Digital immersion in museums: the beginning of a new era?
Digital immersive technologies are relatively new in science centres and museums. Their use for educational purposes raises tremendous potential as well as numerous challenges. More and more structures take the leap and invest in temporary experiences or even permanent spaces, dreaming of a new era where contents could be sustainably and cheaply exchanged in one click, where, in the context of pandemies, visitors would not have to touch to experiment, where businesses would crave to invest, where our practises could boundlessly be reinvented…
What if digital immersive spaces were the future for science communication? In this session, we will consider digital and immersive installations fostering a collective and interactive experience. We will address the ambitions and challenges encountered in developing and running these spaces. This panel will be followed by an online workshop to deepen the challenges raised and think forward to building a community of interest.
Session speakers
Her creative studio has been reinventing learning for 20 years, combining games and technologies to propel content. With her team, she has explored immersive technologies in different projects in Canada and France, some of which were developed in a design thinking approach in the middle of the pandemic. She will discuss the interest of each technology and their impacts, before focussing on the learnings from prototyping with audiences.
Stephane Berghmans is leading Technopolis for five years now and is currently rolling out a renovation of all exhibits. Stephane has been active in innovation for many years and aims to apply this knowledge in the science centre world. Technopolis recently opened an interactive immersive zone in co-creation with partners. Technopolis believes these innovative experiences make science and technology more accessible to the general population and are a future business model for science centres.
Dave Patten has 35 years experience of developing and commissioning digital experiences for the sector. Recent work includes VR and audio soundscapes. For the last couple of years, he has been exploring immersive experiences in many forms including audio, mixed reality and large scale projection experiences. He is excited by the role that interactive immersive projection can have in engaging audiences with science and the opportunity they provide for the sector to think about new exhibition models.
La Casemate is building a science centre that will complement its existing activities. In this brand new venue will be installed a permanent digital immersive space consisting of a 2 sides screen with great dimensions and high quality projection. This space rises tremendous opportunities for the development of innovative projects in many fields. Being new to La Casemate, this digital immersive space also brings many challenges that will set the scene to the session and introduce the talks of already experienced speakers.
