Fieldlab Virutal Worlds
In the fieldlab Virtual Worlds, which is coordinated by CLICKNL, they are working hard to apply new virtual techniques to museum’s and heritage institution’s collections. In this “pop up lab”, creative professionals have the opportunity to work on new applications for Virtual, Augmented and Mixed Reality together with researchers. The “frontman” for this fieldlab is Patricia Alkhoven of the Meertens Institute. The fieldlab has been running for a year now, how is it going?
Beautiful when 17th century documents come to life through augmented reality
How did the idea for the fieldlab come up?
“At some point I noticed that museums were looking for new ways to make their collection available with the help of VR, AR or MR. At the same time I noticed lots of VR makers and other creative professionals who felt the need to work on case studies to further develop their technology. So we thought: what if we bring those two groups together?”
In what way do you facilitate the cooperation through the fieldlab?
“We organise matchmaking sessions during which both sides can get to know each other. We make sure that a few people from the VR industry present some engaging projects as inspiration. During the last session we also asked heritage institutions to present their dream when it comes to VR: if there were no restrictions whatsoever, what would you do with VR, AR or MR? The idea is to foster connections and that new cooperations submit plans for the calls. It seems to be working, because during both calls at least half of the submitters were cooperations that started from the matchmaking sessions.
The idea is to foster connections between heritage institutions and VR makers
What is happening at the fieldlab at the moment?
“Well, of course we just announced the results of the second call, that lead to three beautiful projects that will be further executed in the upcoming months. These projects should be finished in March 2019 at the latest. And the two projects that came out of the first call, will be done by the end of the year. I’m really looking forward to them! Thankfully we get a little sneak peek in the meantime, because at the VR days in October, all five projects are going to present their current state of affairs. We will also share the newest development from the fieldlab at DRIVE.”
Which projects really jump out in your view?
“Jee, that is pretty difficult of course, because really I like all of the projects a lot! If I really have to pick one, I would say the project “Rembrandt Privé” by the Amsterdam Municipal Archive and Synergique. The Municipal Archive has all sorts of documents about Rembrandt from the 17th century that were written in old Dutch. You could transcribe them, but no one is going to read those entire pieces of incomprehensible text. Through AR they are trying to give the content of those documents an extra layer. By pointing your tablet at a certain area in the exhibition, it shows you images about the documents which really brings them to life. What’s fun about choosing AR to me is that unlike VR, there is room for interaction with others.”
Are there any nice plans on the horizon?
“In addition to the projects who are now executing their plans further that we keep following and supporting, of course, we are working on an analysis of the total of 28 projects that have submitted ideas with us. The questions that heritage institutions have posed can be grouped into themes. Such as education, interactivity and showing the collection in a different way, like more inclusive or more complete. To process these Meta questions we are trying to set up a large public-private cooperation. Knowledge institutions will be playing a big part in this, since they more aimed at the overarching questions and can focus on larger trends and developments. We can then, in turn, go further into certain questions with which multiple heritage institutions are struggling."
Patricia Alkhoven