The Glasgow School of Art, working in partnership with Scottish digital media and software studio ISO, has been awarded almost £75,000 by the Arts and Humanities Research Council to develop a prototype for an immersive virtual exhibit which will enable visitors to have a deeper understanding of the restoration of the Mackintosh Building, it.
The exhibit will focus on the conservation the GSA’s collection of plaster casts, a number of which were badly affected by the fire.
One of only a handful of projects to be awarded the maximum grant from an AHRC call out for projects focused on the next generation of immersive experiences, it beat off competition from around 100 other innovative proposals.
The project will see researchers at the GSA collaborating with industry experts to create an interactive exhibit using 3D digital scans of the Mackintosh Building and the GSA’s collection of plaster casts which were in the building at the time of the fire.
The prototype will take around six months to develop, and once completed the technology could then be applied to other aspects to the Mackintosh Building restoration and to create similar experiences for museums, art installations and visitor attractions.
“Glasgow’s creative economy is developing through collaborations including those between HE institutions and companies at the cutting edge of digital design ,” says Professor Tom Inns, Director of The Glasgow School of Art. “We are delighted to be working with our strategic industry partner, ISO, on this research project to explore innovative approaches to maximizing the potential of new immersive and interactive technologies.”
“The prototype that we will be creating with this research grant will be an exemplar of how state of the art digital technology can be used to enhance the visitor experience,” says Steve Love, Senior Researcher, School of Simulation and Visualisation who will be Principal Investigator on the project. “It will help mitigate real and perceived obstacles that currently obstruct use of the technology more widely.”
“Through the collaboration we will also demonstrate how industry professionals are critical voices that must be included in the conversation if projects such as this are to be successful,” he adds.
Damien Smith, Partner at ISO said “The opportunity to return to the Mackintosh, working with SimVis to develop and deploy new visitor experiences is very exciting… we want to leverage the GSA’s renowned research skills for real world applications to shape new digital experiences.