MSc Heritage Visualisation School of Innovation & Technology
Lynsey McDougall
I may have a degree, but I am not an academic. I am drawn to people’s stories and want to share them in an interesting and creative way. I started as an Archaeology student who found that most ways of conveying heritage, even the most fascinating, were incredibly boring and I drifted towards more contemporary approaches using different technologies. I have dabbled in a few fields such as photogrammetry, augmented reality and virtual reality and have found they can be very effective at conveying a story to the public in an exciting way. I then joined a museum as a trainee trustee. I attended many meetings where the budget was discussed and the balance of trying to keep the museum afloat while paying staff and also keeping the public engaged was a constant struggle. I realised that telling stories does not have to be about the flashiest bit of tech, but instead, we should be demonstrating how affordable it can be for any museum to tell a story without breaking the bank.
My interest is helping organisations and the general public get online and learn about history from all around the world. In 2024, we should all be able to appreciate and share our heritage with each other easily, and I intend to make that possible.
The life cycle of a handaxe
For my dissertation, I looked into Doggerland and what has been found there. I wanted to create a simple animation displaying a fictional story about how things could be discovered based on true events. The story begins with a fishing boat bobbing on the water, bringing in a net of fish. when the net is opened a fisherman notices some objects got caught up in the net that don’t belong. He picks up one of the objects and inspects it. At this point you go back in time to when it was being made and its possible uses. Finally, the object is lost, and it is reclaimed by the earth and the sea. This takes us back to the beginning of the cycle.
This story is meant to highlight how a very ordinary object for that time has a history, and sitting in a display case, it doesn’t have much of a voice. I wanted to keep the animation simple and demonstrate that you do not need to have a background in animation and use expensive software to create this.
Haunted House Game
We were challenged with the task of making a simple game using three interactive elements. Due to this being around the time of Halloween and loving all things spooky, I chose to do a cartoon haunted house. The three interactive parts were the doorbell, the gravestones, and the house could change colour.
Project Links
Visualising Pre-Industrial Trade in Govan
This was a group project done in Semester 2 by Catherine Bellamy, Lu Hong, Lynsey Mcdougall and Angus Pattison.
Focused on Govan Old Parish Church, the video explores how the landscape has changed over time and its connections to the surrounding areas through local trade. We utilised a range of technologies and visualisation methods such as laser scanning and photogrammetry to showcase Govan Old Parish Church, a range of it’s pre-industrial gravestones and nearby Water Row.
Industrial Trade in Govan
Govan Old Churchyard is a historical site with abundant history. We hope to connect Govan Old Churchyard with Water Row and the River Clyde and create an exceptional Govan that is rooted in its historic and riverside context. Furthermore, to create a positive relationship with its people and attract more visitors. Govan’s archaeological and built heritage has huge potential to contribute to improving the popular image of Govan and to enhancing local pride.
The historic, economic and physical relationship with the river has defined Govan throughout the centuries and with it Water Row, which since ancient times has been a fording point of the River Clyde. We were intrigued about the Water Row bridge development, also the fact that Water Row used to be a natural crossing point in low tide. This got us thinking about how people travelled across the Clyde for work and how that would have changed when the Clyde was dredged.
To show the changes near Govan Church and Water Row from the 18th century to the 21st century, we use two-dimensional and three-dimensional presentation methods. Maps are displayed on a flat surface as an image resource. We hope to achieve the effect of superimposing changes on multiple maps so that the development of the same area can be seen.
We were interested in the Gravestones in the churchyard as they had different symbols carved into them such as shovels, crowns, hammers etc. We researched and found out more information about grave symbolism. Later, we took a laser scan of Water Row and the churchyard to get a detailed map of where everything was. Then we carried out some photogrammetry of the graves and mapped out where they were in relation to the point cloud. We used the model generated by photogrammetry to illustrate the relationship between grave symbolism and trade history of Govan.
