Challenge
Genevieve Grieves, exhibition curator and Melbourne Museum’s Director of First Peoples, had an overarching vision for Awaken that focused on inclusion and community. The exhibition was more than just a window to look back at history with fixed perspectives — it was an opportunity to move forward; to reconnect the belongings with community and to start new conversations around future outcomes for First Peoples. Our challenge was to find the best way to breathe life into that vision using our expertise in exhibition design and extended reality.
Approach
With help from The Mulka Project and representatives of the remote communities involved in the project, we captured 360º audio-visuals of the landscapes where Thomson originally sourced the belongings. Working closely with the University’s Faculty of Arts along with the Digitisation Centre and NExT Lab, we explored various approaches to the 3D scanning of the belongings. Virtual reality and Oculus Go headsets transported visitors to the far-flung reaches of the Northern Territory and Queensland where they could see and hear the belongings in their remote environments.
Art Processors understood from the outset our objectives to reconnect the objects with community through a contemporary, best practice approach that would complement the Arts West object-engaged learning methodology. They delivered an innovative solution that opens up new ways of cultural exchange, of communication and of exploring our shared history..
– Professor Russell Goulbourne,
Dean, Faculty of Arts, University of Melbourne
If the landscapes are vital to understanding the history and knowledge embedded in the creation of First Nations belongings, why not take people there? Using sunlight captured in 360º video filmed in the three remote regions, we were able to re-light digital surrogates, in effect reuniting them with their original landscapes for the first time in nearly a century.
Solution
We created a context-based virtual reality museum experience that used film, video, audio, AR, VR and 3D technologies to synchronise time and place, sound and vision, awakening old and new connections between the belongings, the communities, the country, and museum visitors. A technically and culturally complex project, we collaborated closely with stakeholders including institutions, museums, remote communities and technicians. The success of the project was ultimately delivered by this diverse group of participants coming together, often virtually over vast distances, to contribute their skills, knowledge and enthusiasm to realise the exhibition’s goals.
