ETL’s First Long-term Project: An Interactive Virtual Recreation of Kent Island
In the Spring of 2020, the ETL embarked on its first long-term project: an interactive virtual recreation of Kent Island. Kent Island is a Bowdoin owned island field station in the Bay of Fundy and a hotspot for Bowdoin College Environmental and Marine Science research. The ETL coordinated with Patty Jones and Ian Kyle to imagine a large, to-scale virtual replica of the island, populated with interactive areas that demonstrate interesting research methods or visualize research data. This project is ongoing and, though it was disrupted significantly by COVID-19, the ETL is making steady progress.
The ETL also created a virtual to-scale replica of a Bowdoin College Museum of Art gallery. Using Matt’s Museum Environment as a starting point, the team worked with Sean Burrus to create another gallery, more precise and more detailed, populated with high resolution digital copies of the artwork in the gallery. The gallery recreation was another successful collaboration, and one that opens up many research possibilities into both art and accessibility in indoor spaces.