus in 2021 PURE3D was funded to develop an infrastructure for the publication and preservation of scholarship created in 3D, with the BMSB a key source for developing the infrastructure. PURE3D has adopted Voyager Story as one of its 3D viewers, and the BMSB team has utilised it to create an intermedial multimodal publication of the battle.
Voyager Story, an open-source 3D viewer developed by the Smithsonian Institution, combines textual, visual, moving images and audio to create a rich environment for creating a (spatial) narrative, with a 3D model the central navigational and narrative pillar. Voyager Story also provides for hotspot annotation labels on the 3D model, accompanied by short descriptions. From an annotation label, longer ‘articles’ can be expanded to display supporting digital content, including text, image, hyperlinks, audio, video and other types of embeddable media (including other 3D models). Multiple guided tours can then be created in which camera movements, 3D scene changes, annotation labels, and articles are flexibly organized for designing engagement between the model and the accompanying narrative.
Due to the software design, the MountStreet Bridge team decided to not treat the entire view of the battle as a whole within the software, but rather to present each building separately, creating a linked-spatial narrative of the battle. The first building to be treated this way, 25 Northumberland Road was the first building where the British encountered resistance from Irish troops on 26 April 1916 during their march from the port of Kingstown into Dublin’s city center.
In the process of developing 25 Northumberland Road within Voyager, conceptual challenges emerged that are not found with other forms of media publication. It is our contention that as opportunities open up for 3D-centred publication to become part of the digital heritage ecosystem, further critical analysis is needed on the practical implications of these applications as communication media. This article will explore these challenges and opportunities, both for utilising 3D generally, and Smithsonian Voyager specifically, to construct historical narratives, particularly (but not exclusively) for a public audience. This implementation has also had significant feedback, in the form of an online survey and focus group, the findings of which will also be reported.
Digital Storytelling, 3D Narrative, 3D Web Viewer, Intermediality