Multimedia technologies in St. Petersburg museums.

Multimedia projects based on museum materials are associated mostly with CD-ROMs presenting a museum as a whole or certain collections and exhibits. The majority of the disks of a kind are created by computer companies oriented at commercial distribution of multimedia publications. Their virtues and shortcomings have been discussed in detail at many seminars and in various specialised editions. Potentials of Internet technologies are thoroughly analysed in the same editions.

The experience of multimedia application in museum space as such is less studied, though search of new approaches in providing informational services to museum visitors seems no less topical. Progress in this field depends on the ability to solve managerial, technical and creative problems unconventional for museum practice. St.Petersburg as a first-rate cultural centre has gained noticeable experience in the field to share. It is not only the large and world-wide known museums of the city but smaller ones also that to a certain extent use new resources in their daily practice initiating various multimedia projects.

Since 1996 the computer studio “Mart” has been co-operating with different cultural institutions of St.Petersburg and Leningrad region, executing the projects for the Hermitage, Russian Museum, Museum of the History of St.Petersburg and for smaller museums. The studio has acquired evident experience in performing such diversified cultural and educational projects as presentations, information kiosks, computer movies, tours, games. All the projects have been implemented in close co-operation with museum specialists: historians, art researchers, artists, restorers. Some of the works have been replicated afterwards, others have not left the museum walls. We will try to show the tendencies of museum multimedia projects development basing on the products created by the studio “Mart” in co-operation with Petersburg museums.

The first significant computer-supported exhibit project refers to March 1997 when a one-painting show – of “Annunciation” by Jan van Eyck- was opened in the State Hermitage. The display has signified a new level of relations between the museum and its foreign partners: the Hermitage painting sold in the 1930-ies by the Soviet government and now belonging to the National Gallery in Washington was exhibited in Russia again. The Hermitage administration made a decision to accomplish informational support of the exhibit according to the latest standards. Computer presentation was supposed to present the gospel plot, symbolics used by the author and compositional structure of the painting. It was as equally important to introduce the artist and his contemporaries as well as centuries-old history of the masterpiece to spectators. The presentation information was prepared by the Hermitage experts and computer implementation of the idea was delegated to the studio ”Mart” members.

The projection screen to show the computer movie (25 minutes long) was installed straight in the hall, in the vicinity of the painting. Artistic embodiment of the movie by means of computer graphics and animation effects was supposed to not only provide museum visitors with an ordered set of data but to tune them in to a certain emotional perception of the painting. Two information kiosks standing nearby allowed a person to choose the order and mode of screening at one’s own discretion.

It was very important to secure comfortable conditions for the exhibit visitors while viewing the presentation. In respect of this requirement the managers did not expect troubles with the computer movie genre which is similar to a documentary format. Visitors seemed to be less familiar with information kiosks. To simplify the interaction with the computer, the kiosks were equipped with touch-screens which secured dealing without a keyboard and a mouse. All elements of the user's interface of the program were accordingly designed as “finger-managed”. Two-month exhibiting experience testified that visitors did not have problems while viewing the presentation, regardless their age or computer proficiency.

Despite the exhibiting concept being non-traditional for a Russian spectator, practically no negative opinions were expressed. Not to disturb the museum silence no computer sounds were used (all textual information was communicated by subtitles). It is also worth mentioning that a crucial for publishing technologies problem of equivalent colour rendering did not arise. In this case the adequacy of the colour spectrum was not important for either art researchers or visitors: the screen image is solely used to describe the painting and its history, no one will judge about the painting using a replica when an original is here, in the same room. It is possible to state that multimedia technologies did not ruin the habitual museum space but add new attractive features to it.

Unfortunately, the museum visitors’ department did not use the first experience of multimedia presentation to attract more attention to the exhibit. The computer support was covered neither in promotional posters nor in mass media. Similarly, no questionnaires were distributed and comments collected and classified.

Nevertheless, the first experience of a painting multimedia presentation in the Hermitage was considered a success, therefore in half a year the information space lay-out described above was reproduced for the exhibit devoted to the rebirth of “Dana¸” by Rembrandt.

The history of the 12-year restoration and art research discoveries made in the process were particularly stressed in the narration. Multimedia technologies provided the comprehensibility required. All stages of scientific research and restoration work were reproduced by means of computer graphics and animation; X-ray, infrared and ultraviolet images of the painting were shown. We even managed to show and comment on the original author’s version of the painting reconstructed with use of the X-ray images. The computer presentation actually became an integral part of the exhibit that has lasted for the whole year and attracted wide public. Unfortunately, in this case too neither press release nor other official publications pointed to the significance and even the very existence of the computer support of the exhibit and the program became inaccessible for visitors after moving “Dana¸” to the permanent display. It remains only to regret that the Hermitage did not find resources to produce a replicable CD-ROM basing on the exhibit materials.

Since 1997 computer support for major displays has become customary practice for the Hermitage. Gradually “the genre rules” has been developed: a 15 - 30 minutes long computer movie with subtitles and a reference system with a touch-screen interface. However, sometimes the rules were broken. Thus, for one presentation there was as much material collected that the duration of the movie exceeded 50 minutes. As a result chairs and benches were put in the room and a peculiar cinema hall sprang up in the museum one. Many visitors were pleased to rest in “the cinema hall” familiarising themselves with the history of antiquity at the same time. It is clear that existence of such “relaxation area” is polemic but it seems to be natural evolution of the museum space.

It might be summarised that for the Hermitage use of diverse capabilities of multimedia has become the same everyday practice as traditional methods of museum work (tours, lectures, publishing printed catalogues).

Besides computer presentations of exhibits, Petersburg museums have been mastering other formats of multimedia programs demonstration. For instance, in the same year 1997 the Museum of the History of St.Petersburg offered computer tours to the schools conducting lessons of the “History and culture of St.Petersburg” course in the museum. In fact, the computer movie containing musical illustration and voice-over is a virtual guide assisting the museum employees to unfold the topic. It uses visual media based on the museum items including those that are kept in the repository. Duration of a tour should not exceed 10 minutes – even computer effects are not able to focus attention of children for longer. Unlike an exhibit program with its life-time being restricted by the show duration, the tours have been in use for several years already and hundreds of Petersburg kids and other Peter and Paul’s Fortress guests have viewed them.

The museum concern in attracting visitors was a moving force in the search for new applications of multimedia technologies in exhibiting practice. Thus, a large-scale show dedicated to the history of the Rozhdestvenskaya Chast - one of St.Petersburg historical parts, along with traditional exhibition items, offered the district’s buildings directory introducing architects, house-owners and notable residents. Inquiry systems as an information background for major exhibits turned to be an attractive multimedia approach for museums. The Museum of Anna Akhmatova in the Fountain House, in particular, decided to use a similar system for the exhibit “Requiem” in memory of the victims of Stalin’s repressions.

We have to admit, though, that our pioneering was not always successful and some experiments failed. For instance, a computer game was created to support the “Rozhdesvenskaya Chast” exhibit mentioned above. Using the game, visitors could put the street names and important buildings on the district map and mark the houses where prominent people (Peter the Great, Alexander Suvorov, Alexander Blok et al.) lived or stayed. The game tasks proved to be hard to accomplish in the exhibition hall as the game distracted people from the show viewing, period of presence in the hall was limited and other visitors intervened. That is why the valuable idea implemented in the program was not in demand. It is likely that a game model better suiting the show conditions could be created if the programmers participated in the game script writing. To the museum officials credit be it said that this not really successful experience did not deter them from computer projects.

Multimedia technologies retain a potential to serve not only informational needs but artistic ones as well. We would like to provide a rather more detailed comment on the history of creating the computer movie “Shadow of Mine on the Walls of Yours…”. The original idea implied a reference system which would describe the years spent by Anna Akhmatova in the Fountain House, as well as contain biographies of the people (from Innokenty Annensky to Joseph Brodsky) with whom the fate has willed to connect her. But the idea to make a computer movie was getting more and more attractive in the process of writing the script. The sequence of visual images illustrating the story of Anna Akhmatova and her generation is completed with the poetry recited by the authors and with music by Dmitry Shostakovitch. Unlike the traditional video shooting, computer technologies can add an emotional and dynamic touch to dull archival photo documents. At the same time the internal rhythm of narration prevents random interactive interference in the program operation. An attempt of getting additional reference tears the artistic texture of the movie – an informational function conflicts with artistic delivery. The collision of a kind is often solved in favour of informational component but in this case another choice was made. The first showing of the program in the museum when images were projected to the white wall of the exhibition hall showed that even those people who were extremely far from the computer world accepted the new approach in documents delivery and highly valued the multimedia montage potential.

It is not the separate exhibit units but the entire exhibits that can be created by means of multimedia. The gallery of pictures by the students of the Hermitage Children’s Paint Shop is an interesting example of a virtual museum within a traditional one. More than a hundred paintings portraying ancient Olympian Gods were selected for the exhibit. To display works by children in the world-known museum is not an easy task, so an idea occurred to place their pictures not in the real but virtual space. The artists of the studio “Mart” created a 3D model of an art gallery assigning a separate hall to each Olympian. As far as the interiors were stylised to resemble the Hermitage ones, children’s paintings ended up not in accidental halls but exactly in the virtual Hermitage. Another virtual project created by the studio was supposed to contrive an exhibit not existing in reality but actualising an artistic concept of presenting museum items in odd perspective. Along with other features, this approach allows, for instance, to fix a computer as the central element of installation. The work of a kind titled “New Image of the Museum of the Animal Anatomy” was conducted within the framework of the cultural action “New Art in a Traditional Museum”.

In summarising the above mentioned, we would stress that Petersburg museums actively look for and find solutions of using multimedia technologies in museum space. We would determine the following stages in the development of the museum computer technologies. The first stage being already overpassed by the majority of St.Petersburg museums is characterised by very cautious response of museum specialists to new approaches. They are frightened by the complexity of unusual work, uncertainty of the prospects, necessity of finding managerial and financial resources. Nevertheless, energy of the computer companies interested in creating replicable products relating to the history and culture of St.Petersburg has gradually provoked motivation in the museum community. At the second stage the aspiration of cultural institutions to new technologies becomes so intense that they overvalue their own capabilities and consider the assistance of computer professionals to be unnecessary. Museums arrange departments and branches of computer technologies and try to penetrate market with their own developments. The experience of the typical for the second stage independent efforts provided museum specialists with better knowledge of the features of various computer genres, better understanding of the optimal format suiting for a certain museum project and ability to balance replicable products against non-replicable ones. Nonetheless, inevitable difficulties in creating professional computer programs have taken the most “advanced” museums to the next, third stage. The new credo states that everyone does one’s own business: historians, art researchers, restorers provide computer professionals with contensive information and the latter ones put the contents into elegant and user friendly shape. Today many Petersburg museums are at the stage when partnership of cultural institutions and computer companies is truly efficient.

Specific character of computer genre poses obstacles even for education professionals.. Say, experience of writing popular booklets sometimes confuses a potential scriptwriter. The habit of writing verbal descriptions results in underestimation of computer visual potential, resources of graphics and animation tools and hierarchical structure of hypertext. Similarly, proficiency in conducting tours does not guarantee that regular inquiry systems will be created with all the information being carefully checked and logically arranged. It might be concluded that a computer program authoring requires particular professionalism. The fact that practice of multimedia programs development is not sufficiently summarised makes the situation even worse. Therefore, script solutions are more often determined by computer specialists who have more practical experience than their museum associates.

That results in the following procedure: basing on the materials and draft script provided by a museum, the studio proposes a shooting script which transforms the initial concept into a clear description of structure, product design and technology of the project implementation. Co-ordination of the shooting script is the first and most important stage of collaboration. Once it is approved, the studio begins the technical work and the museum secures that the contents are complete and trustworthy. The final phase of the work assumes the exhaustive testing of the program product including editing and proof-reading. Unfortunately, our experience shows that valid check of contents requires enormous efforts since creation of multimedia editions does not fully correspond to the publishing process that is customary for museums. At the same time the knowledge the computer people have on the subject is not sufficient to check the contents carefully. A collision arises when the multimedia project quality at the final stage depends exclusively on the efficiency of the parties interaction. Absence of mutual understanding results in innumerous mistakes, very funny at times, that can be find in some renown multimedia projects.

It is not easy to work the interaction procedures out and it takes time. The solution we see is the strategic partnership of cultural institutions and specialists in multimedia design. The studio ”Mart” has been a permanent partner of several St.Petersburg museums for a number of years. With good reason we can state that our relations with the Russian Museum, Museum of the History of St.Petersburg, Museum of Anna Akhmatova in the Fountain House are being developed. In collaboration with the latter one, for instance, after the computer movie discussed above was produced, the studio participated in preparation of travelling exhibits, replicated the CD-ROM with the movie, recorded the video version of the movie, illustrated and edited and published the book “Anna Akhmatova and the Fountain House” (distributed with the CD-ROM). The museum and studio co-operate in creating the exhibit “Requiem” at present.

Whereas the Museum of Anna Akhmatova is not big, the State Russian Museum represents a huge museum complex. Every computer project conducted for the Russian Museum becomes a large-scale one just because of the museum collection size and mass attendance. Therefore a careful pre-project work should precede any technical development. This kind of work requires qualification of information system designers – the museum does not have specialists of this profile. The visitors’ information complex implemented in 1998 to celebrate the 100^th anniversary of the museum could serve an example of a sophisticated multilevel solution. Beginning from that moment, the Russian Museum officials being in charge of technical projects regard the studio not only as a potential developer of specific programs but as a system designer participating in the process of making decisions on the development of the museum information structure.

On the whole, the museum practice of St.Petersburg provides many examples of successful application of computer technologies. It is not surprising that the institutions in charge of the city image advertising and cultural tourism as well as the city education authorities show interest in the new projects using the informational, artistic and educational potential of the leading museums of the city. This interest brings a hope that continuous demand for replicating the museum developments may arise which means that creation of new multimedia projects will get a powerful incentive. The experience accumulated in St.Petersburg will be instrumental in consolidation of the market mechanism in supporting cultural institutions.

Kondratieva Irina Nikolaevna, “Mart” computer studios, executive director. Multimedia-projects manager since 1998. Participated in such projects as “The Centenary of The State Russian Museum”, “Anna Akhmatova. The Fate of Generation”, “Alexander Block’s Memorial Museum” and others.

 Dr. Roubashkin Dmitry Davidovich, “Mart” computer studios, art director. An expert in innovative projects for cultural and educational institutions. Project director of computer presentations dedicated to The Hermitage exhibitions such as “Jan van Eyck. The Annunciation”, “Dana¸. The Fate of the Rembrandt’s masterpiece”, “The Kids’ View on Olympic Gods” and others. Managed also projects for The State Russian Museum an some other museums.

“Mart” studios were founded in 1993. The basic activity is linked with innovative projects for cultural and educational institutions. The studios are the frequent partners of museums of St.-Petersburg and Leningrad Region. Since 1997 “Mart” developed more than 15 projects including CD-ROMs “The Centenary of The State Russian Museum”, “Anna Akhmatova. The Fate of Generation”, “The Exhibition of the Unofficial Arts”, “St.-Petersburg’s Jewish Community. Three Centuries of the History”.