ClimAID VR application “Mills on Mars”
Overview: The innovation of the ClimAID lies within the variety of methodologies and activities proposed, such as the development and testing of a 3D environment. To start, the project team compiled best practices of cultural heritage related with climate change, four sites per partner country, twenty sites in total, in the following typologies: portable building techniques, windmills and watermills, aqueducts and, finally, drystone terraces for agriculture.
These selected cultural heritage sites are showcased in this Open Resource Platform, which includes a 3D environment to allow users to experience these heritage sites in a virtual reality (VR) application, as well as an e-learning course for cultural organisations to connect heritage with climate change. In particular, the VR application includes one heritage site from each of the consortium’s countries, modeled in 3D, integrated in a fictional environment that allows the users to interact and to be immersed, featuring emblematic windmills and watermills from Portugal, Spain, Italy, Greece and Cyprus.
The creative proposal is based on Miguel de Cervantes’ “Don Quixote”, playing with the main characters of this classic narrative. The VR app aesthetics is loosely based on Jeronimus Bosch’s “The Garden of Earthly Delights”: here Mars is Hell and planet Earth is again a garden of delights, but without humans. The soundtrack for the short introductory animation is based in Richard Strauss “Don Quixote”.