Let me understand the poetry: embedding interactive storytelling within panoramic virtual environments

This paper presents a method for the merging of poetry into interactive storytelling that is based on still and video panoramas. This non-linear approach aims to give a young audience a new understanding of poetry, by exploring the poet Charles Causley’s house and the town of Launceston in England where he spent most of his life. His poetry mentions a number of locations from this town and artefacts located in his house. The user of the interactive application based on Adobe Flash plug-in and Lucid Viewer (panoramic viewer), take a number of narrative journeys in order to search for hidden poems, voice marks or trails signs that have references to the town. Still panoramas localised at decision-making points were linked by using video panoramas (360-degree video), which were recorded with a spherical video camera – Ladybug2 mounted on a motorised wheelchair. Still and video panoramas are elements that create a branching narrative. The aim of this application is to develop the interest not only in the Causley’s biography but also in literary output of the poet.