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

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

Closed to the public from 2004, the Museum of Archaeology and Ethnography of Elvas 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. In addition, created a new exhibition that combined the collection of the António Tomás Pires Museum with that of the Farmers' Guild of Elvas.

"For this project, we were asked to base the proposal on three fundamental pillars: history, time and people", Says Pedro Pereira of byAR, who oversaw the entire project. "From here we had to develop an exhibition where archaeology and ethnography could go hand in hand., adding a digital, interactive layer to the tour, that will help to understand history and convey an educational and cultural message, to update a museum created in the early nineteenth century”.

The project, fully 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 room of the exhibition, is a space that pays tribute to the collections and people who made the museum possible. At the back of the room is a giant book, from 140×100 cm, that invites visitors to browse and, by doing so, 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.

“Use Anyblend of Vioso for the augmented 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 image projected in the book., to compensate for distortion of the image projected on an open book with 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 following space, dedicated to the Holy Trinity of Mediterranean gastronomy (bread, 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 Day; how the bread triad, wine and olive oil has always been part of our diet; or the schedules and favorite dishes of the 'Ganhões', name given to the peasants of the region”.

The following 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 of the entrance to the main exhibition", Pereira continues. "This application is based on the drawing of the territory of Elvas, on which an interactive videomapping is projected. This was developed to help visitors discover people and institutions that contributed to the archaeology of Elvas and contributed to the discovery of most of the objects exhibited in the rooms.".

A back room, call Contanário, used a projection system of Sony with Vioso Player to help increase stories played in 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 deform the images that were going to be projected on the curved walls of the exhibition, That which, according to Pereira, it was perfect as they needed a video player that could warp the content without compromising image quality..

The final area Sandbox invites visitors to explore its more archaeological side. Instead of sand, byAR filled the box with wheat grits (a cereal that is typically grown in the region), allowing visitors “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 Augmented Book 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 because of the pandemic.

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

Other articles on byAR, Museum of Archaeology and Ethnography of Elvas, Optoma, Sony, Vioso, Vioso Projection Software