The fellowship this year has been very eventful and a lot of fun. So far, I worked with James and Kyeesha to come up with a vision document for incorporating virtual reality (VR) into the Canadian Museum for Human Rights. Though I believe none of us are experts in the field of VR, it was entertaining and helpful to come up with what the deliverables of a project like that might be. We had to research and brainstorm what sort of technology we would use, what the content would be, and who the audience is that we are trying to reach. These are important factors to consider with any digital project.
For the deliverables we wanted to stress the building of 3D exhibits. The novelty of virtual reality can attract people into the door, but we also wanted to stress the ability for VR to immerse people into the subject matter. For instance, reading and taking in the images associated with indigenous boarding schools in the past are important for understanding the history of human rights, but it can also be engaging to explore and look around the recreation of such a place within a virtual reality exhibit.
With this mindset, we decided that this would be an exciting way to draw people into the museum, while also acting as an educational tool that could be explored on the museum website. Our idea was that museum patrons would be able to come into the museum to experience our VR exhibits using headsets in the museum, while also making some or all of the exhibits available online for anyone in the world to experience. I will be working with Kyeesha and James again this week to create a website project pitch for this same idea. Check out our progress at the end of the week on our github site!
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