Frederick BAKER
(Cambridge University, Cambridge, UK)
Keywords: Interactive VR Experience Museum Klimt
Abstract:
Klimt’s Magic Garden is a VR experience created vor HTC vive that shows and then transforms the Stocelet frieze by Gustav Klimt into an interactive walk around experience – a magic garden. it is the first use of Interactive VR in a large public museum and has been highly successful with the public, having its display time extended from 2 to 8 months at the MAK – Museum of Applied Arts in Vienna. The world that the public can explore is made up of 100% colors and images taken from Klimt’s work, that tell a story expectation and fulfillment. Traveling from expectation the fulfillment the user can climb hills dive into lakes and cross intricate bridges in a landscape based on the Attersee region of Austria that gave Klimt the idea for many of his works. As an Archaeologist and filmmaker I argue that though only 100 years old the methodology used to create this experience is relevant to the presentation of friezes and cultural heritage that is much older. Secondly the paper will present the results of detailed market research into the use of the installation by the publican the museum. This is important because, it is argued that there is much to learn from this pioneering work into how to make VR work in museums. Finally it will be argued that this work shows that a key factor to the success of VR is the proximity to the analogue originals that inspired it. Klimt’s Magic Garden is shown in the very same gallery as Klimt’s original – analogue aura meets digital aura
Relevance for the conference: A successful case of making Cultural Heritage attractive to a broad public using VR
Relevance for the session: Using the the power of new visual methods to refresh the eyes of the public for old visual artifacts
Innovation: Interaction and story telling in a fully surround environment
References:
• Frederick Baker “Digital Difference….” in CHNT 19, Frederick Baker Art of Projectionism. 2007