At the forefront of cultural heritage visualisation, the Atlas of Maritime Buddhism project develops ground-breaking Australian research to resolve the fundamental challenges of narrative coherence for museum audiences as they explore a digital archive of ’Maritime Buddhism’. This research transforms public access to digital archives by creating the world’s first narrative-driven multiuser ‘deep mapping data browser’ for interactive virtual environments using the AVIE Immersive platform. In this unprecedented study, user evaluation has taken place across three museum sites — in Australia, Hong Kong and mainland China. Through frontier technologies, the project drives innovation in museum interpretation for future digital experiences.
Sarah Kenderdine and Jeffrey Shaw, Pacifying the South China Sea Scroll Navigator, Hong Kong Maritime Museum, Hong Kong, China, 2013
This project resolves the fundamental challenges of narrative coherence for museum audiences as they explore digital cultural atlases. Addressing narrative coherence provides a structure for interpretation, as users navigate, explore and creatively reorganise heterogeneous datasets. The project integrates a unique heritage dataset which has accumulated historic evidence for the spread of Buddhism from India to Korea through the seaports of Southeast Asia. Its pan-Asian spatially and temporally enabled sources are significantly diverse in both type and format (e.g. archaeological materials, travellers’ accounts and historic gazetteers to name a few). The aim of the research is to develop a pioneering narrative-driven deep mapping schema, an information visualisation framework for interactively exploring the narrative patterns, processes and phenomena in the Atlas. This schema investigates narrative coherence through the experimental application of the world’s first deep mapping data browser — a navigational interface developed in a 360° 3D (omnidirectional) virtual environment.
Sarah Kenderdine and Jeffrey Shaw, We Are Like Vapours, Hong Kong Maritime Museum, Hong Kong, China, 2013
This project was financially supported under the Australian Research Council’s Linkage funding scheme with Industry Partners Australian National Maritime Museum, Chronus Art Center (Shanghai) and Hong Kong Maritime Museum.
Sarah Kenderdine and Jeffrey Shaw, Pacifying the South China Sea Scroll Navigator, Hong Kong Maritime Museum, Hong Kong, China, 2013
- Overview
- Exhibition
- Credits
ARC Investigators: Dennis Del Favero, Sarah Kenderdine, Michael Thielscher, Lewis Lancaster, Jeffrey Shaw, Jianxiong Ge, Lynda Kelly, Li Zhenhua
Project Directors: Sarah Kenderdine, Jeffrey Shaw
Programmer: Chris Hancock
Project Funding: ARC LP150100318
2015-2017
Industry Partners: Australian National Maritime Museum, Chronus Art Center (Shanghai) & Hong Kong Maritime Museum