Like
most students, I'm sure, I spend a lot of time in procrastination
instead of the research and writing that I'm meant to. I prefer not
to say, "wasting time", since it can be put to unexpected
use, such as the inspiration for this article. As part of this, I
subscribe to the British
Museum on YouTube,
and blundering through computer games based in middle-age and
colonial age settings.
(My
obsession for the past year has been Kingdom
Come: Deliverance,
which aspired to be as realistic in detail as possible. It has
generated its own niche of internet fandom/nerdiness, which is
concerned with questions from "how to construct an ideal suit of
armour?" to "how could you accurately transcribe a
illustrated Bible found in a monastery library?".)
By
interactive museum work, I was inspired by the Queensland State
Archives, which found a creative use for their collection of
architectural drawings: converting them into stages of an arcade
game, based on the classic Pac Man. For the cost of getting there,
you can chase a mate and a few unfriendly sprites around the Thursday
Island watch house!
The
British museum videos are especially engaging in how they use their
exhibits to tell a story. these are variously about the technology in
use, or how useful the exhibit itself would have been originally, the
political and economic context where from which it originally
derived, or even how people used to pass the time in a given time and
place.
This
led me to stumble upon the channel for Tod's
Workshop,
where I finally learned points of trivia like the difference between
a knife/sword, or spear/Lance. Then there's this wonderful piece,
which starts with the question: "could
arrows actually get through metal plate armour?".
(If
the rest of this article doesn't make much sense, I promise it will
after be watching through that video.)
This
video has thousands of fans and has taken the internet by storm, with
good reason. Structurally, it is as well assembled as the best
academic articles where likely to find open (and perhaps, the best
metalwork). It starts with a research question and analyses the
sources available to give insight into the answer. Todd then outlines
the design of a test for existing assumptions and knowledge, then
finds people with skills and materials appropriate to putting a field
test or experiment together. They execute the plan, discuss the
results, and then tweak their experiment further before arriving at a
solid and convincing conclusion. this would make it a great piece for
teachers to show their students (especially the little boys).
More
fascinating I think we can agree was how they managed to design and
faithfully recreate solid steel armour appropriate to the time
period, including with the tools and techniques of that time,
especially considering most mediaeval tradespeople were illiterate!
This
got me thinking about what a new field for the GLAMR industries might
be, for which my working label is “reverse curation”, or
“interactive archaeology” (© Douglas 2019). Not everyone could
or would go to a physical museum and view original or recreated
exhibits, regardless of the subject. Video series by archaeologists,
curators, archivists etc. on their exhibits could be great for
communicating their value to a bigger audience, particularly in
combination with skilled enthusiasts to answer questions about things
we know must have happened, but we're unsure how or why. Perhaps
include a professional conservator or re-constructionist/restorer or
dramaturg to make the direct link that this is a real and serious
thing people are paid to do.
Another
example is just as impressive, but more terrifying and more topical.
Since the mid-1980s, a group of sailors calling themselves the First
Mariners has
been recreating epic sea voyages in what I can only really think of
as reverse curation, but also describes itself as “archaeological
re-enactment”. They started with a migration from Indonesia to
Madagascar, which is theorized to have been achieved dozens of
thousands of years ago. That's easy enough, until you question how
people from that place and time would have crossed the whole Indian
Ocean or especially why. Similarly, a Viking dragon boat was built to
specification, to test a voyage from Denmark to Ireland by way of
Scotland. In early 2020 (summertime for us), this epic voyages team
will build an ocean going raft to sail between
Timor and northern Australia,
again to see whether and how it can be done. They're combining stone
axes and reed-grass rope with G. P. S. Personally, I'm excited for
this! I’m even tempted to go and be part of it!
In
the near future, I foresee a collection of historical resources
hosted on dedicated cloud servers, which people can interact with
virtually, to a degree that no decent archivists/curator would allow
physically. Returning to the example of Tod's Workshop, I was
fascinated by the discussion of how the breastplate is a different
thickness in different places. Imagine a digital tool which allowed
you to take a virtual replica and analyse it in as much detail as you
wanted; far more than you'd read on the attending label in a physical
museum. You could track the thickness of the metal, its chemical
composition, variations in design over time, place of manufacture,
owner, and so on. This could be especially useful for exhibits which
an audience couldn't physically interact in the first place: massive
historical buildings for analysing their architecture and
construction; any famous art museum; any maritime museum; a war
memorial which allowed visualisation and interaction with the
battlefields, down to the weather conditions. From there, it would be
easy to make themed virtual exhibitions. An alternative or even
transition state could have exhibit labels with Q. R. Codes, readable
by the audience members' tablet or smartphone. This would allow them
to take time to absorb the details of the resources, including with
their own accessibility settings, and in their preferred language.
Interface functionality could even allow exploring the pieces without
the metric system (for those who insist on using 1:16th
inches).
