VESPACE
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Project Timeline
American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies Annual Convention
“V-ESPACE: Virtual Early modern Spectacles & Publics, Active Collaborative Environment” (roundtable on digital humanities).
Jeffrey M. Leichman
CPER Pays de la Loire – 1st VESPACE meeting
Participants: Françoise Rubellin, Jeff Leichman, Jan Clarke, Florent Laroche, Matthieu Quantin, Toinon Vigier, Loic Jeanson, Guillaume Raschia, Ronan Gaugne, Mylène Pardoen, Brian FG Katz, Jean-Louis Kerouanton, Florent Coubard, Christophe Schuwey, Isabelle Ligier-Degauque, Mathilde Labbé, Emmanuelle Bousquet, Isabelle Duval, Fanny Prou, Julia Jacob, Arianna Fabbricatore, Amélie Renard, Jean-François Bianco, Jessica Goodman, Wilda Anderson, Ward Keeler
Activities: This was the initial meeting in which principles for conceiving and implementing the VESPACE project was discussed with an international group of humanities and computer science scholars, organized by Françoise Rubellin in Nantes, France.
NEH Digital Humanities Advancement Grant – Phase I (HAA 255998-17) V-ESPACE: Virtual Early Modern Spectacles and Publics, Active and Collaborative Environment
Jeffrey M. Leichman and Françoise Rubellin, co-PIs
FREN 4030 – Gaming the French Enlightenment – Curricular excursion with undergraduates to Nantes, France
Activities: Undergraduate LSU students enrolled in FREN 4030 (“Gaming the French Enlightenment,” Prof. J. Leichman) travelled to Nantes, France, to present their game-development process and play-test their designs with students in the Université de Nantes Master-2 level course “Cultural Hierarchies” (Prof. Françoise Rubellin). Travel support for students provided by the Friends of French Studies.
Participants: Jeff Leichman, Françoise Rubellin, Liam Sheehan-Dean, Tania Wilson, Talia Momon, Loodjaah Laguerre, Maggie Sprague, Jennifer Beadle, Kendall Raymond, Hannah Bonsall
VESPACE LSU Workshop
Activities: Planning workshop for building a theatre-history research module based on a virtual reality architectural model of an eighteenth-century Paris Fair theatre, as part of NEH DHAG-Phase I.
Participants: Jeffrey Leichman, Françoise Rubellin, Guillaume Raschia, Jan Clarke, Arianna Fabbircatore, Pannill Camp, Jeffrey Ravel, Paul François, Marc Aubanel, Ben Samuel
American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies Annual Convention,
“Old Regime, New Technology: Digital Humanities and French Theatre” (roundtable on French theatre)
Jeffrey M. Leichman
VESPACE LSU Workshop
Activities: Organizational and planning meetings for implementation of a dynamic computer-based model of a Fair theatre, as part of NEH DHAG-Phase I. Public facing lectures on the implications of this research for historically-oriented humanities scholarship.
Participants: Jeffrey Leichman, Françoise Rubellin, Florent Laroche, Arianna Fabbricatore, Paul François, Jan Clarke, Pannill Camp, Ben Samuel, Isabelle Duval, Mylène Pardoen, Marc Aubanel, Marco Cocito-Monoc
Centre Culturel International Cerisy-la-Salle
“La Foire aux reenactments: Problématiques de la restitution d’un théâtre du dix-huitième siècle par le biais du jeu video”, part of the weeklong seminar Reenactment/Reconstitution: refaire ou déjouer l’Histoire?
Jeffrey M. Leichman
VESPACE Seminar, IEA de Nantes
“Lumières virtuelles”
Jeffrey M. Leichman presented his yearlong fellowship project in the first seminar of the 2018-2019 class at the Institut d’Études Avancées de Nantes.
“Humanités numériques, la nécessaire interdisciplinarité” (roundtable)
Florent Laroche, Françoise Rubellin, Paul François, Jeffrey M. Leichman
Fête de la Science, Conseil de Région Loire-Atlantique, France
In addition to this public forum (later rebroadcast on Prune.fm), the VESPACE project was selected for this prestigious national science festival highlighting innovative research across the sciences in France, allowing hundreds of users from all walks of life to test Paul François’s initial VESPACE VR rendering under the supervision of Paul François and Isabelle Duval.
“Mettre en place les fondations d’un outil de restitution à large audience : VESPACE”
SCAN18 (8th Séminaire de Conception Architecturale Numérique), Nantes, France.
Paul François, Florent Laroche, Jeffrey Leichman, Françoise Rubellin.
“La Foire Saint-Germain vers 1770 : images et mutations des lieux de spectacle”, paper delivered at the study day Permanence et mutations des espaces du spectacle vivant dans la ville, Bordeaux, France.
Paul François
“De la donnée à ses artefacts: Processus, Méthode et Formalisation dans une Recherche Exploratoire” (roundtable)
EADH 2018 (1st annual European Digital Humanities Association Annual Conference), Galway, Ireland
Participants: Mylène Pardoen, Julien Ferrando, Suzanne Mpouli, Yasmine Serdouk, Guillaume Raschia, Françoise Rubellin, Paul François, Sitthida Samath
“Remonter le temps pour comprendre le passé: l’immersion virtuelle au service des historiens,” DAHLIA (DigitAl Humanities and cuLtural herItAge: data and knowledge management and analysis) workshop, EGC2019 (Extraction et Gestion de Connaissances, conference), Metz, France.
Paul François
“Virtual Enlightenment: Sensory Immersion, Video Games, and the Future of Digital Humanities,” invited lecture at Durham University, England.
Jeffrey M. Leichman
“VESPACE, de la représentation au savoir,” invited presentation in the M2 seminar Politique des spectacles et pratiques des spectateurs avant la Révolution (Prof. Isabelle Ligier-Deguaque), Université de Nantes, Nantes, France.
Jeffrey M. Leichman
Penser le monde autrement, 10-year anniversary of the nantes Institute for Advanced Studies (IEA de Nantes)
As part of this international gathering of scholars in humanities, social sciences, law, industry, and technology, the VESPACE project was represented at the roundtable on “Culture numérique, culture humaniste” by Jan Clarke and Jeff Leichman, presented by Françoise Rubellin, director of the Institute.
Françoise Rubellin, Jan Clarke, Jeffrey M. Leichman
Social Physics Workshop, IEA de Nantes
Activities: Presentation of principles of coding social physics with two dozen students and professors from the Université de Nantes and the Ecole d’Architecture de Nantes, held at the IEA de Nantes.
Ben Samuel and Jeff Leichman (workshop facilitators)
“Dans l’œil de l’artiste: interprétation d’une miniature de Louis-Nicolas van Blarenberghe.” Identités et circulations des spectacles forains: Musique, théâtre, danse, acrobatie et marionettes, 1660-1830 (conference), Metz, France.
Paul François
“Projet VESPACE: Immersion dans un théâtre de marionettes du XVIIIe siècle.” Expérimentations et recherches dans les arts de la scène (study day), The LaB 18-21, Université de Bordeaux Montaigne.
Jeffrey M. Leichman and Paul François.
“De l’usage à l’espace : prospective pour une rétro-architecture.” 16th S-MART (Systems Manufacturing Academics Resources Technologies) Conference, Les Karellis, France.
Paul François
Innovatives SHS CNRS, Lille, France. VESPACE was selected for inclusion in this prestigious research exhibit of the year’s most innovative projects in humanities and social sciences, selected by the French National Center for Scientific Research. VESPACE was included as part of a consortium of projects under the name NOMADHISS (NOuveau Mode d’Approche et de Découverte de l’Histoire par l’Immersion, le Sensible et le Sensoriel), coordinated by Mylène Pardoen.
Mylène Pardoen, Françoise Rubellin, Paul François, Jeffrey M. Leichman.
“Vespace,” presentation of research program and methodologies of the project during the study day on digital humanities in Nantes during the Nantes Digital Week
Paul François, Françoise Rubellin, Florent Laroche
NEH Digital Humanities Advancement Grant – Phase II (HAA-266501-19) Interactive VR Simulation of an Eighteenth-Century Paris Fair Theatre: VESPACE
Jeffrey M. Leichman, PI
80 Years of the CNRS, Lyon, France
A celebration of the 80th anniversary of the French National Center for Scientific Research. VESPACE was invited to participate in this public science event under the banner of the NOMADHISS digital humanities initiative.
Mylène Pardoen, Françoise Rubellin, Paul François
American Society for Theatre Research Annual Conference, Arlington, Virginia
“Embodiment and Simulation: Playing the Public in a VR Eighteenth-Century Theatre” (working group presentation) and “The VESPACE Experience” (demonstration and research module; two dozen scholars in theatre and performance studies experienced the model).
Jeffrey M. Leichman and Paul François
VESPACE discussed on episode 35 of the podcast OnTAP (A Theatre and Performance Studies Podcast), hosted by Sarah Bay-Cheng, Pannill Camp, and Elizabeth Hunter.
SITEM (Salon International des Musées, des Lieux de Culture et de Tourisme), Carrousel du Louvre, Paris, France.
Françoise Rubellin
Nuit blanche des chercheur.es: Preuves en images (Nantes Université, Nantes, France).
An annual public science event in which laboratories invite the community to see where and how they work, as well as provide demonstrations of recent and ongoing projects. For this edition, Paul François devised a collective viewing experience of the VESPACE project by remapping images from the VR model onto rear-projection screens surrounding a seated audience.
Paul François, Florent Laroche.
Use of the VESPACE prototype with VR headset with two classes of sixth-graders. Their French teacher, Fanny Prou, used this system to allow students to gain a different understanding of eighteenth-century theatre.
Paul François, Fanny Prou
Social Physics Coding Workshop
Participants: Jeff Leichman, Ben Samuel, Daniel DeKerlegand, Paul François, Chiara Azzaretti, Charlee Redman Bezilla, Julien Legoff, Camille Gros, Louise Moulin
Activities: Originally planned as an in-person workshop, this event moved online due to the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic. Introduction to principles of coding social physics predicates in Ensemble, followed by intensive multi-day dataset building, using a custom-designed authoring tool to code social situations found in period readings prepared by workshop participants. A write-up of this experimental workshop is forthcoming from the Canadian journal Digital Studies/Le Champ numérique.
International Conference on the Foundations of Digital Games, UX of AI Workshop
“Encoding Socio-Historical Exegesis as Social Physics Predicates”
Daniel DeKerlegand
Fête de la science, Nantes, France.
The VESPACE project was selected for inclusion as a “fan favorite” (“coup de coeur”) for this edition of the French national public science day; unfortunately, this event was canceled due to the Covid-19 pandemic.
American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies Annual Convention, Toronto, Ontario (held virtually)
Immersive Histories: Sensory and Interactive Digital Humanities for Eighteenth-Century Studies (2 panels)
Jeffrey M. Leichman, panel moderator.
Mylène Pardoen, “Archéologie du paysage sonore”
Ben Samuel, “Applying Social Physics to the 18th Century”
Arianna Fabbricatore, “L’expérience du spectateur au banc d’essai. Tensions entre contemplation, performance, et fruition (considérations à partir de VESPACE)”
Florent Laroche, “Reconstruction de modèles numériques par le sauvegarde d’objets historiques”
Paul François, “Virtual Reality for Historical Research: Visiting Theatres that Never Were”
Françoise Rubellin, “Érudition, interprétation, sensation: les apports du projet VESPACE à la connaissance des Théâtres de la Foire”
“Jeu vidéo et historiographie du théâtre de la Foire”, guest speaker in M2 Theatre Historiography Seminar (Prof. Pauline Beaucé), Université de Bordeaux Montaigne, France.
Jeffrey M. Leichman
“Historiographie et jeu vidéo: restitution architecturale et simulation sociale dans le projet VESPACE,” Journée d’étude, Recréer et interagir avec le passé, Fédération de recherche Sciences et Cultures du Visuel / Université de Lille, France.
Jeffrey M. Leichman
“Rejouer une histoire qui n’eut jamais lieu: Modèles et hypothèses informatiques,” Journée d’étude, Nouvelles perspectives sur l’histoire des spectacles sous l’Ancien Régime: Enquêter, questionner, et transmettre, Université de Nantes, France.
Jeffrey M. Leichman
Modern Languages Association (MLA) Annual Convention, Washington, DC (held virtually)
“Re-Creations of Literature and Theater in Virtual, Augmented, and Mixed Reality” (digital humanities roundtable)
Jeffrey M. Leichman
Virtual Theatres, International Study Day at LSU
Participants: Jeff Leichman, Pauline Beaucé, Scott Sanders, Paul François, Louise de Sédouy, Elisa Cazzatto, Brendan Harmon, Nicholas Serrano
Activities: In conjunction with the FACE-Council/Thomas Jefferson Fund “Virtual Theatres in the French Atlantic World,” this international study day brought together theatre history researchers working on unrealized or virtual manifestations of early modern theatre, including presentations on the VESPACE project.