Immersive 3D Visualizations of Early-Twentieth-Century Home Cinema

This article draws on recent developments in both the cultural heritage field and the scholarly domain to reflect on the potential of 3D digitization for documenting, contextualizing, and presenting cultural heritage objects and knowledge about them. It addresses the role 3D technologies can play in the virtual reconstruction of cultural heritage objects so that the objects’ material characteristics and usages become part of the virtual and immersive user experiences. It focuses on the development of a 3D real-time application and virtual environment that recreates two earlytwentieth-century home cinema technologies: a Kinora motion picture viewer (ca. 1907) and a Pathé Baby 9.5mm film projector (ca. 1924). The objective of the application, called Virtual Viewing Experiences (VVE), was not only to represent these two media historical objects digitally and convey historical information about them, but also to provide an interactive and immersive “hands-on” yet virtual user experience. Using computer-based 3D visualization, the application depicts the materiality and functionality of the two historical home cinema devices, allowing the user to “view” a Kinora reel on the Kinora viewer and to “project” a 9.5mm film using the Pathé Baby projector. Documenting the application development process – from the digitization of cultural heritage objects to their digital recreation and presentation in a virtual environment with simulated functionality – the article reflects on the process of making the 3D application. It explores how 3D technologies and immersive virtual environments can play an important role not only in preserving media heritage objects in digital form, but also in “re-animating” them through user interaction and digital storytelling to disseminate knowledge about their histories of use.