I began shooting my experimental movie project Rousseau’s Daughter in the small town of Ashbourne in Derbyshire, UK. I went there to shoot photographs and video of the Penelope Boothby monument in St. Oswald’s church. During my preparation I learned that from 1766 to 1767 Rousseau spent a year living in exile a few miles away at Wootton Hall. Nothing remains of the original house, except some ruins known as “Rousseau’s Cave”.
I connected with Dr. Stephen Leach, a historian of philosophy who had previously published research on the history of the “cave”. The site is significant because it was one of two favorite writing spots where Rousseau wrote the first volume of Confessions. Stephen helped me visit the ruins where I conducted a detailed photo-scan for use in the Rousseau’s Daughter. We agreed to collaborate on a scholarly article on the history of the ruins. We made some significant discoveries about the history of the “cave”, which it turns out was not, as was previously thought, a cave in Rousseau’s time. In fact, it was a free-standing decorative hermitage. Our research also added some previously undiscovered details to the history of Rousseau’s time in England, including possible interactions with Erasmus Darwin.
As part of the research I created a detailed CGI reconstruction of the hermitage which was used to create an animated tour of the structure and its environs. Our article A Photogrammetric Survey and Reconstruction of Rousseau’s Cave was published by The Antiquaries Journal (Cambridge University Press, which is the journal of The Society of Antiquaries of London (the second oldest learned society in the UK after the Royal Society). You can see the full-length video that accompanies the paper HERE.
I began shooting my experimental movie project Rousseau’s Daughter in the small town of Ashbourne in Derbyshire, UK. I went there to shoot photographs and video of the Penelope Boothby monument in St. Oswald’s church. During my preparation I learned that from 1766 to 1767 Rousseau spent a year living in exile a few miles away at Wootton Hall. Nothing remains of the original house, except some ruins known as “Rousseau’s Cave”.
I connected with Dr. Stephen Leach, a historian of philosophy who had previously published research on the history of the “cave”. The site is significant because it was one of two favorite writing spots where Rousseau wrote the first volume of Confessions. Stephen helped me visit the ruins where I conducted a detailed photo-scan for use in the Rousseau’s Daughter. We agreed to collaborate on a scholarly article on the history of the ruins. We made some significant discoveries about the history of the “cave”, which it turns out was not, as was previously thought, a cave in Rousseau’s time. In fact, it was a free-standing decorative hermitage. Our research also added some previously undiscovered details to the history of Rousseau’s time in England, including possible interactions with Erasmus Darwin.
As part of the research I created a detailed CGI reconstruction of the hermitage which was used to create an animated tour of the structure and its environs. Our article A Photogrammetric Survey and Reconstruction of Rousseau’s Cave was published by The Antiquaries Journal (Cambridge University Press, which is the journal of The Society of Antiquaries of London (the second oldest learned society in the UK after the Royal Society). You can see the full-length video that accompanies the paper HERE.
