Dig Hill 80

Creative Director, 3D Lidar and 3D Hand Held Scanning Specialist
Wijtschate, Belgium, Summer 2018 – present
Funded by the School of Visual Arts (SOVA) and University Libraries, Virginia Tech

Dig Hill 80 is my second project using immersive technology to explore WWI history in new ways. As part of an international, transdisciplinary team including archeologists, historians, and artists, I led a team of faculty and students to develop an immersive digital experience of an extraordinarily well preserved trench fortress near the village of Wijtschate in Belgium. Working alongside archeologists Simon Verdegem and Robin Schäfer, and leading military historian Peter Doyle, my team and I created a 3D point cloud of the site, as well as 3D hand-scanned images of individual artifacts and 360 video and documentation. Our research has been presented in London, New Zealand, and Japan.

The overall experience working with a professional archeological team along with a variety of trained specialists with an added timetable crunch of 90 days to archive the site was both exciting and stressful. There were actually live bombs and ordinances still in the ground that had to be removed daily. The Dig Hill 80 crew were a voluntary group of experts working as a whole utilizing each of our strengths to preserve the archeological site and honoring the countless bodies found at the site. In the near future we will create an immersive experience of the battle site utilizing the strengths of our team of faculty, staff and students’ strengths to finalize an engaging historical experience of the deadly battle site.

Collaborators: David Hicks, Todd Ogle and Dongsoo Choi.