CWI and Sound & Vision open virtual museum during VR Days Amsterdam
Will 3D video be the solution in the future to experience cultural heritage and museums? Centrum Wiskunde & Informatica (CWI) and the Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision provide a foretaste of future museum visits with a demonstration of the innovative media project MediaScape Extended Reality (XR). MediaScape XR is the first VR demonstration in which visitors can interact remotely with the Sound and Vision museum collection in a virtual museum space that is shared with other visitors. The event will take place during the VRDays – Immersive Tech Week – in OBA Oosterdok Amsterdam from November 15-17. The demo is free for all interested visitors for three days.
The demonstration of the MediaScape XR place the visitor in 3D in the new virtual Sound and Vision museum. The experience focuses on one specific item: the costume that Jerney Kaagman, lead singer of the rock band Earth and Fire, wore in the 1979 music program Toppop. In the virtual museum, visitors can put on the 3D model of the costume, dance in it, reenact the Toppop show with other visitors and take a guided tour.
Project leader Pablo Cesar (CWI): “This new and unique VR experience of a museum visit will enable people in the future to easily take advantage of a cultural and educational experience from their own home and show them in new ways. interact with museum pieces. A step forward, because it is a new kind of museum visit experience that offers more possibilities than at the museum location itself. This innovation will help museums to increase their impact and reach a new and wider audience.”
Eppo van Nispen tot Sevenaer, director of Sound and Vision: “A museum is something you want to experience together with others. We are therefore very excited about this first demonstration of MediaScape XR, where you can enjoy our collection with a friend or family member during a remote visit.”
Social Virtual Reality
The new museum experience allows visitors to relive historical museum pieces through Social Virtual Reality. This historical development shows how the traditional model of a museum experience from passive observation is shifting resolutely towards active experience and recording. Museums are rethinking and redesigning the layout of their sites. They strive for greater interactivity with their audience, an innovative range of activities and greater use of VR technology. Efforts to digitize museum collections have mainly focused on creating digital surrogates. MediaScape XR now enables new ways to use, experience and interact with museum pieces in a social way. The demo offers visitors a unique experience of a joint, sound museum visit and provides insight into the way in which cultural steps can be taken.
Lectures and workshops during VR days
CWI, Sound and Vision and SOUND provide a platform for discussing this current and relevant topic: the showcase serves as a framework for a series of lectures and workshops during the VR Days conference on 17 November. It examines how Social Virtual Reality can be useful for cultural heritage archives such as the Rijksmuseum, Nederlands Dans Theater, NEMO, and libraries.
Patrick de Lange (SOUND) will be the session ‘Unlocking cultural heritage’‘, in which Pablo Cesar (CWI) and Philo van Kemenade (Image and Sound) demonstrate the demonstration of the. The panel consists of representatives from the business community and cultural heritage, such as Willemijn Maas (NDT) and Jacob Groote (KPN). As VR technology continues to evolve, so do the opportunities for the cultural sector. In various workshops, support from this sector in the design of experiments, business models and pilot projects can be accessed via immersive media.
More information
About Centrum Wiskunde & Informatica (CWI)
Center for Mathematics & Computer Science (CWI) is the national research institute for mathematics and computer science. The CWI was founded in 1946 and is part of the institutes organization of NWO, NWO-I. The institute is located at the Amsterdam Science Park and has a strong international position. CWI is known worldwide for the high quality of research. Pablo Cesar is group leader of the Distributed and Interactive Systems (DIS) group and professor of Human-Centered Multimedia at TU Delft. In 2020 he won the Dutch prize for ICT Research.
About The Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision
Sound and Vision is the care institute for media. An inspiring, creative and multifunctional meeting place for professionals and individuals; online, in our museum and sometimes on location. We are one of the largest archives in the world and we store various types of media, such as radio and television programs, video (games), written press, political pictures, gifs, websites and objects. Image and Sound is one of the images from the perspective of mapping the Dutch media landscape and current developments is a media perspective. In this way we show the impact media have on everyone’s lives. We do this with a large number of partners, such as creative media makers, clever experts, involved companies and relevant influencers. In this way we contribute together to a media wiser world.
About Sound
We help people and organizations to grow by unlocking the digital potential
unlock. We specialize in strategy, people, business and product development, fusing people, business and technology into a winning combination. Our digital agency consists of a dynamic mix of strategic, product owners, innovators, innovators and business developers with an extensive network who share an extensive passion for the digital economy. We are active in new technology-related companies and work for both national and international clients such as KPN, BAM, ING, Schiphol, NS, Dutch government, European Union, Vodafone Ziggo, Samsung and many others.
About Mediascape
In research project MediaScape an innovative model for making audiovisual cultural heritage accessible is being developed. Alternative forms of access to the collections are being developed to make connections between individuals and heritage objects. State-of-the-art information technology such as AI, XR and Intelligent Agents are used for this.
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