The Raven’s Eye is an interactive view of the camp of the Viking Great Army at Aldborough in the late 9th Century. Created with Dawn Hadley, Adam Parker and Andrew Woods from York Museums Trust, the installation builds on the work we did with Viking VR back in 2017.

The interaction is simple and instinctive, touching the screen redirects the Raven’s gaze and brings the action closer.

As in the creation of Star Carr: After the Ice, I used a combination of library animations and motion capture for the characters. However, this time, I used plask.ai to capture character motions from video. Some of the vikings in the scene were animated by the actions of volunteers from the museum.

The installation consists of an 86″ screen and a 34″ touchscreen monitor. Visitors to the Yorkshire Museums’ Viking North exhibition will be able to interact with the work from summer 2025 onwards.