Will 3D video change the way we experience cultural heritage? From November 15th to 17th, Centrum Wiskunde & Informatica (CWI) and the Netherlands Institute of Sound and Vision will give a sneak peek into the future of shared, remote access to cultural heritage with a demonstration of the pioneering work MediaScape Extended Reality (XR). MediaScape XR is the first demonstration where visitors can interact with the collection of Sound and Vision in a virtual space shared with other remote visitors. The event will take place during the VRDays - Immersive Tech Week - in OBA Oosterdok Amsterdam. The virtual demo is open to all visitors of OBA Oosterdok for free.
Remote visitors
The demonstration of the MediaScape XR places the remote visitor in the virtual Sound and Vision museum. The experience is tailor made for one specific cultural artifact: the costume that Jerney Kaagman, lead singer of the rock band Earth and Fire, wore in the music program Toppop in 1979. In the virtual environment, visitors can freely interact with a high-quality 3D model of the costume, enjoy a curated tour through this model and recreate the Toppop show with other remote visitors.
Project leader Pablo Cesar (CWI): “This new VR experience of a museum visit will allow people in the future to enjoy a cultural and educational experience from the comfort of their own homes and let them interact with the museum pieces in novel ways. One step forward, because it will let a museum experience go beyond the possibilities onsite. This innovation will help museums to increase their impact and reach new audiences.”
Eppo van Nispen tot Sevenaer, director Sound and Vision: ‘A museum is something you want to experience with others. We are very excited for this first demonstration of MediaScape XR, where you can interact with parts of our collection during a remote visit with a friend or family member.’
The costume that Jerney Kaagman, lead singer of the rock band Earth and Fire, wore in the music program Toppop in 1979
Social Virtual Reality
This new museum experience allows visitors to relive the history of museum pieces through the new medium of Social Virtual Reality. It illustrates how the traditional model of a museum experience as a passive observation is decisively shifting to active, interpretive engagement. Museums are rethinking and reworking their spaces to promote deeper understanding of their collections and mission, greater interactivity with their audiences, a fuller range of activities, and a more advanced usage of immersive technologies. The ongoing effort of digitizing museum collections has focused on the creation of digital surrogates as part of the preservationplan. MediaScape XR facilitates novel manners to enjoy and experience the artifacts or interact with them in meaningful and socially engaging ways.
CWI and Sound and Vision will provide a forum for discussing this current and relevant topic: cultural institutions are under pressure to make collections available online, by going a step beyond and enabling highly immersive and interactive experiences. The event offers visitors a unique playful experience of a shared virtual museum visit and will provide insights on how cultural institutions can take the next step after the digitization process of their collection is completed.
Talks and workshops
The showcase will serve as the framework for a set of talks and workshops during the VR days on November 17th about how Social Virtual Reality can be beneficial for cultural heritage archives like the Rijksmuseum, Nederlands Dans Theater, NEMO, libraries and other cultural archives. Patrick de Lange (Sound) will lead the session ‘Unlocking Cultural Heritage’. Pablo Cesar (CWI) and Philo van Kemenade (Sound and Vision) will present the demonstration. The panel consists of delegates from industry and cultural heritage, like Willemijn Maas (NDT) and Jacob Groote (KPN). As the immersive technology evolves, the opportunities increase as well. In several workshops, participants from the cultural sector get support to design experiments, business models and pilot projects to add value by unlocking cultural heritage through immersive media.
