St. George and the Dragon: Design and production of a cultural heritage museum installation using media archaeology

Abstract

Media archaeology is a field of media research investigating new media cultures through material manifestations. Although often recognized as an approach to art, its use as an approach to design has not been fully explored. Media archaeology can be valuable because it offers alternative qualities of mediation, as a design palette, to that of prescriptive common media devices. This thesis describes a media archaeological approach towards the design of a cultural heritage media installation, exhibited at Häme Castle between April–December 2017, and produced as a collaboration between the National Museum of Finland (Kansallismuseo) and the Systems of Representation research group in the Department of Media at Aalto University in Finland. The installation displayed a multi-view stereoscopic (3D) digital reconstruction of a medieval sculptural scene of St. George and the Dragon, based on preserved, fragmented medieval sculptures from the museum’s archives. Four stereoscopic video viewers were synchronized to a rotating central physical display, affording visitors an effect of augmented reality, without the need for a mainstream augmented reality implementation. Though the work was time-limited and project-driven, the design approach achieved a well-integrated installation that was sensitive to the aims of an exhibition of sculpture within a cultural heritage museum: artistry, materiality, interpretation. This thesis therefore seeks to argue that media archaeological approaches to design can identify historical ideas that can be remediated into relevancy for new contexts, and, in spite of their historical connotations, foster engaging technological experiences for the contemporary audience, that are sensitive to the aims of an exhibition of cultural heritage.