C4DI Company Members BetaJester have partnered with the University of Hull to mark celebrated poet Andrew Marvell’s 400th birthday with an incredible and thought-provoking 360° film.
Marvell was born in the city in 1621 and frequently wrote about flooding across Hull in the 1640s. Combining the topics of literature and climate change, this project uses virtual reality to immerse audiences in seventeenth-century Hull as it faces flooding.
By The Rising Tide of The Humber confronts its audience with a virtual flood, and they must make decisions about how to survive it by speaking with Andrew Marvell himself.
The project has been led by Dr Stewart Mottram, a Senior Lecturer in English at the university whose research focusses on the seventeenth-century poet.
“Marvell often writes about flooding and the aim of this project is to bring people face to face with a virtual flood that they can experience and interact with,” Dr Mottram tells us.
The team at BetaJester has worked with Dr Briony McDonagh, a Lecturer of Geography at the University of Hull and Dr Chris Skinner, Environmental Modeller at Energy and Environment Institute.
They have used old maps, archival and archaeological evidence, to build a digital model of what the city would have looked like through Marvell’s eyes in the 1600s. This has then been integrated with the Energy and Environment Institute’s flood plane model in order to visualise the impact of the 1646 Humber flood.
“Before we extensively managed the estuary, building embankments and walls to keep water out, people used to use it to their advantage – by deliberately flooding fields, they added rich sediments and even held back Royalist forces sieging the city during the Civil War,” Dr Skinner adds.
“In part, it’s this relationship with the Humber we want to try and come back to – learning to live with the estuary as part of the nature of the city as opposed to it being something to fear.”
Funded by the AHRC Creative Industries Cluster, XR Stories and the University of York, this intriguing project aims to celebrate Hull’s rich heritage while bringing attention to a key part of its present and future.
By The Rising Tide of the Humber was part of the virtual Freedom Festival that took place online from 4-6 September 2020. However, the 360° film has now been uploaded to YouTube for you to enjoy.
Find out more about BetaJester and view their other work on their website.