| art.description.project | The experience is made up of a virtual visit to Granshults forge in Bankeryd, a preserved forge from the early weapons manufacture of Husqvarna. The visitors put the Virtual Reality (VR) glasses on and are thereby transported to a full scale photogrammetry model of the forge. In the forge there is a blacksmith drawing out a piece of metal. The visitor can walk around in the forge and look at the work from any chosen angle. When the metal is ready to be reheated the visitor is transported to another forge where another blacksmith is doing the same thing, and then a third and a fourth. All blacksmiths forge the same thing, a taper, a technique. They have the same stock material and have been given the same instructions, to make the piece of metal longer in one heat, but they still work in their own personal way, in relation to their respective body size, prior training and experience as well as choice of tool to use. The blacksmiths are Gustav Thane, Bertil Pärmsten, Therese Engdahl and Julius Pettersson, four of the best blacksmiths in Southern Sweden.
The main theme throughout the work is how forged designs and products evolved throughout history, the weapons of Husqvarna are no longer made, but the techniques are still around as an immaterial cultural expression. A technique can, when mastered, be slightly different between experts but it is
also in some ways the same, not just in 2019 south west Sweden, but all over the world and through time.
The VR format were a hologram of the blacksmith is experienced turned out to be an extensive technical endeavor. 360- video formats where a space is recorded from one point has been around for a long time and so has animated spaces to walk around in as well as photogrammetric stills of an actual space. In this project our intention was not to create but to capture human skills in a full scale moving format in order to create a kinesthetically empathic experience of the skill itself, not the designs formed. The work on developing such a format came a long way but a concluding remark would still be that this format will need a few more years before it is optimal for the task. The software developed is named Bodyghost VR. | sv |
