The Elvas museum merges the physical and the digital in an interactive exhibition

History, time and people are the pillars of the recently inaugurated Elvas Museum of Archeology and Ethnography. A building that begins its exhibition route with a large giant book that invites visitors to continue their journey through the interactive exhibition using augmented reality.

Closed to the public since 2004, he Elvas Museum of Archeology and Ethnography It is the largest of its kind in the Portuguese region of Alentejo. For reopening, administrators found a new location, a fully restored military maintenance building. Besides, created a new exhibition that combined the collection of the António Tomás Pires Museum with that of Farmers Guild from Elvas.

“For this project, We were asked to base the proposal on three fundamental pillars: history, time and people, comment Pedro Pereira of villageAR, who supervised the entire project. “From here an exhibition had to be developed where archeology and ethnography could go hand in hand.”, adding a digital and interactive layer to the tour, that would help understand history and transmit an educational and cultural message, that updated a museum created at the beginning of the 19th century”.

The project, entirely conceived by byAR, was based on building an exhibition route where the physical and the digital can interact, without overlapping.

The Augmented Book Experience, the first exhibition room, It is a space that pays tribute to the collections and the people who made the museum possible. In the back of the room there is a giant book, of 140×100 cm, that invites visitors to browse and, when doing it, experience animated content that complements pre-existing information.

Each page has unique content and this information is recognized through video maps and computer vision, allowing visitors to learn more about the people and institutions that made the museum possible.

“We use Anyblend of Vioso for the enlarged book, because it is very interactive, instead of being a simple video playback”, says Pereira. “We developed our own software and used this tool to distort the projected image on the book, to compensate for distortion of the projected image on a book opened at an angle of 15 degrees.

The augmented book experience was a challenging installation due to several reasons. The projector was installed with a first reflection mirror; the book was tilted 15 degrees; the size of the pages also created a curved distortion; and the weight of the pages forced the pages to create a vertical distortion. “With Vioso’s remote support it was possible to overcome all these challenges”.

In the next space, dedicated to the Holy Trinity of Mediterranean gastronomy (pan, wine and olive oil), a pair of large interactive tables were used to represent the center of the family home.

“By touching certain points on the table, Visitors can access animated and illustrative content to get to know the people of Elvas better: how utensils were used to prepare certain dishes, from the stone age to the present; how the bread triad, wine and olive oil have always been part of our diet; or the schedules and favorite dishes of the 'Ganhões', name given to the farmers of the region”.

The next is the Interactive Wall, which was added to represent all those who have contributed in some way to the museum itself.

“We developed an application that is projected on one of the walls at the entrance to the main exhibition”, continues Pereira. “This application is based on the drawing of the Elvas territory, on which an interactive videomapping is projected. “This was developed to help visitors discover people and institutions that contributed to the archeology of Elvas and contributed to the discovery of most of the objects exhibited in the rooms.”.

A back room, call Accountant, used a projection system Sony con Vioso Player to help increase stories played on an audio system, while several tablets were also available to listen to stories and consult information.

The byAR team chose Vioso Player to allow them to warp the images that were going to be projected on the curved walls of the exhibition, which, according to Pereira, was perfect as they needed a video player that could warp content without compromising image quality.

The final area Sandbox invites visitors to explore its most archaeological side. instead of sand, byAR filled the box with wheat semolina (a cereal typically grown in the region), allowing visitors “to dig” the Plaza de Armas of Elvas and discover, through more digital content, each object and the curiosities about them.

Sony projectors were used for the Libro Augmented and Contanário areas, while the Interactive Table and Sandbox areas required projectors Optoma. All software and content was developed by the byAR team.

The new museum was supposed to open to the public in September 2020, although the grand opening was postponed until May 2021 due to the pandemic.

“With Vioso Anyblend it was very easy to achieve our objectives and the results are very good”, concludes Pereira. “Visitors so far have been really surprised to see this level of quality outside of the main Portuguese cities. From our point of view, The software is very easy to use and almost all processes are automatic, so we don't even need support.