Category: Inspiration

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How Museums are using Augmented Reality

Charlotte Coates
Original paper on MuseumNext >

Augmented reality is the process of using technology to superimpose images, text or sounds on top of what a person can already see. It uses a smartphone or tablet to alter the existing picture, via an app. The user stands in front of a scene and holds up their device. It will show them an altered version of reality. There are many ways that museums could be using augmented reality.

A few of the most well-known applications of AR technology are from the gaming world. For example, Pokémon Go, the game where users can ‘catch’ Pokémon hiding in the world around them. Animated creatures are superimposed onto what players can see through their device’s camera. The technology makes them appear as if they are existing in the real world. The app has been downloaded almost 11.5 million times. This shows that AR is accessible, and has the potential to reach a huge audience.

How can museums use augmented reality?

There are many possibilities for the use of AR in museums. The most straightforward way is to use it to add explanations of pieces. This means visitors will get more information when they view exhibitions using AR. Museums could even use it to display digital versions of artists next to their work. These 3D personas are then able to provide a narration. AR gives an opportunity to add a third dimension to displays, bringing objects or scenes to life. There are already many institutions around the world using AR. These projects bring something new to existing collections and attract wider audiences. Here are some interesting ways that museums are using augmented reality.

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Graphic Time

Graphic Time is a series of abstract clocks. These kinetic objects are graphic interpretations of functional time pieces. A diversity of prints, perforations and colours create a combination of movement and ever changing compositions. Paper, laquered stainless steel, clockworks. Graphic Time was initially developed for the solo exhibition ‘Blend’ at The Aram Gallery in London. The project is supported by the Creative Industries Fund NL.

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Deep Space Atomic Clock

NASA’s Deep Space Atomic Clock is a critical step toward enabling spacecraft to safely, independently navigate in deep space rather than rely on the time-consuming process of receiving directions from Earth. Developed at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, the clock is the first timekeeper stable enough to map a spacecraft’s trajectory in deep space and small enough to be housed onboard. The technology demonstration is validating a miniaturized, ultra-precise mercury-ion atomic clock orders of magnitude more stable than what’s used on spacecraft today.  

Concept of the system
Tom Cwik, the head of JPL’s Space Technology Program (left) and Allen Farrington, JPL Deep Space Atomic Clock Project Manager, view the integrated Atomic Clock Payload on General Atomics Electromagnetic Systems US’s Orbital Test Bed Spacecraft. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
One of three free posters celebrating NASA’s Deep Space Atomic Clock. The mission will demonstrate technology that would allow a spacecraft to calculate its own trajectory rather than waiting for that information to come from Earth. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
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Towards a definition of time / Precise time measurement: atomic clocks and their applications

Towards a definition of time
Lecture by Prof. Gaetano Mileti (co-founder of the Time and Frequency Laboratory of the University of Neuchâtel) at the SIHH 2019, Watches & Wonders Geneva (in English)

The philosophers and astronomers who came before us probed the stars and studied their light to understand the universe and observe the passage of time. They learned to measure time in intervals of years, months, days, hours, often as a period or cycle. Nowadays, we are also using light in the same quest for precision and knowledge, but can we proclaim having found universal time?

Precise time measurement: atomic clocks and their applications
Lecture by Prof. Pierre Thomann (co-founder of the Time and Frequency Laboratory of the University of Neuchâtel) at the University of Geneva, in 2011 (in French)

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How an atomic clock works

Bill Hammack shows the world’s smallest atomic clock and then describes how the first one made in the 1950s worked. He describes in detail the use of cesium vapor to create a feedback or control loop to control a quartz oscillator. He highlights the importance of atomic team by describing briefly how a GPS receiver uses four satellites to find its position.

We take lots of things for granted in this world; GPS, the internet and of course particle accelerators. However, none of these things would be possible without atomic clocks.

How Long Is One Second, Really?
Do we really know how long a second is? The science behind how time is actually measured may prove you wrong.

Inside The Most Precise Atomic Clock in the World
From his basement lab in Boulder, Colorado, physicist Jun Ye and his team have built the world’s most precise atomic clock. The clock is so powerful it can measure otherwise imperceptible changes in the physical world. “Have you ever seen the movie called Interstellar? You’ll see some of that in our lab, it’s not science fiction. You can actually see clocks slow down,” explains Ye. In episode seven of The Most Unknown, geobiologist Victoria Orphan travels to JILA—a physics institute jointly operated by the University of Colorado Boulder and NIST—to untangle questions of space and time with Ye and his otherworldly atomic clock.

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Lausanne Zoological Museum

Exhibition “Missing!”

It is estimated that 869 species have become extinct in the last 500 years. Nearly 20,000 are now considered threatened with extinction. Why are so many species disappearing so quickly? Which are the most vulnerable? What mechanisms are causing these disappearances? What are we doing to avoid them?

The museum has a small but beautiful collection of extinct animals that was removed from the exhibition some 20 years ago for conservation reasons. We have decided to exhibit this collection, not only in ideal conditions for these valuable objects, but in a current scientific context, aiming to explain by example certain mechanisms at the origin of the disappearance of species.

This new exhibition space addresses topics such as the conservation efforts undertaken at the local, national or global level, or the 6th extinction.

PDF of the exhibition

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Present your Project | 07–09.05.2020

Teachers: Ferdinand Vogler, Josh Levent

During this course we learned how to present our project in different formats. In 5 and 1 minutes, and in 30 seconds. This is a very interesting way to summarise our ideas and to be able to present them clearly to an audience that knows nothing about them.

Pitch in 5 minutes

Pitch in 1 minute
The permanent exhibition Space and Time: Stories from the Neuchâtel Observatory wants to offer the public a dive into the origins of time measurement in the Neuchâtel area over the last 150 years.
In an Art Nouveau style building, visitors will be able to discover how the industrial era accelerated the making of time, how the observation of the movement of stars and then atoms made it possible to make ever more precise measurements, to arrive at atomic clocks with a margin of error of one second every 30 million years!
To allow the visitor to understand this complex subject, images, videos, objects and texts from other fields such as art, philosophy and science will be on display. For example: the painting of Dali’s soft watches or the first image of a black hole.

Pitch in 30 seconds
What is time? The exhibition Space and Time: Stories from the Neuchâtel Observatory will offer to the public a dive into the origins of time measurement in the Neuchâtel area.

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Youtube Strategy for Museum

Kickstart Your Museum’s YouTube Strategy

YouTube Strategy for Museums is a bite-sized course designed to be completed in an afternoon. You’ll be led through a series of nine exercises to get you thinking about how to use YouTube for your museum.

The course features examples from some of the most successful channels on YouTube, including the work that our course leader Wouter van der Horst from We Share Culture has done for the Rijksmuseum.

The course is £50.