Mindcraft: A digital story of mind-control mysteries

Clearleft has collaborated with Wellcome Collection to produce its first digital story.

Clearleft, the award-winning digital agency based in Brighton, has collaborated with Wellcome Collection to produce the collection's first digital story: "Mindcraft: A century of madness, murder and mental healing".

It is the first in a set of digital stories from Wellcome Collection that will provide a new way for the public to engage with the Wellcome Library's digital archives.

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The story explores the mysteries and methods of mind-control and the discovery of the unconscious from 1779 to 1895.

Animated hypnotic demonstrations, imagined Twitter spats, and rich image galleries all help users explore a fascinating story.

Rich Rutter, founder and production director at Clearleft, said: 'Clearleft worked with Wellcome Library from the start to set a creative vision that would tell stories from fascinating historical material. A single-page web design has been taken to a new level with users scrolling down to get the next gem of knowledge. We developed a range of interactive methods to share information, including videos, animation and a quiz."

Danny Birchall, digital manager at Wellcome Collection and executive producer of Mindcraft, said: 'We set out to tell some of the hidden stories buried in the Wellcome Library's collections.

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"Working with Mike Jay and Clearleft, we crafted a story about the history of mind control that's full of surprises, explores a variety of narrative methods, and allows the user to delve as deeply as they wish into the Library's extensive store of digitised content. Future digital stories will explore other curious aspects of the human condition.'

Mindcraft is free to access and can be explored online via the Wellcome Collection website: www.wellcomecollection.org/mindcraft

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