Students in the English department at Boston College are transforming novels into reality — virtual reality.

They are working to transform James Joyce’s “Ulysses” into a virtual reality gaming experience, and what started last April as a proof-of-concept proposal has since grown to a 21-member multidisciplinary project, according to the Boston College website. “Ulysses” is a novel that takes place in Dublin, Ireland in 1904 entirely on June 16, a day that fans today celebrate as “Bloomsday,” per Britannica.

Deemed “JoyceStick”, the project is based at Boston College, but features students from Northeastern University and the Berklee College of Music.

The idea for recreating “Ulysses” comes from Joseph Nugent, the Boston College English professor leading the project, said Liam Weir, a Boston College student and designer for the project. Nugent is a Joycean Scholar and has studied Joyce’s work for most of his life. There is a lot of overlap between what is explored in the “vividly described” novel and what VR is, he said.

The most challenging part of working on the project, Weir said, is that it is “uncharted territory.”

“Very few people in the professional VR space are working a literary adaptation, and virtually no one is doing that at a college level,” Weir said. “(We are) trying to channel the ambition of the students and Professor Nugent into something tangible.”

The students first started working on the project in the spring 2016 semester, Weir said. Some of them took a trip to Dublin for four days to research the locations in the novel, and Skyped multiple times in the summer before coming back to school to begin developing.

The team is broken down into four groups, each with developers, text writers, sound experts and 3-D modelers. They fashion scenes that represent the vision Joyce expressed in his writing, per the project’s website.

Students utilize mapping and Geographic Information Systems, among other specialties, to ensure the game is accurate to within 2 millimeters based on a laser scan, according to the website.

Players have the option of exploring the world Joyce lived in, or the world he created through prose. The game includes the Martello tower in Sandycove, Dublin, where Joyce lived while writing “Ulysses,” and where the first two chapters of the novel take place, according to the website.

Right now, the students are working on recreating the scene where Steven, one of the main characters, is teaching in Dalkey, a suburb of Dublin. The students are working on building the classroom, paying attention to period accuracy, Weir said.

The students are still developing the game, Weir said, with a finish date of June 16, or “Bloomsday.”

Because the project members come from across disciplines and colleges, the students meet at a common maker’s space. While there have been a lot of late nights trying to make deadlines, Weir said one of the best parts of the project has been getting to work with a variety of different people.

The game is developed for the HTC Vive, and the team is thinking of distributing it to the system’s store, STEAM, once it is complete, Weir said. But because “JoyceStick” is such a specific game and few people have the equipment, the game might be treated as a traveling art exhibit.

“(We can) bring it to different Joycian conferences, (where people could) experience this book — that they have been reading and rereading — in a completely different way,” Weir said.

Published on March 23, 2017 at 12:07 am

Contact Taylor: tnwatson@syr.edu