Fen to Fire is an innovative digital art installation that brings the Late Bronze Age Must Farm settlement to life through immersive, photorealistic computer graphics. I worked with digital arts organisation Collusion and Cambridge Archaeological Unit to create a multipurpose digital reconstruction of the settlement that formed the centrepiece of a multi-screen installation, showing the settlement at various points in its brief existence.
The installation was built in Unreal Engine 5.6 and as with previous works, I used lots of randomisation to vary the weather conditions, activities in the settlement and wildlife: no two viewings of Fen To Fire are the same.
The project was funded to help give people from the area around the Must Farm site a sense of ownership of the archaeology. We ran a series of workshops at Cromwell Community College in Chatteris in which a group of year 10 students imagined life in the settlement, designed Bronze Age characters and used video-based motion capture to place themselves in the work.
Fen to Fire is part of Collusion’s SHAPE Hub programme, a partnership with the University of Cambridge supporting collaboration between artists and academics to increase public impact and opportunities for innovation. With thanks to the University of Cambridge Department of Archaeology, Collections-Connections-Communities (CCC), the McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research and the Cambridge Archaeological Unit.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c15d8nez0v5o
Guy Schofield | Art & Research 