Digital Solutions for Museums

Our focus:
Our goal is to help chance the mindset of this generation’s museum visitors. Contact us

 

We want to introduce our new focus area: digital communication-solutions in museums. In the last couple of yeas we’ve been developing several projects within this area for museums and other cultural institutions, that want to strengthen the museum experience. Our solutions increase the visitors participation and engagement, where computer games and digital media serve as tools in the communication process.

The total experience
Serious Games Interactive prioritizes the authentic museum experience and believes that the museum objects should not loose their “soul” in the communication process. Our goal is to optimize and expand the museum experience with digital storytelling. We help museums create a contextual understanding of the objects with digital media. The physical encounter - to stand in front of a object in a museum - is traditionally seen as the authentic museum experience. Serious Games Interactive wants to build on this assumption, but the same time challenge it. Well, basicially instead of someone visiting a museum, watching an item and then leaving we can expand that process. By expanding the time and space of the primary item. Lets for example take a stone axe. For decades it has been sitting behind the glass and very implicitely suggesting its importance to visitors (with help from text and pictures usually – sometimes even animations). Increasingly, museums are creating a context around these items so we can see them in context.  Although such a stone axe is interesting it is to a large extent points beyond it self. It it important because it speaks about time, places and people long gone. Furthermore, the museum visit can include an “before - during - after” experience. It can for example start on the web, and continue within the museum walls and end on the web, where the visitor can seek additional information. At the same time, we can create unique entrances to the museum´s objects, history, story, etc. online and make the museum website a destination in its own right.

Make the cultural inheritance relevant
The question is: Is what your museum/institution relevant to the visitors? Digital communication solutions can create new experiences of our cultural inheritance. Experiences that will appeal to a whole new segment of visitors. Serious Games Interactive´s solutions can make the museum experience more accessible, relevant and inspiring for visitors by creating a synergy between the physical and the digital museum.

This still a relatively new area which demands knowledge and a degree of curiosity. Even though several museums have worked with incorporating digital media, it´s still a area that´s under development when it comes to technology and new trends in user-created digital culture. This creates both opportunities and barriers, but mostly it expands the museums ability to communicate to the visitors and create positive experiences, that will ultimately result in more first-time/repeated visitors.

Contact us to hear more or get a non-committal offer on a project.

Case 1: World Pictures

The Danish National Museum wished to present the story about the birth of modern heliocentrism, the belief that the sun is the center of our universe, in a new and different way. They imagined a solution that would integrate gaming and learning experiences, so they chose Serious Games Interactive to develop an online game.

The aim of the game is to open young people’s eyes to the wonders of astronomy, physics and world-breaking discoveries. In the game, the player will assist some of the greatest scientists in history, like Tycho Brahe and Galileo Galilei, as they struggle to find proof of their beliefs. The player will learn about their ideas, visions and the scientific revolution of the renaissance. Throughout the game the player will be tasked with doing observations on the virtual night sky and with finding the historical quotes that can backup these observations. In three episodes, with the famous astronomers as tutors and guides, the player travels through some 40 years of astronomical upheaval, as both a witness and an active partaker.

• Target group: Students 15 -18 year
• Platform: Single player, web-based
• Technology: Flash/Unity

Case 2: Experimentarium

Experimentarium chose SGI to develop the ambitious “Time Machine: Darwin” for Darwin’s anniversary year.

The darwin game is a 3D web-based learning game that introduces Darwin, his life and theory to young students. The goal is to offer students an introduction to Darwin that will make them want to know more while also picking up the basics.

• Target group: Students from 10-14 years
• Platform: Single-player, web-based
• Technology: Unity 3D engine
• Playtime: 60-90 minutes

Play the game at Experimentarium's site.

Case 3: Amnesty International World Map

Amnesty International Denmark wanted to expand their activities to include education about human rights. The organization works towards getting human rights as part of the school curriculum and believed that one way to get closer to the goal was to use innovative tools and materials to educate teachers and students about human rights. Serious Games Interactive developed an interactive and web-enabled world map for Amnesty. The world map is available on a large touch screen and is used in Amnesty International's offices in Copenhagen to educate about human rights. The map presents the countries of the world. When clicking on a country the details are "pulled out" and information about the country's demographics along with human rights issues in that specific country is presented. The interactive map ties together a lot of information and this is presented in a new and innovative way.

Case 4: In the name of Love

Serious Games Interactive developed, in cooperation with the Aarhus-based theatre group "Opgang 2", a web-based learning space for the reinstallation of the show "in the Name of Love". The show consists of 10 scenes that describe different aspects of love.

Through the theatre group's website, pupils from different schools can enter a virtual house where each room belongs to one or more of the characters from the show. Through various tasks and challenges students play with different themes and try to understand the character's motives and background. To conclude the project, each group presents their thoughts, ideas and solutions for the rest of the class, either by showing the room they have been working with by performing a small part from the play or deliver a presentation about the scene and its characters.

As something new, the audience get the opportunity, before the show, to choose some of the scenes that they would like to see performed. In this way students can help to compose the play and how it will play out.

If you are interested in our assistance or consulting on how to implement interactive gaming-experiences and application in museums please contact us at info@seriousgames.dk