CS Forum: Zsófia Ruttkay

Topic: Digital Museum – the potential of technologies to renew experience and outreach

Place: Odeion TUAS Building

Time: Coffee from 2 PM

Speaker: Zsófia Ruttkay, PhD, Creative Technology Lab, Moholy-Nagy University of Art and Design Budapest

Abstract: 

The traditional museum as the “temple of culture and knowledge”, with its matching protocol for visitors, is becoming outdated at the beginning of the 21^st century. Generations X, Y and Z prefer (moving) images over text, active participation over passive consumption, creating and voicing an opinion of their own over accepting authoritative views. In order to attract further generations of visitors, the museum should adapt itself to their presentation and communication practices. On the other hand, the emergence of digital technologies and services open entirely new ways of explaining and teaching, of whetting the appetite of casual visitors, and of increasing its emanation in space and time. Some of the oldest museums in Western Europe, as well as younger ones in Asia, have taken up the challenge, and have experimented with new genres and forms and created interdisciplinary professional forums with heated discussions. While the provision of certain services such as multimedia guides and virtual online exhibitions has become more or less self-explanatory, there lies a real intellectual challenge in the diversity of the domains, ranging from literature via fine arts to music, and in the multitude of objectives such as the entertainment and the education of diverse groups of visitors. 

At MOME TechLab we have been exploring the field for five years. In cooperation with a dozen museums, we have designed installations and apps for a range of scenarios. In my talk I will give an overview of this emerging field and illustrate it with a number of international examples as well as several projects of our own, addressing the following issues:

1. Intro on MOME TechLab – a platform to work on the intersection of technology, design and art

2. The “big bang” in the museum world – the threats and the potential benefits of technology

3. A discussion of TechLab cultural heritage projects with demos, including: “Loud score” to commemorate Franz Liszt, interactive installations to get poetry under one’s fingertips in a literary museum, and ways to revive the Bible, to “read” a novel in course of a multimedia walk through Budapest, and to explore Jewish heritage in a museum and in a cemetery, in reality as well as in virtual space.

4. Principles of good design: How can technology reinforce or ruin the message? Reason and magic, learning and experience. Trans-media solutions and strategic planning. 

5. Some words about our practice, particularly about the Digital Museum interdisciplinary course.

BIO: 

Zsófia Ruttkay is associate professor at the Moholy-Nagy University of Art and Design in Budapest, where she founded and is heading the Creative Technology Lab at the Média Institute. She is involved in teaching programming and digital technologies for art and design students (occasionally also from abroad), running (student) projects on applying the technology for socially relevant, useful applications (e.g. serious games, e-learning, cultural heritage) as well as doing research with national and international partners. In the Creative Technology Lab she brings together interdisciplinary teams to turn ideas to prototypes, or even to real-life implementations. She is convinced that by combining the creativity, social sensitivity and aesthetic appeal of artists with the technical skills of programmers and engineers highly original and appealing applications may be invented. The novel locative urban games and museum installations – many conceived by students at her courses – have proven this assumption. 

She graduated in Mathematics at the Eötvös Loránd University in Budapest, and defended two PhDs, one on Computer-Aided Design, and one on Computer Facial Animation. She has 30 years academic research records in computer science, particularly, artificial intelligence, computer graphics and multimodal communication with virtual humans, at the Academic Research Institute for Computing and Automation in Budapest, at Center of Mathematics and Computer Science and University Twente in the Netherlands. 

In the past 5 years at MOME she has been exploring the potentials of new technologies for cultural heritage applications. She, with her group consisting of students, alumni and external TechLab Fellows, seeks new genres of storytelling by combining modalities in interactive books and creating novel experiences inside and beyond the walls of museums, also combining the real and the virtual. Besides creating new experiences using tablets, mobiles, image processing and a range of sensors, she pursues research on the benefit of the applications. Their works won several design and ICT awards with their wit and aesthetic qualities. The group has prepared installations for a dozen a museums. The ones bringing poems to life got international recognition in the museum world. 

She has over 130 scientific publications, and contributed to a dozen of installations and applications as concept designer and/or programmer. 

Contact: ruttkay@mome.hu 
More information about the research