Case study

271

Cooperation of a museum institution and students in creating virtual exhibitions

using the MOVIO tool

Goran Zlodi, Josip Mihaljević, Anica Šimunec, Paula Mikeli, Ivana Rudić Department of Information and Communication Sciences,

Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Zagreb Ivana Lučića 3, Zagreb, Croatia

gzlodi@ffzg.hr, jmihalje2@ffzg.hr, anica.simunec@gmail.com, pmikeli@ffzg.hr, irudic@ffzg.hr

Summary

MOVIO is one of the creative tools from AthenaPlus network. Its purpose is to facilitate the creation of virtual exhibitions. MOVIO is very similar to other content management systems (CMS) but it focuses more on creating interactive multimedia page contents, such as digital photo galleries and exhibitions, games, interactive timelines, and digital storytellers. MOVIO tool provides and also shows how its different options can be easily and efficiently used by users who do not have any specific IT knowledge such as advanced programming or web design techniques, to create and show different types of virtual exhibitions. Virtual exhibition “For Better or Worse… / Wedding Fashion from 1865 till Present” is a virtual extension of a physical exhibition held in the Museum of Arts and Crafts in Zagreb. Virtual exhibition catalogue was developed using the Timeline tool as a page type which proved to be very effective in presenting the exhibition conceptualized chronologically. The Timeline allows easy browsing through virtual objects within the timeframe we have previously determined. The other virtual exhibition, “Herman Bollé – Builder of the Croatian Capital” is also a virtual extension of the real exhibition held in the Museum of Arts and Crafts. Using the MOVIO tool and information from the catalogue of the real exhibition, the virtual exhibition was made making the most MOVIO options. The FFZG team used the following page types Home Page, Page, Google Map, Storyteller and Timeline. Furthermore, Bolle’s virtual exhibition has a unique content as compared to other exhibitions. It is an interactive game (among few simple puzzle and memory games) made in the Unity game engine which allows players to try to place many of Bollé’s architecture designs and buildings on the appropriate location on the map. Tools like MOVIO show that technology has evolved and has become simplified for end users so that they can easily create virtual exhibitions production of which was complex or costly several years ago.

Keywords: virtual exhibition, multimedia content, interactive game, interactive timelines

doi: 10.17234/INFUTURE.2015.30

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Introduction The aim of the European founded project AthenaPlus is providing new tools to support cultural institutions to narrate their resources. These new tools where created by the Italian enterprise GruppoMeta on MOVIO platform which serves as innovative application for creating digital exhibitions and thematic routes. MOVIO offers different page templates that use different tools for showcasing digital content that can combine multiple media such as text, photo galleries, animations, timelines, games, Google map, and probably more content in the future. Layout of each of these pages is responsive, so it fits screens of all sizes and there is also multilingual support for creating content in many different lan-guages (Minelli et al. 2015). This paper is a result of collaboration that was es-tablished between the Museum of Arts and Crafts in Zagreb and the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences in Zagreb. Museum of Arts and Crafts partici-pates in the project AthenaPlus, whose goal is to upgrade the terminology and enhance the Europeana search engine. At the same time there is great emphasis on re-use of content and the development of tools and applications that support new possibilities of presenting cultural heritage. As part of the project, MOVIO tool for creating online digital exhibitions is in the developing process and sev-eral partners are testing the tool. Museum of Arts and Crafts created its own digital exhibition entitled “A Century of the Wristwatch” (http://54.247.69.120/ build/movio/movioTraining12) and furthermore, museum’s staff (Petra Milovac and Iva Meštrović, curators) held a training on how to use the tool at the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences (course Virtual Museum, Goran Zlodi PhD, assistant professor). After the training, students tested the tool as well, creating two digital exhibitions: “For Better or Worse… / Wedding Clothes from 1865 to Nowadays” (http://54.247.69.120/build/movio/movioTraining39/) and “Her-man Bollé – The Builder of the Croatian Capital” (http://54.247.69.120/ build/movio/movioTraining40/en/). In this paper authors will present their expe-riences of creating online virtual exhibitions with the MOVIO tool. MOVIO – online virtual exhibitions MOVIO is one of the creative tools from AthenaPlus network. Its purpose is to facilitate the creation of virtual exhibitions (athenaplus.eu). MOVIO is very similar to other content management systems (CMS) for creating websites such as WordPress and Joomla!, but it focuses more on creating interactive multime-dia page contents, such as digital photo galleries and exhibitions, games, inter-active timelines, and digital storytellers. Most of MOVIO’s functions are in-tended for presenting the content of museums and galleries in a variety of ways. For example, Partenon frieze is a part of a plaster cast of ancient sculptures at the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences of the University of Zagreb. It can be shown as a simple photo gallery with a slider for images, as a storyteller or a timeline, where each part of the frieze is chronologically explained with images and texts (wiki.athenaplus.eu).

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There are 28 building that where cropped from the map using a free and open-source raster graphics editor GIMP. Each of the cropped buildings was saved as a small JPEG image that was later imported as an asset into the Unity game en-gine along with the map with empty round-shaped spaces in which the buildings were to be inserted. Each asset in Unity has its own code which defines the ac-tions that the user will have if he moves one of the objects with a mouse or drags it on a touch screen. If the player guesses the approximate position of the location of the building, it sticks to that location. This game is interesting be-cause it is educational and meant for players who do not know much about cer-tain building locations. Most of the adults in Zagreb recognize the buildings but are not sure where they are positioned. It is also more complex than common drag and drop games because there are 28 locations for which the user should know the exact location. While similar children games are composed of less objects, this game requires more time and certain geographic memory, therefore it is more appropriate for adults. Regardless of this fact, children can also easily play it and learn about some culturally relevant locations on the map such as St. Mark’s Church and the Zagreb Cathedral. If the player is not sure where a cer-tain location is, he or she can simply click the Solution button which places all buildings in the correct place. The game is functional but it could be updated in the future by designing better user interface and adding solutions for one loca-tion at a time. There is also a problem that Unity has with browsers, since it re-quires the installation of the Unity web player plug-in to work with a certain browser. MOVIO tool does not support the more widely used Flash plug-in and it does not have options to support HTML5 games which would work equally well on all browsers and platforms without the need for additional plug-in in-stallation. However, with future updates such options will probably become possible. This interactive game can be used as an example of how easy it is to create interesting and simple multimedia content by using only programming tools that are free. Conclusion Tools like MOVIO show that technology has evolved and has been simplified for end users so that they can easily create virtual exhibitions that were just few years ago too complicated even for expert programmers. With MOVIO tool ar-chives, museums and libraries can create rich and interactive multimedia con-tent for presentation of their assets. This article also shows that usage of con-temporary information and communication technology tools like MOVIO gives new opportunities of cooperation between cultural heritage institutions and uni-versity students what could result in benefits for both parts and, what is most important, benefits for end users.

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