Augmented reality (AR) poetry installation combining volumetric performance capture, interactive 3D and a disappearing Belfast starling murmuration at Belfast’s Lanyon Station.

Whitepot Studios created an augmented reality experience for Poetry Lab – The Luminous City, a public installation presented at Belfast Lanyon Station as part of the 2023 Belfast International Arts Festival.

The wider project was led by Quotidian – Word on the Street Limited, working with Ulster Touring Opera and Translink, and centred around a newly commissioned poem by Northern Irish poet Moyra Donaldson.

For the AR element, we worked with director Dee Harvey and Ulster Touring Opera’s Dafydd Hall Williams to bring Donaldson’s performance into the station as a three-dimensional augmented reality experience.

Bringing a poetry performance into AR

Rather than simply presenting recorded video through a screen, the aim was to make the poet feel present within the viewer’s surroundings, using AR and volumetric capture to create a new way of encountering a spoken-word performance.

Donaldson’s performance was captured volumetrically using a multi-camera setup, producing a 3D representation of the poet which could be placed directly into an augmented reality scene

Whitepot integrated the captured performance into an interactive experience built around a geometric interpretation of the Belfast skyline. As the poem progressed, elements of the city transformed into a moving flock of starlings, surrounding the volumetric performance and connecting the physical location of the installation with the subject of the work.

Lost From the Luminous City

Donaldson had originally been commissioned to write about Belfast’s famous starling murmurations, particularly the large flocks traditionally associated with the area around the Albert Bridge and Lanyon Station. During her research, however, she discovered that the spectacle she was meant to be celebrating had largely disappeared.

Conor McKinney, Founder and Chair of Wild Belfast, re-tells the beautiful and poignant story of the murmurations disappearance, and return.

www.ulstermuseum.org

Changes to lighting around the birds’ traditional roost were believed to have disturbed the starlings, and the resulting poem, Lost From the Luminous City, became as much an elegy for their absence as a celebration of the murmuration itself.

That story became central to the AR treatment. The Belfast skyline did not simply provide a backdrop to the poem: it transformed into the missing birds, visually linking Donaldson’s performance with the changing urban environment she was writing about.

Part of a larger public installation

The AR experience formed one part of Poetry Lab – The Luminous City, which took over Belfast Lanyon Station from 30 October to 3 November 2023.

Alongside the augmented reality work, visitors encountered a large-scale textile murmuration installation created with designer Una Hickey, while the wider programme brought together poetry, music, performance and participatory art within one of Belfast’s busiest public spaces.

The installation included contributions and performances from artists and organisations including Ulster Touring Opera, Arco String Quartet, Una Lee, Beyond Skin and composer Keith Acheson.

For us, the project was an opportunity to combine augmented reality development, volumetric video and real-time 3D within an unusual setting, while supporting a work whose technology was there to serve the poetry rather than overshadow it.

Unexpected epligoue

After the poem had been written and the installation had taken place, campaigning around the impact of artificial lighting led to changes around the birds’ former roost. Days after we set up at Lanyon Station, the starlings had resumed their murmurations!

In Pictures: Starling murmurations thrive after light pollution reduced

Wild Belfast became alarmed as the number of starlings at dusk started to fall but numbers are starting to grow once more

Belfast Live

Press & related links

Belfast International Arts Festival – Poetry Lab: The Luminous City
The Irish News – Moyra Donaldson on becoming an augmented reality ‘Pop Up Poet’
Arts Council of Northern Ireland – Digital Evolution Awards
Moyra Donaldson – Write a poem about…