LoGaCulture researchers from the Interactive Technologies Institute (ITI, Portugal) and Hochschule RheinMain (HRM, Germany) convened this week in Madeira Island, hosted by the Natural History Museum of Funchal (NHMF).
This three-day meeting, which included the Museum director, Dr. Ricardo Arrujo, and Curator, Dr. Carolina Ornelas, brought together interdisciplinary work on cultural heritage and interactive technologies, highlighting the potential of Mixed Reality (MR) tools and transmedia narratives to deepen engagement and immersion with museum collections.
Reporting on work developed at the Senckenberg Museum (in Frankfurt, Germany), HRM researchers Ulrike Spierling, Jessica Bitter and Yu Liu demonstrated how immersive MR storytelling using head-mounted displays potentiates a visitor’s interaction with otherwise static natural history collections. This visit from LoGaCulture HRM colleagues to the NHMF workshopped the additional goal of twinning the AR work developed at the Senckenberg Museum with the renowned wealth of the NHMF’s natural history collection.
The research work being developed by the ITI team for implementation at the NHMF, led by Professor Valentina Nisi and Prof Nuno Nunes, starred in equal measure in this gathering. Interns Matteo Cappello and Lavinia Rossini, under the guidance of Dr Marta Ferreira, presented preliminary proposals for an upcoming transmedia installation housed at the NHMF, connecting the museum with the wider natural diversity of Madeira’s Laurisilva—a unique subtropical forest declared of Outstanding Universal Value by UNESCO.
Sparking conversations on ongoing and potential collaborations, this LoGaCulture meeting of the minds bridged the drafting of scenarios, preliminary ideas and storyboards, testing prototypes and running software applications through head-mounted displays. In particular, NHMF and ITI partners tested the HoloLens experiences developed by HRM for the Senckenberg Museum, adapted to the localities of the Madeira museum.
All in all, this get-together helped set the stage for the next phases of the project and usher in a new generation of innovative locative games to enthral European society with its invaluable natural and cultural heritage.