Today we’ll look at some current, emerging, and experimental approaches to museums and digital public history. We’ll also take stock of what we have explored this semester and consider what directions public history might take in the future. Developers and designers need humanists to understand the current capabilities of emerging technologies, their future potential, and how we can harness them to tell stories,  share history, and build communities.

Begin by having a look through some of the exhibits on The Virtual Museum of Canada.

You have already had a small taste of augmented reality, now have a look through what others are doing with the medium and what imagine what you could do with this in the future.

Read Chapter 1 of Alan Craig, Understanding Augmented Reality: Concepts and Applications (2013) (Requires UWO proxy) and explore the rest.

Helen Papagiannis: Augmented Stories

An example of AR in Museums  and 5 more from the Smithsonian Magazine.

Augmented sights and sounds has been the focus of most AR designers, but what about Haptic Augmented Reality? A team of researchers tried this out at the National Museum of Scotland. Read about their results: Mariza Dima, Linda Hurcombe, and Mark Wright, “Touching the Past: Haptic Augmented Reality for Museum Artifacts” (2014) (Access through OWL).

3D Modelling and Virtual Worlds

A group of scholars from the University of Calgary is exploring ways to connect people with the past using 3D models and “virtual world exhibit” you can find in the VMC above. Peter Dawson, Richard Levy, and Natasha Lyons, “‘Breaking the Fourth Wall’: 3D Virtual Worlds as Tools for Knowledge Repatriation in Archaeology” Journal of Social Archaeology, Vol. 11, No. 3, (2011): 387-402. (Access through OWL).

Virtual Reality is finally becoming more user-friendly, and is finding a home in museums, according to The Verge. Have a look at the MET’s new VR Exhibit Small Wonders: The Virtual Experience, which was created for the AGO with 3D scans completed here in London at Sustainable Archaeology.

We’ll also play with some examples from Google Cardboard.

Finally, if you want to explore how to make your own VR, you can begin here.