Museum design is a complex process that involves various aspects such as space planning, accessibility, circulation, lighting, security, and more. To effectively communicate the message of a museum, it is essential to consider various methods of display, such as frames for paintings, pedestals or vertical display cases for sculptures, and table cases for books and papers.
To create an exceptional interior space for a museum, it is crucial to prioritize lighting to enhance exhibit visibility and create ambiance. Neutral colors should be used to allow artifacts and art to take center stage. Museums should be supported by designs that provide a spatial experience, making visitors memorable and wanting to return.
Interior design factors such as color, form, texture, light, and pattern enhance the spatial experience. Museums rely on technology professionals to create unique exhibitions that offer visitors new ways to engage with art. Examples of interactive experience design include Breeze Creative and Interactive Scape.
Museum interior design is a blend of creativity, functionality, and educational purpose, playing a significant role in creating an inviting, accessible, and immersive environment. The role of an interior designer in a museum using digital exhibition methods is to redefine the value and experience of interior spaces.
In addition to preserving, maintaining, and providing knowledge about historical records, museums are also legal institutions that play a crucial role in preserving, maintaining, and providing knowledge about these records to the general public. Hiring a museum architect and exhibit designer simultaneously can help create a unique and engaging museum experience.
📹 Museums are about to change forever
Thanks for your support! Chapters: 0:00 Introduction 0:35 The purpose of museums 1:40 New technologies 2:26 Virtual museums …
📹 World Famous Interior Designer: How Your Space Can Affect Your MOOD | Kelly Wearstler
Today I welcome interior designer, Kelly Wearstler, to the podcast. Internationally recognized by the design community, Kelly has …
I’m an artist and often take photos of my pieces for work. It always holds true that no photo or representation ever holds a candle to seeing the actual painting or textile sculpture in real life. So while I’m glad to witness the accessibility of museum collections via media, I know that nothing will be able to replace the experience of being present in the room with them.
As Robin Williams says to Matt Damon in Good Will Hunting “”Michelangelo? You know a lot about him. Life’s work, political aspirations. Him and the pope. Sexual orientation. The whole works, right? I bet you can’t tell me what it smells like in the Sistine Chapel. You never actually stood there and looked up at that beautiful ceiling. Seeing that.”
Museums have to walk a tightrope between serious scholarship and public appeal. They have to appeal to the general public to produce revenue as well as keep credibility with academia to get grants. That part of museums, physical and virtual, will not change. Best of luck with the new venture, Garrett you are able to be informative and entertaining. Oh, have a happy Ides of March (as contradictory as that sounds)
I don’t see this ever replacing people’s desire to see the real thing. Being able to see this incredibly rare golden bust of Marcus Aurelius (one of six known gold busts ever made by the Romans) when it was on display at the Getty Villa in person was truly special and it wouldn’t be the same if I merely saw a digital copy of it no matter how HD that copy is. It could prove very useful for educational purposes but there will always be a demand to see the physical/tangible artifacts in the flesh. Your gallery does look really cool though! Good luck with that!
A lot of negative comments, and I share some of their concerns, but it seems to me they are misplaced. After all, the people complaining are still here, perusal a website that is essentially a personalized, narrated digital museum trip. This will never replace the instinctive human desire to see the Real Thing, true! And it should not aim to. BUT it can be a great additional resource, that allows so much more focus and detail than even hours of entertaining articles ever could, and be better at it than any book could be. So many times I’ve watched a Told in Stone article, and wanted much more information, detailed pictures, or narrative focus on just a small item or portion of the subject matter of the article…..and that is what a well built online museum could provide, better than any wikipedia page, printed encyclopedia, museum website, or most other resources that are easily available currently. This isn’t a “replacement”, it’s a tool to expand the reach of static places, a way to extend the magic and deepen the knowledge of the subjects of the articles that this website already provides in article narrative form. Seems like a lot of work, but without modern technology it would not even be possible, and it looks like a good use of the technology to me, with a lot of potential. A few well placed easter eggs alone could be hours of fun.
In the future, the benefit would be complementary and supplemental to seeing the real thing. Those who cannot travel due to age, finances, health or preferences would enjoy this as a substitute. To those fortunate to travel or have traveled this could bring back memories or fill in all the exhibits you walk by as you go to the most famous items in your time limited visit. It could also prepare you before a visit and let you choose what you really want to spend time on in the museum rather than what your guide or guide book tells you to see! I could see this as large screen projections as a back drop to lectures in history, literature, etc. at university to painlessly introduce art and sculpture at the same time. Great stuff!!
This appeals to me as a way for people to virtually create their own museum as a collection of things they’ve witnessed in person. That way over years of travel around the world you can virtually revisit the pieces knowing you were there in person and made the scan yourself. I don’t think seeing things in person can ever be replicated.
I had a look around. I’ve also scanned through the comments and noticed some about how it does not recreate the authentic museum experience. This is true, but I have a different point of view. I have been around the world, visited museums and galleries of all sorts. Now I’m old, and don’t want to travel anymore. For me it’s good because I can fill in the blanks based on my experience. Maybe it is not ideal, at least not for everyone, but I believe there will be an audience for this format.
I have to agree with a lot of other commenters when I say that there’s still no substitute for actually being in front of the real thing. There’s a strong sense of wonder involved in looking at 2,000+ year-old artwork, tool, or building and thinking “Someone made this. Someone used this. Someone admired this, or lived here, or worked here, or any and all of the above.” There’s an immediacy and a connection with the past involved in that realization that would be very difficult if not impossible to recreate with a virtual copy, no matter how faithful. For that reason, I think there is and should always be a place for physical museums, despite their flaws. That said, I think there will be some value and use for virtual museums. For providing access to those who can’t make the trip, for reference before or after a visit, for scholarly work, for showing objects not currently on physical display—I think these are all worthwhile goals, but at that point a virtual museums starts to become closer to a particularly immersive and glossy catalog, rather than a substitute for actually going there.
I spent some time in your “Pantheon” museum, looking around. I should mention that I’ve made POV-Ray models of the Pantheon and a hybrid of the Basilica Nova and the Baths of Diocletian that seem lighting-wise at least mathematically near-perfect vs. normal article card generated material, as POV-Ray can uniquely produce via radiosity etc. So it took some time for your more normal graphics to work for me, and it clearly wasn’t supposed to be a literally perfectly accurate rendering of the Pantheon. The photographically accurate obelisk of Constantinople was what really pulled me in, with its erosion, text and all. But after some time, especially with that curious background sound loop, I started getting some of the feel I think you were trying to convey. The brain started compensating for any visual inaccuracies detail-wise to deliver the overall experience which you intended. That unique sound really helped! Those less capable of nitpicking others’ renderings to pieces would (especially after some time) I think be likely very impressed. Then when you look up the photographic in-person imagery available online of what you’re showing that likely starts completing things and one ends up really wanting to be near the then-obvious amazingness of the original actual physical things. One thing making that POV-Ray Pantheon model of mine has done is make me really, really want to spend some good quality time in the Pantheon on a moonlit night (which would of course be illegal for a tourist), and made me realize that the more I study the original, the more very complex is truly is (interesting details everywhere).
As I age and my health fails, I can not tell you how much I appreciate your website and others about the ancient world. I have been a casual student of history since I started learning the responses to the Latin Catholic Mass as a kid in the 50’s and class in high school in the 60’s To be able to enjoy the new discoveries and new understanding of our ancient ancestors.
I love this website, however I disagree with what I’m seeing here. Not that virtual museums may be accessible to those who may not be able to visit. No, I take issue with your placement of objects even more out of context than exist already. Example: The Pantheon does not contain either the Tomb of Alexander nor the Obelisk of Theodosius. I think this is a dubious precedent, one which causes confusion at least and, I suggest, does not follow academic or scientific best practices. Again, I learn from this website continuously, however, I would welcome rethinking of this approach by Toldinstone. MHO.
I would really recommend everyone to visit Europe at least once in their lives.. and I think ideally in the off-season when it is not so crowded. There are places there where you will pause and reflect on centuries of history and lives lived.. and they will move you in a way that a computer image can’t.
I think this is a good example of something to do. Well done! It will however not replace the real thing, but it is an inexpensive way to see things and can help provide better understanding of history. I feel YouTube is exactly the same in comparison. It has allowed for people to grasp history better than they could have before like your good self and got me into reading. I commend you for this and it is certainly a niche. I would highly suggest making a larger than life museum that is almost like an artefact archive but with meaning and understanding so people can either go simple or incredible detailed on an era and area of history. Keep up the good work!
high-res scannings is how the science was able to read the burnt or very fragile dead sea’s scrolls. this technology is also helping the greeks rebuilding the Partheon with the original marble pieces. it’s non-intrusive and the scans can be shared amongst scientists and archeologists around the world. One day in the future, we’ll be able to use the technology to do underwater archeology and finds lost cities across the mediterranean shores
Digitization continues not to be the solution to our problems. It’s a thing, and it’s already a thing long-established – every museum has had a website for years. However, people will still want to be in the presence of the real thing. When they stop wanting that, that’s bad news for digitized collections, which will then have to justify their existences. “Here are the digital versions of the things you don’t care about.” See the paradox?
As VR is perfected virtual museums will become more acceptable to students of history. Victorian ideas about tramping all over creation to stand on or near the spot thus-and-so stood when whatever happened will become old-fashioned and those sites will be protected. The Sistine chapel doesn’t smell like it did when Michelangelo had his scaffolding set-up. Or, maybe, antiquities will become a Disneyland attraction for those with the means.
A key element to virtual museums taking off will be interactivity. The Assassins Creed historical tours do this inadvertently by their nature of primarily being games. It proves the concept can work. But for them to be financially viable in their own right and to create them to the fidelity needed to do them justice historically would require a big buy-in from investors, along with a business model that gains enough traction with consumers.
I’m told my hardware does not support the app, it fails to open. I’m on an android device. It’s dissapointing to be told I can do this with my phone, and I can’t. I will send this link to my desktop, and try again from there, but Im terribly dissapointed to not be able to use my phone to view this. The idea is brilliant, and I think it’s wonderful.
A thing to note I think curators, digital and non should start doing is allow for a mixture of simplistic and highly detailed. Archival and display. There should be a simplistic style of room or viewing and if people wish for more of this, they can access a far more highly detailed room. This can be very doable in digital but if it was in real life, id highly suggest for museums of all to give public access to their archives.
I’m going to paste a lecture from my favorite theme park and experience designer/architect Joe Rohde on the historic nature of museums and the innate superiority of a sensory physical environment: “When museums first became public institutions (the kind in England and America), that was done with a paternalistic urge to discipline, education and lift the masses; there’s an underlying disciplinary vibe of lines, containment, standing everywhere, and looking at everything – very disciplinary. There’s an 18th century premise, which is tragically flawed, that if people just understand something, they’ll care about it – which is utterly upside-down from the way the human creature is designed. That only works for scientists, and not even all scientists – most scientists only study things they care about. The value equation tends to be upside-down so the push is very cognitive, very information-biased, very, ‘If you only understood this, you’d think it was cool because then you understood it, and then you’d be excited,’ – instead of, ‘This is really exciting, you should care about it and then learn what you’d like to learn.’ So you have the disciplinary format of standing, walking in lines, and regarding. The historic nature of museums once upon a time being the only air-conditioned building a person would ever be in is not very different from peasants going into a church. I think the actual physical format needs to be much more modeled on the living room than a school – it needs to be a place where I feel comfortable, socially comfortable, doing what I want to do with couches and tables and chairs instead of barren rooms, rooms, rooms.
I think you have an excellent idea here. particularly for those of us whose travelling days, may be, or, are over. I don’t know how I feel about the exclusive access part. but I do understand that this will have entailed a substantial up-front cost, that you have every right to recoup. I wish you luck in your 21st century take on the less democratic aristocrat collectors of the 18th and 19th centuries.
The rise of digital “museums” may actually increase the numbers of visitors to traditional museums. As higher numbers of people are able to experience artifacts from the past in a virtual way, their interest will be kindled to go visit the real thing. For instance, next week I am planning to visit Graceland in Memphis, where Elvis lived. If I had not watched a bunch of articles about the place (not virtual spaces one could wander around in yet, but perhaps that will come), it is quite possible I would have let this old idea slide; the digital experience only increased my desire to go there. It is not a competition; the two complement one other.
“Museums are about to change forever because the metaverse startup paying me really needs that to be true for them to justify a valuation.” Man. I started out really liking your stuff (I was a patron for quite a while) but the constant shilling is too much. This is an unlabeled advertisement and nothing more. I’m out.
Great idea! As years ago a curator of a history museum said: “If it is not in the internet, it does not exist for the public.” But there’s a but: Be careful with european copyright laws. Often museums do not permit the commercial use of their ‘property’. Which it is in some legal aspects, because they are doing a lot of care-taking around the objects. Some artifacts wouldn’t be here in our present, if not stored in a museums magazine over a hundrets of years.
I think both. Virtual reality can do amazing stuff, it allows us to visit places we can’t visit in reality. The Titanic, the Hindenburg, ancient Rome… but there’s no emotional connection. I’ll take an extreme example: Auschwitz. Seeing a pile of spectacles or shoes in situ really drums home the horror and the sorrow. You can’t get that from a smartphone in Ohio. Look, I’ve read books about the Khmer Rouge, but I’ve never had the privilege to visit Cambodia so it’s all abstract, just words on a page. I know what happened, but I don’t feel it. Seeing the actual thing connects us, and people will always seek that. But VR certainly has its place, and it’s an awesome tool. It’s not and/or if you ask me. Both.
Did anyone really ask for this? Clearly some effort’s been put into it, but if this is the future of museums then count me out. This “virtualisation” of experiences only makes them more solitary, fleeting, and removes the tangible connection and memories made when you see and feel these things for yourself. I can already search up pictures and articles of almost any historical artefact or place I want for free in seconds, but I go to museums to see them with my own eyes, and to see them with other people in real life.
This is amazing!! For those that cant afford to travel to all of these incredible museums and collections around the world this is absolutely important, and altho I do agree on some level with the discourse around the value of seeing artifacts and object with one’s own eyes, I absolutely wouldnt discount all the effort and thought thats gone into this! On behalf of your ever informed public: thank you, truly 🙇♂️🙇♂️🙌
The same people complaining about “you can’t replace the experience” are the same people who think remakes of their beloved movies somehow erase the existence of the movie they love. Nobody is trying to replace the direct experience. People are improving upon the photograph. The copy. Why can’t we be happy at the existence of the real thing and happy to have the ability to recreate the experience virtually for those who can’t experience it directly?
Did you try to apply for a grant to open the work to the public? Access to the patron community is nice, but how many people would you really outreach vs. how many you could? (Parenthetically, it’s kinda against the grain of the very idea of patronage sensu stricto.) It would be totally fine to offer “admission fees” or memberships, exactly as many brick-and-mortar museums do, but you’ll need an outreach fac exceeding the little “patreon” (what a weird word!) community. I’ve been to private museums who were asking for donations, not admission fees, with the sliding window average donation for the last month (or so they had asserted, at least) to give you a ballpark estimate of an expected donation. One of these was where I got access to some rarest of the rarities, such as Tsiolkovskiyie’s handwritten notebooks where he developed his futuristic space travel ideas. Yes, the original not copy, and I could even photograph them as long as I used LED and not HID flash and was wearing white cotton gloves provided by the staff. You can easily imagine me leaving $100 as a donation, while I’m reluctant to disclose the actual amount: everyone financial situation is different but shall not define their access to the museum-preserved artefacts. But. I have no straightforward sense how that would translate to the virtual museum, but I would say may be worth trying if you had asked me. You see what worries me and is the central motif of my rambling: such a great project shall not vanish into oblivion for the lack of funding, not for the lack of the excitement internal drive creating it!
This is the direction Egyptology needs to go because we can’t even take a grain of sand home. I totally agree that Egyptian artifacts should stay in Egypt, but the rest of the planet is really missing out. Virtual galleries are the only way people will be able to see new discoveries in person without a plane ticket to Cairo.
I distrust virtual museums for the simple reason that seeing is believing. It is true that many museums are less than truthful about their exhibits and the proper context of what they display, but at least you can see the physical objects in that case. A big part of museums was that the public could see art and artifacts for themselves, and a virtual museum just effectively reduces the original material back into somebody’s private collection where only a select few can actually see it – while the elites get access and enjoy it for us. It’s a pity that our increasingly low trust culture is forcing famous artwork behind thick glass and even out of reach due to vandals.
That’s perfectly fine, so long as we don’t enter a world where the real artifacts are stowed away forever and the only interaction we have with them is in a virtual environment. It’s already horrifying to think that in our guilt we would cede some of humanity’s most precious treasures to governments known for corruption and even destruction of relics; if that became orthodox practice in archaeology and in museums it would be like death for me. The Museum of Us (Formerly the Museum of Man) already made a point of removing all mummies from display over sensitivity issues and the next best collection is quite the drive away, it’s madness and we really ought to stop it in its tracks. Your project looks quite interesting, clearly a lot of work went into it.
This is great before one goes to see and experience the actual. You really have to experience the “pilgrim” effort and when there the temperature, smells, sounds,” there is a memory to smells, temp etc” to permanently stay with you. I’d definitely use virtual before going. Question: will travel books be on the chopping block?
I remember a few years ago encountering a fully 3D-scanned Museum in VRChat called the Hallwyl Museum. While I’m sure it is even more beautiful in person, since it is located in Sweden, it would be very difficult to visit said museum. In much the same way, I think virtual museums can be great to improve accessibility for many around the world. While it will never replace the real thing, I believe it will be a great tool going forward. I wish you the best in your endeavor in creating a virtual collection.
These is fantastic and I’m really excited about the potential, but sir, your simulation absolutely must have a mode that uses articlegame-style “mouse-look” controls. Having ‘Q’ and ‘E’ or left-click-drag controls for looking around is entirely unheard of in first person perspective article games and has been for the last 25 years because it’s so far below mouse-look in terms of usability and comfort. The free cam stuff that click-and-drag look controls allows is AWESOME for getting up close and inspecting stuff, but a first-person mode would be infinitely better for casual strolling.
The resolution of these objects & scans is not good enough to warrant a paid VR experience. I love the idea, but the execution here is not up to snuff. This would be impressive in 2015 (as a proof of concept), but the level of fidelity in both the scanned objects and the “museum” itself are very, very poor. The lighting is terribly basic, literally every polygon on screen is aliased to hell, it just all around does not look good. This would be contemporary for something made in 2002. I don’t say this to discourage you, I say this to encourage you to get a better quality product from SaganWorks. Get Unreal Engine, because what is presently on display here is useless for your intended purpose. Do as much, and I will pay for what you’ve created.
I agree up to a point. I actually think Assassin’s Creed has always been underrated in this regard. I think it reached its zenith with Origins and Odyssey specifically, but the series has always been pretty unique in immersing you in at least the spirit of a place. And I’ve used a few of the virtual apps to view artifacts and the city of Rome. But I really don’t think there’s much concern about technology bringing an end to people wanting to physically be present around artifacts and trying to find the immersion of history. It certainly doesn’t stop me. I appreciate the opportunity to experience things I can’t physically visit, but I’ll still have these places on my bucket list to visit.
Not to rain on your parade but this makes me feel like I’m playing old school Thief… The only way a virtual gallery would be remotely usable is if it was as close to realistic as possible otherwise I’ll look at a photo that isn’t awkwardly wrapped around a low poly mesh. The super flat textures on the built museum pieces only hammers home how fake and article gamey it feels. Honestly not a good substitute unless you want to hire quality people that actually know how to make good 3d assets and know how lighting works.
digital things can be modified to fit narratives, a casting at least stays unchanged after it’s made. you have seen the damage done to antiquities by religious/government censors, what would stop them when it’s made much easier? instead of a chipped away face or crotch on a statue which would have to be explained, a modified digital copy could instead be used where the face or crotch were never there to begin with.
I can’t say all items should be returned. I think it depends on who will be the best steward of that item. But if we can return items with certainty they will be properly cared for, they should be returned to origin. Remember when ISIS destroyed all those artifacts? Some were copies but plenty were real. Let’s not let that happen again.
Surely you must recognise that you would much prefer to have gone on that trip you just went on and seen all these things in real life rather than put on a VR headset and walk around some scans of them? The desire to go and see things with your eyes will never go away even when you can’t even tell the difference. By the time someone is old enough to put on a VR headset and go to your museum they will have already have seen virtual copies of everything in it a thousand times. seeing a new virtual copy isn’t going to do anything more.
Last year I went to a computer museum where they had put the computers in rooms that resembled various eras. I had lived in those days and used some of the computers myself back then and the setting of the museum it looked like those times. But it didn’t feel like them. A younger person than me who hadn’t lived through those times would have gotten a more detached impression as me. So when I visit a museum of more ancient history or a historical building with the furnishings of the time I wouldn’t feel was experiencing those times. Reading a book from someone who has lived through those times gives me more of a sense of how it must have been back then. Books connect people through the ages. It’s more interesting to me than perusal some artifacts for a past era, whether they are from 20 years ago or 200 years ago or 2000 ago.
Digital technologies have been gradually and slowly enhancing and complementing museum materials. However we are decades from them making any fundamental change. The fact that the project here apes the most old fashioned conception of a museum collection (individual ‘masterpieces’ you walk around) shows how much of a hold that experience has on the psyche, and why that element is unlikely to be displaced by technology. Much more radical things are possible but they will arrive slowly.
Constructive criticism: The models look shoddy at best, and definitely isnt worthy of a paywall. Theres visible shadows distorting the colors, holes in objects that shouldnt have them, clear deformities and texture artifacting, the materials are basic and lack detail, etc… On the other hand i love the idea and would suggest using other scans publicly available that have a much better quality.
I don’t think virtual museums can ever convey the same experience as in-person ones. One of the reasons to visit a museum is to be in the presence of an ancient object even if its ugly or was irrelevant in its own time. Some unknowable person very long ago fashioned the object and other unknowables through out time experienced it as you do now. The one who made it, their grave has faded away, all memory of them has been washed from human remembrance but this object they shaped by their very hands and touched survives. No work of the hands of a Caesar or whomever has ever survived, only dubious stories told by others about them has. Through some inexplicable fluke of luck and unlike the overwhelming majority of all fashioned objects of human hands and all persons throughout all time this one in particular survived all the catastrophes and changes of history and in some sense directly saw events you can only read about and imagine (with the nagging suspicion your imagination and the account you were able to read are probably more inaccurate then not and thus the events are far more unknowable than not, other than that SOMETHING happened that those at the time considered worth memorializing and that somehow it formed the world you live in now and yet it is in some inexplicable sense directly known by this object before you), sort like the old expression “if these walls could talk.” To have your breath touch an object that was also breathed on by so-and-so is just simply awe inspiring and gives you a sense of transcendence away from the frivolities and cares of our time and your live as it is now.
Nice work. I haven’t visited major european museums, but every american museum I’ve visited in the last few years has at least begun to grapple with their history (colonialism, racism, murderous robber-baron founders, outright theft), their current funders (Kochs brothers, Sackler family, sketchy billionaires in need of a tax break and reputation washing), curators and management who are pretty sure they should keep the stuff their museum stole… 3d vr columns and obelisks will always remind me of super-mario (n64), but that’s not your fault. 😉
We are all accustomed to a deluge of images at all times. What will make a virtual gallery stand out from all the rest? How would it not just create a false equivalence among this marble bust, that bronze statue, this AI-generated seascape, that piña colada I had with lunch? If there is nothing to pull the individual up into a different, rarefied world, then the individual will simply incorporate more visual stimuli into the mundane. But great art is not mundane and those who curate it shouldn’t be trying to make it seem so. By struggling to make something more “relatable”, you’re really risking making it more forgettable. Are art museums truly an interactive experience or are they more an invitation to leave your little world behind and enter a new, vaster one full of things you never imagined? In the experience of beauty, we are placed outside of ourselves, not patted on the back for being who we already are! The establishment of virtual galleries seems a decent idea, but only to the extent of serving the same purpose that museum catalogues always have: to whet the appetite and prepare the imagination for the real thing.
I love the idea that those who cannot see certain sites and artifacts, either because of schedule, the fragility of the site, infirmity, lack of funds, or a hostile environment, can study and enjoy them without leaving their home or classroom. I don’t believe this will diminish people’s desires to see the real things when possible. But the danger as I see it is altering the virtual experience to fit some form of fashionable social or political agenda. That is to say I fear the messaging and imagery may be watered down or altered outright to reflect more modern (but historically inaccurate) racial, social, political, or environmental sentiments. For example, let’s say you are taking a tour of Ancient Rome in a virtual environment complete with NPC locals walking around, doing their days work. This means we should see many slaves, prostitutes, women being treated as second class citizens, etc. that would offend our modern sensibilities. Having previously worked in 3D, Education, and article Games, it’s all too easy for one ambitious producer to say “This is too offensive. Let’s take this out.” or “This isn’t diverse enough. Replace x amount of blue with red.” And that might be fine for a game. But history is different. It’s not about what we want to see, it’s about exploring the past as accurately as possible, even when it’s uncomfortable. I just hope the developers of these new virtual museums present as much as they can, as authentically as they can, free of modern biases and influence as much as possible.
I can respect your ambitions with these “virtual museums,” trying to make these more readily available to others. However, I think your approach is highly misguided. As you pointed out, there are numerous ongoing debates about who owns historical artifacts (a topic you address rather briskly) and who has the right to display them to the public. Yet your solution to this, is to take this objects as your own in the digital space and sell your own admission tickets? Do you have any intention on compensating these museums for sharing their artwork with you on your digital platform? Museums exist because people patron them, and I think your ambition is to effectively cut out the middle men in most instances in favor of your own enterprise. I know everyone cannot visit these places, but you are effectively giving them another reason as to why they shouldn’t.
I think you are unto something with physical museums- however there are some limitations that clearly are there right now. You should pair up with the community. Meaning – they can start adding items in their own collections. And in turn, become a decentralized online museum where people can see things they would never see and not only limited by your present visits and scans. While people made fun of NFTs, they have created “online digital museums” for digital art.
Not to detract from your message—-looking at pictures on a screen is nothing like seeing objects in person. Of course most people don’t or can’t go to museums. I’m happy I’ve lived in a time when I could. Thanks for the links. The appearance shows that colors and details are not totally realistic, as yet.
Visiting a museum is a fun experience. Yes I can view great paintings in high detail online, and read a lot about them, but do I? No, but I’ll go to museums all the time. I like the idea of organizing your research and publications in an explorable setting, and agree it can allow for more perspectives, more works exhibited, etc., but seeing the real thing is irreplaceable.
For me, this raises the question “What is reality”? Different for every being on the planet at any given moment in time and place. As a senior, I see a world with less and less human interactions. I do not like where this concept is taking “us”. We seem hell bent on dehumanizing the human experience. I’ll pass.
I love the Idea. I love browsing online collections of museums and on wikimedia. It does not make that much of a difference to me if I can not see it in real life. That being said I took a look and the tech this saganworks company is using does not impress. Especially today when engines like Unreal 5 with their lighting tech can make static scenes look almost photorealistic on fairly low end hardware. Unfortunately I would still just prefer good photos to this version of a virtual museum.
I’m curious as to whether you have to get permission from the museums where you took the scans to be able to use them in a monetizing platform. I doubt in-person museums will lose a lot of visitors because of Toldinstone’s website, but if you get enough people deciding to go into ventures like this, then fewer people will make the trip, I would think, and the museums that depend on visitor fees so that they can purchase more items and make quality educational experiences will lose money. I’m not just thinking of places like the British Museum, but the smaller museums who work hard to maintain their collections and need the money they get from visitors to be able to continue that. So to me, unless Toldinstone has express permission from the museums where he got the scans, or the museums were free in the first place, it just feels unethical to me.
I think the level of digital immersion this aspires to is interesting, certainly a miracle technologically, but unsuited to being strung out and developed into replacements for physical things. This is an overdevelopment of the underlying technological advancements. A branch the tree cant support. So I will personally not be cooperating in the attempt to digitize our lives in all ways, and i think those who do sell us, as a species, down a road of a road of subjugation so deep the panopticon will seem as quaint as cave paintings
Many museums have now been called Interpretive Centers, consisting of nothing more than large mostly empty rooms consisting of panels with photos and information and very few artifacts. I would much rather see a collection of genuine artifacts displayed for viewing rather than have them sitting in a storage building unseen.
i was blessed enough to be able to see the colosseum and vatican/sistine chapel in rome and many ancient busts and statues of roman emperors along with david at uffizi and academia galleries in florence just last month. as well as the ruins of pompeii. i doubt any recreation will ever be as great as being there with my ears, nose, and own two eyes.
I went to Gilcrease Museum in the Osage Hills in the Osage Nation in Osage County in Oklahoma with my brother and sister and brother-in-law many years back. There was a collection of miniature paintings or maybe better described as paintings in miniature. One painting I remember in particular was smaller than a postcard in width and height. There were several players around a poker table playing poker in a room. You could count the poker chips on the table and read the hands a couple of the players were holding. The details in miniature stopped me in my tracks, speechless. One thing that digitizing those images would do is show the strokes of the three-haired brushes used in painting this most finely detailed masterpiece. I was wishing I had a magnifying glass. I’m also wishing I could remember the painter’s name. It makes me want to hunt for it in the digital realm now, to see if someone has already put it out there for me to find. Great idea !!! I can’t find the image I mentioned on line. And Gilcrease Museum is currently being remodeled and enlarged.
Sounds great, even better if there’d be a voiced guide of the museum artifacts! I’ve been visiting quite many of my homelands (Finland) museums after getting a card which on one yearly payment gets you access on most of countries museums and its been awesome! If any of you have same kind of programs I highly recommend it. And though you can never beat the real thing, its been cool to see online museums pop up just like this, one that blew my my mind was the interactive tour of the Hieronymus Bosch painting of Garden of Eartly Delights. I’m not a on a Patreon but this kind of makes me think of subbing there but it could be nice if there’d be a chance to pay some other way. 👍🏛️💖
Well, we can go further and just do all education online I wonder how that will work… Oh, we have already done it and the result was very disappointing (called even an educational disaster). So no, VR will not revolutionise museums. It is just another gadget, but all in all people prefer authenticity and personal experience over pixels and copies.
I think it’s dangerous. In a world where historical revisionism is at an all time high, with politicization reaching dangerous depths/darkness, a virtual museum will be prone for all kinds of “ideological adjustements”. For example the wrong belief that homosexuality was not frowned upon in the ancient world due to some vases depicting gay couples (which is completely taken out of context and wrong).
Museums are no longer about facts or history, it is about propagating a narrative. It has been ongoing for decades.. and while it has happened in the past, it is far worse today. Me and my wife went for a date at the museum of natural science in Bergen, so much of history was without context or distorted if not even outright lies. And to top it all off there were pride and trans flags in the giftshop/ticket both of the museum. These institutions have been hijacked by ideologues, the digitization of history is the least of the current day issues when it comes to history.
One problem is that tech companies (and at least one three letter agency) get really whiny if you distribute scans of a certain class of artifact, even though the technology to actually do anything more than look and study doesn’t exist and won’t for some time. I’m sure someone like Johnathan Ferguson of the Royal Armouries and/or the fine folks at the Buffalo Bill Center of the West in Cody, Wyoming has more to say on this.
I’m a retired article game developer and, thus, my response is enthusiasm mixed with what took so long? 😂 Actually there is a long list of reasons, along with an equally long list of things that have to happen before you can don your 3D VR headset and have a fully interactive virtual museum with delightful games such as juggling priceless Greek vases or hurling ancient artifact weapons at targets 😊
In Tasmania, formerly Van Diemen’s Land, that island off the south of Australia, in 1876 Truganini, the last indigenous person from the island, died. Her family and entire ethnic group had been murdered by the white settlers. They put her SKELETON ON DISPLAY in the museum. Her skull and bones, hung up on a wire and displayed like some natural history exhibit. They took it down the year before Star Wars came out, in 1976. They haven’t apologised. Who could they apologise to? There’s nobody left, because they were all murdered.
It would be cool if all the museums around the world gave their plundered artifacts back to their rightful owners, lands, or peoples. Then as the idea of the museum becomes more and more digitized, people will still be able to see all of these wonderful things, but have to go to the real place to see it in person. Like it was intended. I find it so appalling to hear many accounts of governments or groups requesting their own treasures back, only to get a firm no. Saying they know how to care for them better.
Just thought I’d point out why I’m not in the least bit interested in this article, despite it being constantly in my feed for nearly two weeks. It’s that damned title–it’s clickbait, and that means I want nothing to do with it. Don’t try to trick viewers, be a little more informative in the title, or, at the very least, put enough info in the top lines of the description to give viewers enough information to decide from. This crap just annoys me, though, obviously, since I’m subbed, I’ve liked past articles–I just can’t stand what feels like a bargain bin grab bag kind of garbage. It’s how people sell things that no one wants, so why should I want it?