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SOCIAL SPACE:
A multi-user
vrml social space for participants. This space runs the complete
length of the Panopticon structure, giving equal access to all
levels/modules. This space is one of the two places that are based
on actual buildings. Barrels Hall in Ullenhall, Warwickshire has
a particular resonance for the Panopticon Project.
The literary
social circle that established itself at Barrels Halls, although
primarily noted for its romantic and Pastoral output which idealised
the peaceful and simple lifestyle of country folk, was preoccupied
by the revolutionary changes that were evolving in this period.
Australia was 'discovered', America declared its independence,
and the seeds of the Nineteenth industrial revolution were germinating.
This small village in Ullenhall became the spiritual home of writers
who were slowly coming to terms with significant changes advances
in science and engineering were having on human consciousness.
The search for new metaphors to articulate and comprehend the
human condition can be seen in embryonic form emerging from beneath
a rich tapestry of a wealthy and spoilt lifestyle.

Ullenhall,
which lies west of Henley-in-Arden, was made a separate ecclesiastical
parish on 27 June 1861. Barrels Hall and its wooded estate was
bought by Robert Knight, Lord Luxborough (latter Earl Catherlough),
in 1730. From 1739-1756 Henrietta, Lady Luxborough (1699-1756)
lived (confined) there, separated from her husband following a
legal battle that effectively placed her under house arrest, limiting
her movements and banning her from entering London. She made Barrels
Hall a centre of a literary circle for poets and writers such
as the poets Shenstone, Somerville, Jago of Beaudesert, and Richard
Graves. Henrietta obsession with her literary circle was noticeably
eccentric. Lady Huntingdon described Henrietta as, "so odd
and so engrossed with her poets and literary acquaintances' that
she had 'neither time nor attention to spare for that which' concerned
Ôher never dying soul."
(Williams, 1946).

Barrels Hall
was nearly burnt to the ground in 1933 and remains a ruin, which
is being slowly reabsorbed into the wooded undergrowth. The Barrels
Hall recreated in the Panopticon recalls HenriettaÕs period of
exile and the literary enquiry that still haunts the buildings
ruins.
Descriptions
of barrels Hall taken from Marjorie Williams account of Lady Luxborough
Goes to Bath: pp 49-50: "Lady Luxborough told Mr. And Mrs.
Graves that she had planted flowering shrubs at Barrels and Ômade
an aviary and filled it with a variety of singing birds', and
had made 'a fountain in the middle of it and a grotto to sit and
hear them sing in. ThisÉ seen from every window in the house'
afforded 'some amusement. And in a coppice a little further' she
had 'made a lovely cave shaded by trees'. She talked of her new
gardener, Hume, a Scot, and said he had fenced in her 'Service-Tree
Walk' from sheep, and had contrived to keep other intruders out
of it by a ha-ha and high bank'."
Barrels Hall
marks the starting point for the architecture of this social space.
The occupants will ultimately model this social space. Using ftp,
models created by participants will slowly replace the Barrels
Hall architecture. Traces of the original architecture and the
activities of the inhabitants will be stored within the library,
leaving the virtual Barrels hall in a similar ruined and memory
laden state to the real version.
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