Fire in the Centre of Life - a modern Stone Age exhibit

Museum/site Tromsø University Museum, Project website Submitted by Dept. of Archaeology, Tromsø University Museum Developers Tromsø University Museum and Expology

Project status

Completed

Project type

Stationary/Fixed media

Start year

2005

End year

2006

Summary

The exhibition "Fire in the Center of Life" explores new approaches to presenting and interpreting prehistory within the Scandinavian museum context. Technology is integrated at all levels, with both high and low tech interactive displays in Norwegian and English. The exhibition is designed to be used by all age groups with a general comprehension level set at ages 10-16. We have chosen to present three of the touch screen displays from the exhibition: "The Weather and Pollen Forecast" uses the modern metaphors from TV to explain climatic as well as vegetational changes through 11,000 years of occupation in northern Norway. "What will we have for Dinner" makes it possible to learn about past culinary preferences as well as cooking techniques by putting together a 5 course menu. "The Amber Necklace" uses modern technology to get the audience to promote the exhibition by taking pictures of themselves adorned in a self-designed necklace of amber beads from archaeological contexts.

The exhibition uses full screen Flash and Flash video. A web camera is used and the image is captured and sent as an email with Zinc, a flash wrapper for accessing system functions from Flash.

All displays are programmed in Adobe Flash, and uses high quality video content. Data is stored in XML files for easy editing of texts etc.

Tech spec

The exhibition uses touch screens for user interaction. In this way, we don't have to use traditional mouses/trackballs and the design impression is more minimalistic. All exhibits run on a Windows based PC.

Comments

Tromsø Museum's new permanent Stone Age exhibit represent a groundbreaking approach that is unlike anything we have previously produced. It combines low tech hands-on stations where the public can touch and use artefact replicas, theme-based displays of traditional artefacts, and interactive digital media with dialogues and video presentation. This approach has proved to be extremely attractive to a broad public both in terms of age and interest. It has also been highly successful with school classes.