In 2020, Bill’s wife Sue Hill invited Creative Producer Scott Fletcher to commemorate Bill’s workspace and collection in digital form. Entering Bill’s Attic Scott was ‘immediately struck by its cluttered eclectic majesty’.

The physical contents of Bill’s Attic were due to be transferred to the converted Old Schoolhouse at Krowji to build a ‘creative forge’ and workshop where artists could respond to Bill’s collection. Scott was therefore determined to capture Bill’s Attic as it had been left, preserving the space in a variety of digital formats.

Working with photogrammetrist Steve Flanagan and audio expert Ciaran Clarke, Scott’s team recorded Bill’s Attic as Bill had left it. By combining photogrammetry scanning, 360 video/photo and ambisonic audio techniques, they conducted extensive mapping of the architecture and collections housed in Bill’s Attic.

Benjamin Walbrook then used their assets to create an initial VR experience and 360 content.

In 2022 we inherited the digital assets including the photogrammetry files, 3D models and existing VR experience for further deployment.

Thanks to new funding from ACE, Scott commissioned us to optimise the 3D model and develop two immersive Bill’s Attic experiences:

• an immersive VR experience providing the last remaining view of Bill’s Attic at 1:1 scale
• the other an evocative dome experience made of abstracted digital artefacts.

Thanks to the existing 3D model and previous VR experience, making Bill’s Attic accessible in virtual reality was fairly straightforward.

We optimised the existing model, performed minor fixes to the windows and staircase, and then generated a point cloud from the model. This creates an atmospheric and ethereal version of the Attic – a dream-like quality which is heightened by Bill’s weird and wonderful collection.

We wanted people to be able to freely roam around the Attic, so they could be guided by their own interest and imagination.

As the VR experience needed to be used in an open area, we chose to keep the controls simple: encouraging people to navigate the space via handheld controllers, rather than physically moving around.

The result is simple but effective. The evocative nature of the Attic translates well in VR, and the experience is now the only way to view the space 1:1.

We hope to make it freely available on the Oculus store later this year.

Transforming the Attic into a dome experience was an exciting challenge.

We’ve previously developed 360° dome experiences, but the Plymouth Market Hall has the UK’s only 210° dome. This limited the viewpoints we could show, prompting us to focus on unexpected and dreamy ways of navigating the Attic.

By transitioning between the point cloud and the solid Attic model we created a 10 minute experience which immerses audiences in the physical space, whilst retaining the ethereal nature of the Attic.

The dream-like quality is heightened by an original soundscape composed by Scott and played over twelve speakers, ensuring the surround sound array was used to full effect. The audio comprises sounds recorded in the original Attic, layered over echoes of excerpts from interviews with Bill.