Museum Exhibit Ideas for Virtual Antarctic Historic Hut Experience

• Main Author: Sickinger, David
• Format: Other/Unknown Material
• Language: English
• Published: 2005
• Subjects: Antarctic; Ross Sea; The Antarctic; Antarc*; Antarctica
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/10092/14364

The aim of this report was to investigate museum exhibit ideas for a Virtual Antarctic historic hut experience. The author's one-line response to probably the most important question on the GCAS course application form is reproduced below: 2. Indicate !tow, 011 completion oftlte course, you intend to use the experience btfuture postgraduate research, education, community work or in your career. Since I work at HIT Lab NZ, perhaps we could see if we could put together some type of interactive exhibit to help educate people on Antarctica. With this background information in mind, the author was contacted by Nigel Watson from the Antarctic Heritage Trust (AHT) at the beginning of the GCAS course. He suggested a topic idea for the personal project dealing with virtually visualizing the historic huts. Nigel is interested in providing "virtual access to showcase the Antarctic historic huts and the Antarctic 'heroic-era' legacy" (Personal Communication, Watson, 2004). A GCAS 2001/2002 student conducted a literature review on the subject that did a nice job of reviewing what was currently available on Antarctica at the time, various technologies that are available, and suggestions on what could be done in the future to create a much better virtual hut experience (Hyde, 2002). The author of this report assumes familiarity with the terminology that was nicely explained in Peter Hyde's literature review and would suggest reading it prior to this report if unfamiliar with any terms mentioned. This report focused on what could be done in a museum setting and an attempt was made to provide some actual Antarctic related samples that could be used to pursue project funding. There is information about HIT Lab NZ (www.hitlabnz.org) towards the end of the report but mention is made throughout the report on ways this University of Canterbury lab could contribute towards a project such as this. There are 34 historic interest sites in the Ross Sea Region that the AHT recognizes (www.heritage-antarctica.org/index.cfm/default) under 3 ...