Panoply at Open Circuit

May saw Panoply appearing at Open Circuit, the opening event of Short Circuit, 'a strategic action research project commissioned by Arts Council England, designed to put digital acumen and disability artistry together.' http://shortcircuit.org.uk/. Short Circuit is facilitating collaboration between digital technicians and disabled artists and investigating how the digital world can increase access to the arts. A range of excellent presentations and table discussions were on throughout the day, including a talk by artist Rachel Gadsden. Rachel paints, draws and makes digital animations; she had just returned from the Middle East, where her exhibition This Breathing World formed part of an Arts and Disability Festival in Qatar. There’s more about the participants here: http://shortcircuit.org.uk/panoply and check out the video of the day at: http://shortcircuit.org.uk/open-circuit/.

Sonya gave a brief presentation about Panoply’s vision for artefact animation and Steve led a table discussion detailing the Panoply approach. We spoke about the potential vase animations have for reaching across boundaries, particularly audio boundaries, and valuable feedback gave us lots to think about and build on. One idea was to explore the use of sign language in future animations. Look out for the artistic results of Short Circuit’s collaborative creation event coming up on the 8th-9th June.

Meanwhile, thanks very much to AWOL (ancient world online) for featuring Panoply on their excellent site: http://www.ancientworldonline.blogspot.co.uk/.


(an Open Circuit table discussion featuring Dolly Sen and Damian Toal)

Storyboard Progress: Combat Scene for Ure Discovery

Steve is currently creating animations for ‘Ure Discovery’, an Arts Council funded project in which pupils from three schools are collaborating with the Ure Museum. The pupils created stories and storyboards from the vase collection, and Steve is creating animations based on those storyboards, which will be used in a digital museum trail.
You can see here an example of how the storyboards inform scenes from the forthcoming animations. This one comes from a spectacular combat scene on a lekanis (a shallow bowl with side handles), made on the island of Euboea around 550BCE. The teenagers’ story shows a training session getting out of hand. You can read more about the project on the Ure Discovery blog: http://blogs.reading.ac.uk/ure-discovery/ The Ure Discovery animations will be out in June

Panoply Features in Russian Media

This week panoply.org.uk has featured in a news article for Russian news giant Polit. The article, written by Elena Chepel and appearing in the Pro-Science section, focuses on the teaching potential of the animations. Russia has a tremendous history of classical scholarship, and students study classical culture in schools and universities across the country - so hopefully the panoply animations will prompt some interesting discussions in Russian classrooms! You can see the article here: http://polit.ru/news/2013/04/14/ps_panoply/. If your Russian's not perfect, you can get a rough translation by running the text through a translator such as Google Translate or Bing Translator.

Classical Association Conference Follow-Up

Pleased to say that Sonya’s paper on the Ure View project went down very well at the Classical Association Conference. The British Museum’s Ian Jenkins was very positive about the animations all together, calling the moment when Achilles pulls down his helmet in Clash ‘a profoundly Greek moment’, which highlights the persona switch between warriors at play and warriors at war. Dr Carrie Vout, from the Faculty of Classics at Cambridge University, suggested a strand of teaching that invites discussion of the difference between static and narrative representations; definitely an idea with huge potential. The third piece key piece of feedback came from a member of the audience who suggested their use amongst pupils who have difficulty with literacy. This was very welcome feedback, and I’m glad to say that we have already found that the visual focus of these animations has made them popular amongst pupils with those specific needs. The current Ure Discovery project also involves Steve developing stories and storyboards with pupils at a special needs school. The lack of a language element also means that the animations work well internationally and it’s been pleasing to hear of them being used in Greek schoolrooms.

Communicating Ancient Greece and Rome

We’re delighted to announce that Sonya has been awarded a place on the Communicating Ancient Greece and Rome programme run by the Archive of Performance of Greek and Roman Drama based at Oxford University. http://www.apgrd.ox.ac.uk/ This AHRC funded programme helps researchers to build sustainable partnerships with organisations in the media, arts and heritage, and education sectors. Participants attend an impressive series of development sessions and receive funding to design and deliver a high-quality public programme. Watch this space for further developments - we’ll be making something amazing!

Classical Association Conference Preparation

Busy preparing material for a talk about Ure View at the Classical Association Conference. Sonya will be talking on the ‘Classics in Museums’ panel on Thursday 4th April. Other speakers on the panel include Vicky Donnellan (UCL) with ‘The Role of Classical Collections in UK Regional Museums’, and Laura Snook (Birmingham) with ‘Visiting Places of the Past – Exhibitions of Classical Sculpture.’ Chairing the session is Ian Jenkins, Senior Curator in the Department of Greek and Roman Antiquities at the British Museum. Must admit I’m really looking forward to it.