Podcast: The Worldwide Animal Viewer
Tim Rolfe joins Jonathan Finkelstein of LearningTimes for a discussion of the MUSE award-winning Worldwide Animal Viewers, which won a Gold for best “Interpretive Interactive Installations”, a category that recognizes interactive and educational entries that are made up of multiple kiosks or that compose a full gallery installation. Rolfe is the Head of MV Studios at Museum Victoria.
Project Background:
Wild: amazing animals in a changing world is a new biodiversity exhibition of over 770 mammal and bird mounts from all over the globe that opened in November 2009 at Melbourne Museum in Victoria, Australia. It was designed to reach a broad general audience, so it was essential to develop an interactive interpretive device that could be used by young and old; short and tall; the techno-enthusiast and the techno-challenged. Adapted from a concept by Professor Jeffrey Shaw, Museum Victoria worked with Megafun Pty Ltd to create the PANORAMIC NAVIGATORS (generic name)—in this context dubbed the “Worldwide Animal Viewers”—a sophisticated but simple and fun to use system for accessing additional information on each and every one of the mounted specimens in the exhibition.
Description: the Panoramic Navigators are a pole-mounted, tilting and rotating touchscreen greeting visitors with a seemingly live image of the scene before them. Touching on an animal brings up factual information and conservation status. A high quality photograph or video of the animal in its natural habitat can be viewed and a 360° movie of the object can be rotated by the visitor and even downloaded to a BlueTooth compatible cell phone.
Related resources:
- Virtual Exhibition
- Wild: amazing animals in a changing world
- MUSE Award “Interpretive Interactive Installation” Category (2010)
Video about the Worldwide Animal Viewers:
The video above was produced by and is posted with the permission of the Melbourne Museum in Victoria, Australia.
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