# Van Gogh guided demo narration and subtitles — English Status: current runtime transcript plus one proposed Phase 2 opening revision. The proposal is editorial only until the owner finalizes it. The runtime source of truth is `src/inception/tour/narration.js`; recorded files are under `content/inception/assets/audio/van-gogh-tour/`. Narration text and subtitle fragments live together in that source so they cannot drift during playback. ## Recommended short opening at the first painting — content draft The first displayed work remains *The Starry Night*. The long-form opening now lives in its R Reader at `content/inception/museum-labels/van-gogh-section-1.html`; narration should open the question and then let the visitor choose whether to read further. **Recommended narration (about 22 seconds):** > Let us begin with a question: can love carry us through suffering and point > toward eternity? Vincent knew friendship, care, and a restless search for > faith. In *The Starry Night*, a sleeping village rests beneath a sky that > will not stop moving. Look at the lines. What do they make you feel? **Recommended subtitles:** Let us begin with a question: / Can love carry us through suffering and point toward eternity? / Vincent knew friendship, care, and a restless search for faith. / In *The Starry Night*, a sleeping village rests beneath a sky that will not stop moving. / Look at the lines. What do they make you feel? This is a script proposal, not a new recording. The current `01-lines-and-people.mp3` and its timed runtime captions remain unchanged until the owner approves the text and a replacement recording is reviewed. ## Corridor star opening — Recorded for issue #30 This was the intended opening idea for the whole exhibition, not a minor caption. It is no longer deferred: a shortened, approved form of it is now recorded as `13-beneath-the-stars`, the second line a visitor hears and the first spoken inside the corridor. The draft that opened this section reads: > Before we look at the stars, meet two people Vincent loved. He painted Joseph > Roulin with patient eyes and Eugène Boch against a deep blue, star-filled sky. > After Vincent's crisis in Arles, Roulin helped care for his home while he > recovered. Through friendship, Vincent experienced love not only as an idea, > but as something lived. That opens the question of this exhibition: can love > point beyond suffering toward eternity? When Vincent wrestled with faith, he > returned to the night sky. The portraits come first; the starry paintings > follow. The passage that was actually approved and recorded is shorter, and is now the cue `13-beneath-the-stars` below. The camera does not move while it plays: the view stands midway between *The Starry Night* and the Eugène Boch portrait — a position the route derives from the committed room rather than an authored metre value — so the starry work on one side and both portraits on the other share the frame for the whole passage. Re-hanging that chapter carries the view with it. The re-hang this section asked for was **not** adopted. The room keeps its order; the narration carries the sequence instead, naming the stars in its first sentence and the two men in its second. Placing the portraits before *The Starry Night* remains a separate decision about the museum room itself. Both guardrails below hold in the approved wording, which is why it could be recorded before the letter excerpts are settled: it does not say that either sitter cared for Vincent after the Arles crisis, and it does not date any starry painting relative to it. `tests/demo-narration-docs.test.js` keeps those two claims out of the recorded line. The guardrails still bind any revision: - current evidence specifically documents Joseph Roulin caring for the Yellow House after the December 1888 crisis; do not say that both portrait sitters provided that later care unless the supplied letters establish it; - *Starry Night Over the Rhône* was painted before the crisis, while *The Starry Night* at Saint-Rémy came later. Do not describe every starry painting as post-crisis. Two verified background references can anchor the next editorial pass: - [Letter 729, 4 January 1889](https://vangoghletters.org/vg/letters/let729/letter.html) records that the charwoman and Roulin cared for the Yellow House while Vincent was in hospital. - [Letter 638, 9 or 10 July 1888](https://vangoghletters.org/vg/letters/let638/letter.html) connects the sight of stars with dreaming and reflects on death and a future existence. Together they support the care and eternity themes, but they do not by themselves prove the full causal sentence the longer draft proposed. The owner's selected letter excerpts remain necessary before any wording makes that claim — the recorded passage deliberately does not. Once the owner supplies the exact letters, a longer telling can replace the recorded one: record letter ids and dates here, revise the museum reader, then regenerate the narration audio and its subtitle timing together. ## Current recorded script Each **Subtitles** line shows the exact timed fragments, separated by `/`. Cue ids are recording order, not the order a visitor hears them. The spoken order is 00, then 08, 13, 01, 02, 03, 04, 05, 06 through the corridor, then 09, 10, 11, 12, 07 inside the house. Ids are never renumbered: every reference, audio file, test and document names them. ## 00-space-chamber **Narration:** Something different is waiting for curious kids. Are you curious too? **Subtitles:** Something different is waiting for curious kids. / Are you curious too? ## 01-lines-and-people **Narration:** Look at how the lines move. The sky twists and dances, while the people Vincent loved remain still and close. Can a line feel restless, gentle, or alive? **Subtitles:** Look at how the lines move. / The sky twists and dances, while the people Vincent loved remain still and close. / Can a line feel restless, gentle, or alive? ## 02-fathers-bible **Narration:** Here, Vincent placed his father's enormous Bible beside a small, well-worn book. Two books, two ways of seeing life, resting side by side. Was the sacred found only inside church walls, or also in fields, streets, and ordinary lives? Vincent did not answer with words. He picked up a brush. **Subtitles:** Here, Vincent placed his father's enormous Bible beside a small, well-worn book. / Two books, two ways of seeing life, resting side by side. / Was the sacred found only inside church walls, or also in fields, streets, and ordinary lives? / Vincent did not answer with words. / He picked up a brush. ## 03-we-looked-and-asked **Narration:** We looked, and we asked. What did you notice first? What appeared only after you stayed a little longer? Can you see where the paint moved quickly, slowly, thickly, or softly? **Subtitles:** We looked, and we asked. / What did you notice first? / What appeared only after you stayed a little longer? / Can you see where the paint moved quickly, slowly, thickly, or softly? ## 04-student-works-left **Narration:** Now the questions belong to the students. Each artist began by looking, but chose different colours, shapes, memories, and stories. **Subtitles:** Now the questions belong to the students. / Each artist began by looking, but chose different colours, shapes, memories, and stories. ## 05-student-works-right **Narration:** Look across the corridor. These works do not simply copy Van Gogh. They notice something, wonder about it, and turn it into something new. **Subtitles:** Look across the corridor. / These works do not simply copy Van Gogh. / They notice something, wonder about it, and turn it into something new. ## 06-enter-the-house **Narration:** The corridor ends, but the looking does not. Let us enter the Van Gogh House and see what has stepped out of the paintings. **Subtitles:** The corridor ends, but the looking does not. / Let us enter the Van Gogh House and see what has stepped out of the paintings. ## 07-painted-horse-and-easel **Narration:** Emily's painting becomes two objects: a running painted horse and a painting on an easel. The horse, fish, shoreline, and distant houses remain the shared source for both. One idea can travel much further than its first page. There is more to discover, and more to read. Now, you are about to try it yourself. **Subtitles:** Emily's painting becomes two objects: a running painted horse and a painting on an easel. / The horse, fish, shoreline, and distant houses remain the shared source for both. / One idea can travel much further than its first page. / There is more to discover, and more to read. / Now, you are about to try it yourself. ## 08-arrive-house **Narration:** Welcome to Van Gogh House, made and presented by Lucas Academy. **Subtitles:** Welcome to Van Gogh House, made and presented by Lucas Academy. ## 09-student-village-houses **Narration:** Bella's yellow house and Hosanna's brown-purple cottage meet beneath one night sky. Then both houses step out of the wall, keeping their roofs, doorways, colours, and brushwork. **Subtitles:** Bella's yellow house and Hosanna's brown-purple cottage meet beneath one night sky. / Then both houses step out of the wall, keeping their roofs, doorways, colours, and brushwork. ## 10-cypress-valley **Narration:** On the west wall, Ethan's violet valley, Anna's cypress and crescent moon, and Eliana's unfinished grey house become one shared night landscape. **Subtitles:** On the west wall, Ethan's violet valley, Anna's cypress and crescent moon, / and Eliana's unfinished grey house become one shared night landscape. ## 11-mountain-river-house **Narration:** Across the room, Matthew's grey-white mountains and blue river meet Jennifer's white house, red roof, and ochre doorway. Two paintings now form one valley. **Subtitles:** Across the room, Matthew's grey-white mountains and blue river meet Jennifer's white house, red roof, and ochre doorway. / Two paintings now form one valley. ## 12-flower-sea **Narration:** Deborah's circular flower centres and turning brushstrokes have grown into a field of blue and gold. A small painted gesture can become an entire landscape. **Subtitles:** Deborah's circular flower centres and turning brushstrokes have grown into a field of blue and gold. / A small painted gesture can become an entire landscape. ## 13-beneath-the-stars Heard second, and first inside the corridor: the exhibition's opening question, spoken from a still view that holds *The Starry Night*, Joseph Roulin and Eugène Boch together. See "Corridor star opening" above for what this passage does and does not claim. **Narration:** When Van Gogh longed for faith, he stepped into the night and painted the stars. He painted people close to his heart, too—his friend Eugène Boch and the postman Joseph Roulin. In his world, love and friendship lived beneath the eternal stars. **Subtitles:** When Van Gogh longed for faith, he stepped into the night and painted the stars. / He painted people close to his heart, too—his friend Eugène Boch and the postman Joseph Roulin. / In his world, love and friendship lived beneath the eternal stars.