Using immersive acoustics to communicate archaeological narratives: Listening to the Commons
Channel: Recording Archaeology
Date: 2020-11-22

In 1778 women were banned from entering the public galleries of the House of Commons. At the beginning of the 19th century stories begin to emerge of women gathering around a space known  as  the  Ventilator:  a  small  space  above  the  ceiling  of  the  Chamber.  This  narrative  has  largely been forgotten or obscured by the suffrage movement of the later 19th and early 20th century but is part of the long history of women and politics. 2018 was the 100-year anniversary of some women in the UK getting the vote and as part of the celebrations UK Parliament hosted a major exhibition, Voice and the Vote, at the Houses of Parliament. The Listening to the Com-mons project brought together a team of collaborators including archaeologists, historians and acousticians to reconstruct the soundscape of the Ventilator to form part of the exhibition. The exhibition was very successful with over 100,000 visitors over the 3 months it was open. In this paper we will reflect on the methodology we used for recovering the soundscape, the challenges faced integrating this into the exhibition and the success of offering a mixed reality immersive experience. We highlight with the emergence of VR, AR and Mixed Reality for archaeological storytelling taking a multisensory approach can offer different but exciting immersive experi-ences that can communicate different narratives and offer emotive responses to stories not felt through vision alone.


Catriona Cooper, Damian Murphy