Face it! Face recognition in a new hightech Media Museum

Presenter(s)

• Karen Drost - Manager Museum @ Netherlands Institute for Sound & Vision
• Maarten Brinkerink - Project manager @ Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision

Sound & Vision (Hilversum, The Netherlands) manages one of the largest digitized media archives in the world. Since the opening of our museum in 2006, the media world has changed at incredible speed. Media are omnipresent and everyone lives in their own media space. We welcome these developments: we’re creating a completely new, state of the art Media Museum  (opening February 11th 2023).

In the new Media Museum, visitors can experience how media have now become part of your everyday life, and how this came about. This huge influence of media on our daily lives is presented in five zones that focus on five universal human needs: Share, Inform, Sell, Tell and Play. The museum visit is a very personal one, reflecting the individual way we all interact with media nowadays. The lively, entertaining presentations in the museum give visitors insight into the workings of media and help us create a more media-literate society.

An important part of the (personalized) visitor experience is the use of face recognition. With the face recognition tool, the museum will be able to recognize the visitor and personalize the audiovisual content of the exhibit. What was the reason the Media Museum chose this specific tool? What technical challenges did the museum encounter, and what was the level of user acceptance during prototyping? Maarten Brinkerink will talk about the development and testing of this technique and the hiccups he encountered.

Utilizing XR Technology To Enhance Engagement With Artifacts In Museums

Abstract:

XR (Extended Reality) Technology has increasingly provided new possibilities for engaging with digital materials, specifically by how we interact or engage with educational content. The Toronto Metropolitan University (TMU) Library is one of many educational institutions to provide XR technology as tools for faculty and students, which has also helped foster a strong partnership between the TMU Library and the Aga Khan Museum (AKM) in Toronto, ON Canada. This lightning talk will focus on how the partnership between the TMU Library and the AKM has allowed the introduction of XR technology within the AKM ecosystem, and has led to the integration of XR technology within various exhibits at the museum, including the “Remastered” Exhibit in 2020, the “Afghanistan My Love” Exhibit in 2022, and an upcoming exhibit in 2023. 

Specific examples will be provided that detail how the TMU Library have utilized Holographic Displays, Photogrammetry, Augmented Reality, Digital Restoration, and Digital Fabrication throughout three unique exhibits over the course of three years. This also includes how these technologies have been used to contribute to the pedagogy of Persian, Turkish, and Mughal Indian manuscript paintings, amongst other artifacts within the museum. In addition, this presentation will showcase how 360 VR projection spaces can be used in combination with museum exhibits to create collaborative VR experiences for greater accessibility within diverse audiences. Furthermore, this talk will briefly discuss how COVID-19 impacted operations at the Aga Khan Museum, and further emphasize the need to utilize XR technology for engaging with educational content that does not require physical interaction. 

Author’s Name and Bio:

Michael Carter-Arlt

Immersive Technology Specialist, TMU Library

Toronto Metropolitan University (Formerly Ryerson University)

Michael Carter-Arlt is the Immersive Technology Specialist at the Toronto Metropolitan U

“Sonic Topologies: Hong Kong” - an interpretation of art beyond visual

Within the galleries we have a number of Breakout spaces to encourage visitor engagement. They were set up to create moments of pause in the visitors’ journey and prompt them to relate what they see to their present life. In response to the key messages of the exhibition, the Breakout Space is designed with different activities and display. One of the Breakout Spaces in the South Galleries of M+ houses a sonic multi-sensory installation, where the exhibition “Individual, Networks, Expressions” is presented.

The project titled ‘Sonic Topologies: Hong Kong’, is an aural cartographic interpretation of Yamazaki Tsuruko’s 1967 painting, Work, displaying at the South Galleries exhibition. In the bamboo-lined room, a table is placed at the center where a 3D printed topographic relief of the work is vividly displayed. Visitors are welcome to touch and move on the relief – in this way they can use the painting as a ‘sound map,’ creating a multisensory experience through sight, hearing and touch. A collection of environmental field recordings from Hong Kong are mapped to the colour, shapes and textures of Yamazaki’s abstract artwork. The soundscapes create a psychographic exploration of places of geographical and historical significance and sites of economic and social activity as visitors listen and \’drift\’ through the city with their hands. With more participants, the sounds become spatialised around the exhibition space. Visitors may ‘play’ the work collaboratively, where Yamazaki’s painting displayed flat on a table as a tactile map allows participants to embark on an immersive journey around Hong Kong.

Learning and Interpretation team of M+ engaged MetaObjects and sound artist Ryo Ikeshiro to create the sound map for the installation.

Our reflection and outcomes:

COMMITMENT IN ACCESSIBILITY AND INCLUSIVITY
The project begins from the visual but also goes beyond visual. Not only does it encourage an alternative way of seeing, the idea is also integral to