St George's Hall: If These Walls Could Talk

Professor Richard Koeck, Pete Woodbridge and other colleagues from the Centre of Architecture and the Visual Arts (CAVA) have collaborated with Culture Liverpool, Immersive Storylab, Liverpool Institute of Performing Arts, CineTecture and Draw & Code to develop a ground-breaking participatory and immersive mixed reality experience.

Prof Koeck lead a team that brought together world-leading researchers with leading-edge creative practitioners – such as a BAFTA winning writer, a world-class performing arts organisation and immersive technology experts – to create a pioneering hybrid spatial experience.

The location-based prototype was produced for one of city's most iconic heritage buildings – the 19th century St George’s Hall (Harvey Lonsdale Elmes, built 1841–1854), which is an intrinsic part of Liverpool’s UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Two launch events are hosted by CAVA who provide guests with the opportunity to immerse themselves into the famous court case of Florence Maybrick who was accused of poisoning her husband, and taken on a journey back in time to experience and feel what it was like to encounter Liverpool’s late Victorian prison and justice system.

The team created an immersive mixed reality experience, combining 3D projection mapping, Virtual Reality, Augmented Reality and Live Performances that produces an entirely new kind of digital visitor experience. Together with volumetric capture studio Dimension, using Microsoft's Mixed Reality capture software, the CAVA team created the word's first volumetrically filmed (3D holograms) UNESCO heritage experience using Microsoft's HoloLens system.