Port Arthur Prison Journals

Dec 152009
 

Samples of A Separate Prison Journal 1848 – 2008.

Interactive touchscreen exhibit.

The Port Arthur Historic Site today contains many traces of its former uses, including the 19th century prison and the later free township of Carnarvon/Port Arthur. The conservation of this rich and evocative landscape, as well as the associated archival resources, is an ongoing challenge.

To assist in that challenge, the PAHSMA have looked to new technologies to enhance and broaden the visitor experience.

This exhibit was built from 3 Word documents and a selection of images. We built the 3d models of the prison as the main interaction method. Custom programming was completed for the self balancing tags that float around a location.

Convict Depot

Dec 082009
 

Overview

The Department of Treasury and Finance – Building Management and Works – Fremantle Prison is a major heritage tourist attraction averaging 175,000 visitors per annum.  The Prison offers a variety of experiences for visitors including guided tours of the prison site, education programs, public programs, exhibitions and commercial outlets.

Fremantle Prison is a significant heritage site listed on both the State and National registers. Currently Fremantle Prison is part of a joint Australian Convict Sites nomination for World Heritage listing, to be decided in 2010.

Fremantle Prison is currently developing a visitor centre (the Convict Depot) that will engage visitors with the story of the prison’s early convict history. The Customer has a requirement for the supply, delivery (FIS) within the Perth metropolitan area and installation of two multimedia touch screen interfaces for the Convict Depot. In addition the Customer has a requirement for the successful Respondent to provide multimedia programming and digital graphic design services.

Henderson’s Desk

This touch screen will allow visitors to the Convict Depot to interact with digital copies of primary resource material related to the prison’s convict history including:

  • Map and plans;
  • Photographs;
  • Paintings and drawings;
  • Newspaper clippings; and
  • Documents.

The touch screen will also include a series of Fremantle Prison convict-era staff biographies as well as stories relating to convict escapes from the prison.

Convict Database

This touch screen will provide access to a database of information about Western Australian convicts.

While the database content already exists, the database needs to be converted from the online version to the touch screen version. The projects will also require graphic design to complement the surrounding exhibition space.

This touch screen will also provide extended biographical information on specific convicts.

Claremont Boatshed

Jul 022009
 

Overview

An historic Claremont boat building shed is now housed in a purpose built new shed on the edge of Freshwater Bay as part of Claremont Museum. It is in the popular Mrs Herbert’s Park, which receives large numbers of visitors to swim, barbeque, picnic and use the playground facilities. Many visitors to Mrs Herbert’s Park are not aware that the boat shed and Claremont Museum are here.

Project Aims

This project aims to undertake the following:

  1. Provide visibility from outside the boat shed to engage visitors to Mrs Herbert’s Park. This may be achieved through replacing parts of the outer shed with clear walls so the inside of the shed is visible at all times.
  2. Enable visitors to independently enter the boat shed during museum open hours without need for supervision by museum staff. This should also provide wheelchair accessibility.
  3. Provide new, updated interpretation of the boat shed.
  4. Address conservation needs in the boat shed.

Background

The boat shed was built in about 1905 at 8 Victoria Avenue in Claremont. It was used for boat building and repairs.

The boat shed and its contents were moved to Claremont Museum in 1996. They were housed in a new shed in Mrs Herbert’s Park close to the river. This saved the shed from demolition and made the shed and its contents accessible for interpretation at the museum.

The Swan River adjoining the museum is important to Noongar people and is a registered site under the Aboriginal Heritage Act (1972). Until at least the 1940s the grounds adjoining the museum were an occasional camping site for local Nyungar families. The museum itself is on the State Heritage Register but is not a registered Aboriginal site.

Currently the boat shed has interpretation that was installed in 1996. This project will update that interpretation as well as addressing access and conservation needs.

Museum staff currently spend considerable time with visitors in the new boat shed looking at the historic boat shed as the artefacts are vulnerable to theft and if people go through the barriers and walk inside the historic boat shed the floor is dangerously uneven. This project will enable the public to safely visit the boat shed unaccompanied.

Design

We approached the boat building tools and process through building an actual boat in the interactive. Selecting a tool takes you to an indicative phase in the boat building process while it gives you summary information about the tool.

Each tool then has a second and third level of detail, further explaining the uses and giving supporting photographs.

We modeled each tool and the entire boat, giving us the ability to strip it down to 10 stages. Each stage was rendered out into 10 movie clips and then displayed so that visitors can:

  • rotate the boat by dragging their finger across the screen, or
  • select the tool that they are interested in and the boat automatically rotates as necessary

Superb content was written for this project by Mike Lefroy and invaluable boat model consulting by Ross Anderson. Thanks guys!

Step Back in Time

Jul 012009
 

Western Australian Police

Samples of Henry McLaughlin Gallery Installation.

The exhibition Step Back in Time opened at the Royal Show Police Pavillion in September 2009 and tells the story of rural policing throughout Western Australia.

Part of this exhibition is a collection of 35 paintings by Henry McLaughlin. The paintings are presented as a virtual gallery where patrons can zoom in on them by touching the screen and using the magnifying glass.

Henry McLaughlin was born in 1937 in County Antrim, Northern Ireland. Together with his family he migrated to Western Australia in 1969.

Henry’s career started as a Constable serving in the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) in 1959. During his time in Londonderry, Henry met well known artist Arthur Twells, who proved to be one of the early inspirations for Henry’s artistic pursuits.

In Australia Henry joined the West Australian Police Force in 1970. Henry’s talents as a landscape artist were soon recognised by Mr. Athol Webb, Commissioner for the West Australian Police Force and thus Henry was given his first commission to paint a collection of works detailing Western Australia’s Historic Police Buildings which now hang in Police Headquarters and form part of Western Australia’s history.

Henry retired from the Police Force in 1982 to pursue his passion for creating fine works of art full time. His inspiration comes from such masters as Arthur Streeton, Hans Heysen, Leonard Long.

Henry’s works are collected throughout Australia and overseas.

Subiaco Argonauts

Jun 302009
 

Overview

City of Subiaco
Subiaco Argonauts:
Digitising the exhibition and making it accessible on the City of Subiaco website

A project for the City of Subiaco web site that will focus on a collection of handmade books and the two Subiaco boys, Jim Phillips and Alec Choate, who produced the books in the 1920s and 1930s.

The project will provide broad and engaging access to the above collection and communicate its significance without compromising its conservation. It will attract, inform and engage viewers of diverse ages and interests.

Our proposal includes the innovative use of:

  • digital interactive ‘turn-the-pages‘ books,
  • HTML pages (for Google and Yahoo indexing) containing the text for the virtual exhibition one per book, making them suitable for inclusion on Pandora, the National Library of Australia’s digital archive,
  • audio and transcribed oral histories (2004 oral history interview with Alec Choate),
  • presentation of family and childhood photos,
  • pencil portrait of Alec Choate by Jim Phillips

The project progressed and:

  • the City of Subiaco have a photographer available to produce the images and appropriate budget corrections will be taken into account,
  • text for the virtual exhibition will be developed from the present exhibition with further historical research as necessary,
  • GMG worked in partnership with the City of Subiaco’s web professionals in regards to the development of the virtual exhibition

Screen grabs and the live web site are nearing completion. Details soon!

Design

Proposed site structure (to be developed in the discovery phase):

  • Home
    • Book 1
      :
    • Book 17
    • Oral history
    • Photos

Each page includes (as a minimum) curatorial interpretive text, links to the other pages, and the interactive digital books (one viewable at a time).

  • Create interactive digital books of the 17 books
    • Each page to have full zoom functionality to show the fine detail of the book’s illustrations and calligraphy
    • Where transcribed text is available, it will be presented as a pop up window over each page
  • Create a full HTML version of the site
    • Makes the whole site available to screen readers for accessibility
    • Makes it available to Google and Yahoo for indexing and searching
    • Create separate pages per book for indexing in Pandora
    • Each page has its own interpretive text
    • Include full text of the books where this text is available from the Museum
      • Needs to be manually transcribed – can’t auto transcribe hand written books
      • Lets Google fully index the content of all the books
      • Suitable for screen readers (accessibility)
  • Create a presentation of the family and childhood photographs
    • Needs to be sensitive to the curatorial context
  • Add the audio from the oral history to the site
    • Include full transcript (already existing)

So far we have 16.3 gigabytes of material processed into digital books, transcribed, and curated. Should make for an interesting read!

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