3D Media Heritage: From Physical Object to Immersive Experience (Workshop)

Description

How can we document analogue media technologies, such as historical film devices, and the tacit knowledge embedded in their use? What role can digital technologies – such as 3D and 360-degree photography – play in preserving media heritage? This workshop explores a digital experimental media archaeology. The first part consists of a lecture that focuses on the value of digitization and documentation for doing hands-on media history in the digital age. It will highlight research on the Kinora motion photography viewer (ca. 1907) and Pathé Baby 9.5mm film projector (ca. 1924) as early twentieth-century home cinema devices, and will discuss attempts to "re-animate" these media historical artefacts, their functionalities, and user practices through digital storytelling methods in virtual yet multisensorial ways. Among others, the lecture will demonstrate the application Virtual Viewing Experiences, an interactive and immersive user experience of early twentieth-century home cinema. Using computer-based 3D visualization, the application depicts the materiality and functionality of the two historical home cinema devices, allowing users to “view” a reel on the Kinora viewer and to “project” a 9.5mm film using the Pathé Baby projector. In the second part of the workshop, participants will 3D-digitize their own media historical objects using the method of photogrammetry. Through the participatory and interactive process of 3D modelling, participants will reflect on the transformation from physical object to digital artefacts, addressing the question of how 3D technologies can contribute not only to preserving media artefacts in digital form, but also to "re-animating" them through multimodal and digital storytelling.

Period	26 Jun 2025
Event title	RMeS Summer School 2025: Media Transformations
Event type	Other
Location	Amsterdam, NetherlandsShow on map
Degree of Recognition	National