"museum4punkt0" starts: Ideas lab for digital applications in German museums
Press release from 05/08/2017
Today sees the launch of "museum4punkt0 - Digital Strategies for the Museum of the Future", one of the most visionary projects in the German museum landscape. In a joint virtual experimental space, the project partners are exploring the possibilities and opportunities offered by the latest digital technologies in museums and developing model applications for outreach work and visitor communication.
Together, the participating museums are looking for new ways to engage with their visitors, develop individualised offers for them and address additional target groups. Over the next three years, they will develop exemplary innovative applications in specific projects. They will then make these prototypes publicly accessible for flexible re-use by other museums. The Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media is funding "museum4punkt0" with 15 million euros.
Five other partners are involved in the project, which is managed by the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation (SPK) with its National Museums in Berlin and is representative of the range of museums in Germany: Humboldt Forum Kultur GmbH, the German Emigration Centre Bremerhaven, the Deutsches Museum, the Langenstein and Bad Dürrheim carnival museums with other museums of the Swabian-Alemannic carnival and the Senckenberg Museum of Natural History in Görlitz.
Hermann Parzinger, President of the SPK, says: "Mobile devices and social media have also greatly changed the reception behaviour of visitors to museums; they expect - and rightly so - that these will enable them to access familiar content in new ways. Developments in 3D digitisation or in the areas of virtual reality (VR), augmented reality (AR) or game technology have also progressed rapidly in recent years. Museums are now faced with the challenge of identifying the most suitable tools for their purposes and adapting them to their needs."
Markus Hilgert, Director of the Vorderasiatisches Museum of the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin and project manager of "museum4punkt0", adds: "The digital transformation harbours enormous potential for cultural institutions, for example, it opens up completely new ways of interacting with visitors. With museum4punkt0, we want to develop digital tools that open up the museum as we know it today as a new experiential space for visitors."
The Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation and its National Museums in Berlin are responsible for the management, coordination and administration of the "museum4punkt0" network. The SPK is also developing the joint interactive platform on which the new developments created in the joint project will be presented and interfaces for service offerings will be provided.
Within the framework of "museum4punkt0", each partner is responsible for carrying out a sub-project that relates to the specific needs of the respective institution. Digital storytelling, 3D applications, a VR/AR laboratory, instruments for user and reception research and formats for participation in scientific knowledge processes will be utilised. When developing the various applications, it is always taken into account that they should be reusable as flexibly as possible in different scenarios. In addition, the "museum4punkt0" project partners will jointly develop standards and guidelines for future projects.
Correction 29.06.2017: The Humboldt Forum Kultur GmbH is not a partner of museum4punkt0, but rather the Humboldt Forum Foundation in the Berlin Palace.
Press releases on the sub-projects
- Sub-project XD - xplore Digital
- Sub-project Migration Museum 4.0
- Sub-project Perspectives of three-dimensional visualisations in museum mediation
- Sub-project Cultural heritage Fastnacht digital
- Sub-project Explaining, understanding and participating in research in museums
- Sub-project kosmosdigital Humboldt Forum