Mouthful of Dust is a cinematic web experience that brings diverse new perspectives on Ned Kelly, Australia’s most notorious bushranger. The project presents spatial photography of his armour and other personal items, accompanied by new writing commissions by five remarkable writers - Grace Chan, Cameron Hurst, Wesley Enoch, Sarah Krasnostein and Nam Le.
Made from hundreds of still photographs, the 3D models offer near-forensic detail and uncanny perspectives. Across a spectrum of literary genres, the writers describe what they observe in these images, and what they imagine as they navigate around them in digital space. Their stories and speculations add new layers of interpretation and suggest different ways of knowing these historic objects.
The project weaves together elements of the web, cinema, exhibition, gaming and literature into an innovative form of user experience. It employs cutting-edge web and 3D technologies including photogrammetry, LiDAR, WebGL and 3D Gaussian splatting, the latter of which was invented only months before work on the project began.
The experience is free, real-time rendered, fully responsive and built on standard web technologies. Featuring a maximum page weight of only 200 MB, the experience is far lighter than a YouTube video of equivalent duration. Although the website employs advanced 3D technologies, it successfully conforms to WCAG 2.2 Level AA accessibility guidelines.
Explore Mouthful of Dust here:
slv.vic.gov.au/mouthful-of-dust
