http://dx.doi.org/10.14236/ewic/EVA2022.30
Vignettes of Computer-based Museum
Interactive and Games Software
through the Years
Stefania Boiano Ann Borda Jonathan P. Bowen
InvisibleStudio Department of Information Studies London South Bank University
London University College London School of Engineering
UK London London, UK
https://www.stefaniaboiano.net UK http://www.jpbowen.com
[email protected] [email protected] [email protected]
Giuliano Gaia Tula Giannini
InvisibleStudio Pratt Institute
Milan School of Information
Italy New York, USA
https://www.invisiblestudio.net/founders http://sites.google.com/view/tgiannini
[email protected] [email protected]
Museums have used computers to develop exhibition interactives and games over the
years. This paper provides early case study examples and historical context. During the
1980s, computer-based displays in museum exhibitions were largely standalone. In the
1990s, the availability of the web allowed networked interactivity. In the 2000s, access via
smartphones became increasingly widespread, enabling mobile access from personal
devices. As well as the early examples, the paper provides an overview of more recent
developments. Online gaming, including serious games with the purpose of not just
entertainment, but educational and cultural, has increased in prevalence. Preservation
and access to these digital resources have their own unique issues, and these are
reflected in the paper, especially for early examples.
Computer interactives. Digital culture. Digital preservation. Museum exhibits. Online gaming. Serious games.
1. INTRODUCTION Palfrey & Gasser 2016), started by computing and
information pioneers such as Alan Turing and
This paper records some case study examples of Claude Shannon in the mid-20th century (Giannini &
museum-based computer interactives and games Bowen 2017). These digital resources now include
that have been developed over the years. Museums material produced for exhibitions and outreach.
and digital culture have become increasingly There is a question as to how these digital resources
intertwined through the decades (Giannini & Bowen can be preserved, while continuing allowing them to
2019), with the Covid-19 pandemic accelerating the be accessed and appreciated. The techniques
transformation even more since 2019 (Bowen et al. needed are very different from traditional
2021; Giannini & Bowen 2021; 2022). preservation and conservation approaches (Deegan
& Tanner 2006; van der Wal & Arts 2015).
Heritage conservation and preservation has
traditionally been concerned with analogue physical In the following sections, we present some examples
objects (Bowen 2017). However, it is increasingly of museum-based digital resources from the 1980s
the case that cultural resources are digital in nature. onwards. These illustrate the changing technologies
As well as digitised material, much is now “born- used and some of the issues in preserving and
digital” in the digital revolution (Negroponte 1995; accessing them for the future. Section 2 presents
© Boiano et al. Published by
BCS Learning and Development Ltd. 158
Proceedings of EVA London 2022, UK
Vignettes of Computer-based Museum Interactive and Games Software through the Years
Stefania Boiano, Ann Borda, Jonathan P. Bowen, Giuliano Gaia & Tula Giannini
some early examples of museum exhibition Some older digital material may only be available in
interactives, including issues concerning their printed format (e.g., text, programs, and images on
preservation due to changing technology and media. various types of paper and film). It may be desired
Section 3 presents an example of an online to re-digitise such resources to animate them
interaction 3D reconstruction in a heritage context. again. Sometimes printed versions of digital
Section 4 discusses developments in online serious resources can allow easier access and longer-term
gaming more generally, from a cultural and preservation compared to a digital artefact (Diprose
educational perspective. We conclude with a poem et al. 2018), although technologies such as fading
on cyber games and some thoughts concerning the thermal paper have their own issues (see Figure 2).
use and preservation of museum interactives for the
future.
2. THE 1980S
Changing Technology
Within a lifetime, I (Jonathan Bowen) have seen
digital media move from paper tape and punched
cards in the 1970s through to magnetic tape, floppy
disks (in three formats, 8, 5¼, and 3½ inches, from
the 1970s onwards), various forms of hard disk,
different types of magnetic cassette tapes and
cartridges, CDs, DVDs, and more recently SD cards
and USB sticks, all with increasing capacity and at
dramatically decreasing prices per bit stored (see
Figure 1). Figure 2: Printed versions of digital media from the
1970s and 1980s. (Photographs by Jonathan Bowen.)
Software works typically depend on a specific
version of operating system or computer hardware
configuration. Special custom-written software may
form part of the material, particularly if it is dynamic
and interactive. Software is typically very
dependent on the environment in which it runs, and
available facilities tend to change rapidly with digital
developments in both software and hardware. This
is applicable to early computer-based museum
exhibits which could now themselves be of interest
for preservation (Mayall 1980, p. 31; NMPFT 1983,
p. 7).
Figure 1: Various digital media from the 1970s to the
1990s. (Photographs by Jonathan Bowen.)
Different operating systems such as Unix (later
Linux), Windows, Apple macOS, Android (for mobile
devices), etc., add to the complication of formats.
Text may be stored as ASCII text, Word, PDF,
HTML, etc., with the possibility of embedded images
in many formats. Individual images may be available
in a variety of formats such as GIF, JPEG, PNG,
TIFF, etc. Audio may be in AIFF, OGG, MP3, WAV,
WMA, etc. Video may be in AVI, FLV, MOV, MP4,
WMV, etc. All these different formats have various
advantages and disadvantages in terms of quality,
size, etc. Software is needed to view and convert
formats, which may be easy or difficult depending on Figure 3: Demonstration of a CMOS transistor on a PET
the formats involved. personal computer for the Challenge of the Chip
exhibition at the Science Museum, London, UK
(Mayall 1980, p. 31).
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Stefania Boiano, Ann Borda, Jonathan P. Bowen, Giuliano Gaia & Tula Giannini
Museum Interactives necessary hardware and software may be difficult to
obtain or even no longer exist. What is more, the
In 1980, I (Jonathan Bowen) produced an animated physical storage itself may deteriorate. Magnetism
monochrome demonstration of a CMOS gradually disappears over a relatively short period.
(Complementary Metal-Oxide-Semiconductor) CDs and DVDs may become unplayable. Paper
transistor, written in the BASIC programming tape and punch cards last longer but can still have
language on a Commodore PET personal issues over a significant period if not stored well.
computer for the Challenge of the Chip exhibition at
the Science Museum in London, UK (see Figure 3). Since the 1980s and the time of microcomputers
This exhibition covered developments due to the (Clark & Davis 2021), online resources have
increasing power and miniaturisation of integrated become increasingly important compared to
circuits, especially for computing (Evans 1979; hardware storage technologies. Earlier FTP (File
Augarten 1984). As well as museum exhibits, I also Transfer Protocol) servers have been replaced by
produced an early index system for the Science much more user-friendly web servers (very briefly
Museum on the PET computer (Bowen 1981). via Gopher servers), with the “cloud” now available
through facilities like Google Drive and Dropbox for
In 1984, I produced a colour demonstration showing widely accessible digital storage. Various web
different focal lengths of lenses, using BBC BASIC facilities allow the convenient storage of media
on a BBC Micro personal computer for the National online, such as Flickr for images, YouTube for video,
Museum of Photography, Film and Television in and social media like Facebook allowing multimedia
Bradford, UK (see Figure 4). The exhibit was located to be saved. The next section provides an example
with a panoramic view of Bradford from the museum of a museum-based online interactive resource from
and a computer-generated version of the view, and the 1990s.
the associated camera lens, using a lens with a focal
length selected by the visitor.
3. THE 1990S
The decade of the 1990s saw the rise of the web
and increased use of computers by museums (Gill
1996). This enabled museums to achieve global
outreach with online information and exhibitions
(Bowen 1995; 1999; Gaia et al., 2020). Online
gaming became practical, and museums were able
to start exploring the possibilities from their own
perspectives.
From Online Games to Virtual Museums
Online 3D games, as outlined in the previous
pages, started to gain traction during the 1990s,
along with the diffusion and strengthening of the
Internet infrastructure together with the spreading
Figure 4: Demonstration of different focal lengths of of the World Wide Web.
lenses on a BBC Micro personal computer at the
National Museum of Photography, Film and Television,
Bradford, UK (NMPFT 1983, p. 7). The image of virtual 3D worlds was being shaped
by cyberpunk novels, such as Snow Crash by Neil
The exhibit was based on wireframe versions of the Stephenson (1992), where we can find the first
buildings in the view. In parallel, I worked on definition of the Metaverse as an online 3D Virtual
multidimensional hypercubes in BASIC on a Reality environment shared by millions of users
Research Machines microcomputer (Bowen 1982) simultaneously.
and the C programming language on a Silicon
Graphics workstation (Bowen 1984). I also At the same time, in 1999, the movie The Matrix,
produced a BASIC geometrical plotting library of starring Keanu Reeves, gave visual identity to a
subroutines (Bowen 1983) and 3D wireframe digital online world where people conducted
software (Bowen 1984b; 1984c). fictional lives. Even if VR (Virtual Reality)
technology was (and still is) far from getting that
The change of storage media and formats, available degree of realism, the notion of online multi-user
software, hardware, etc., over the years, has made it worlds was becoming more and more widespread.
difficult to conserve digital material in a useful way
that can still be accessed and viewed by humans When we (Giuliano Gaia and Stefania Boiano)
(Bowen 2017). For older digital material, the were working at the National Museum of Science
and Technology (Milan, Italy) in 1999, we were
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Vignettes of Computer-based Museum Interactive and Games Software through the Years
Stefania Boiano, Ann Borda, Jonathan P. Bowen, Giuliano Gaia & Tula Giannini
dreaming about the possibility of recreating an
online copy of the museum where visitors could From a technological point of view, Virtual
meet and interact. When we discovered that Prof. Leonardo consisted of a combination of VRML
Paolo Paolini of the Milan Polytechnic was working (Virtual Reality Modeling Language) technology, a
on a technology capable of doing exactly that, the markup language proposed in 1994 to create a
WebTalk technology, we quickly made contact and standard for 3D visualisation in the World Wide
offered the museum as a testing environment for Web (Raggett 1994) for the 3D environments and
the technology. Java for the infrastructure allowing users to chat
between themselves and to interact with the guide
and the animated objects.
A problem was that the technology was still
immature and not user-friendly. The user had to
download and install a specific plug-in, Cosmo
Player, to be able to visualise VRML and needed a
good computer with a strong Internet connection to
make the system work smoothly, something that
was not common at the time. The result was that
only 20% of the users were able to have a
successful experience interacting with the system
(Paolini et al. 2000); an interesting insight was that
the average connection time among successful
users was nearly one hour, confirming that the
experience was “sticky”.
The system was live for a couple of years, and a
Figure 5: Screenshot from Virtual Leonardo. second version using Java 3D was developed in
Users can see each other and chat using the chat 2000 by the Polytechnic University of Milan.
window in the bottom part of the screen. Together with the launch of the new technology, we
decided to create a new virtual environment,
The result was Virtual Leonardo (Barbieri & Paolini
related not to the existing museum but to the ideal
2001a), an online 3D reconstruction of the two
city imagined by Leonardo da Vinci during his
cloisters of the Science Museum (see Figure 5),
Milanese years (Barbieri & Paolini 2001b). See
with animated Leonardo da Vinci’s machines
Figures 7 and 8 for two example screenshots.
scattered around the virtual space (see Figure 6).
Visitors could have their avatars walk and fly
around the cloisters and rooms, chat with a guide
or with other visitors, and set in motion the
machines. The tour guide avatar had the special
power to force all users to see what she was
seeing in that moment, in order to make guided
tours easier (Paolini et al. 2000).
Figure 7: Screenshot of the ideal city project. Beneath
the 3D navigation area, the chat window (bottom left) and
the collaboration area (bottom right) allow users to
communicate with each other and with the virtual guides.
In this case, the system was more reliable and
easier to install and launch, provided the user had
Figure 6: One of the da Vinci machines, a good Internet connection and a computer
operable by online visitors. powerful enough to execute some 3D graphics
rendering. The virtual environment included not
The system went online on 7 June 1999 and raised only da Vinci’s machines but also artificial avatars
much interest, winning an Honorable Mention at the operating them, in order to make the place more
Museums and the Web “Best of the Web” awards populated and to show first-time visitors what they
in 2000 and being featured in the New York Times. could do in the environment.
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Vignettes of Computer-based Museum Interactive and Games Software through the Years
Stefania Boiano, Ann Borda, Jonathan P. Bowen, Giuliano Gaia & Tula Giannini
Mortara et al. 2014). The Sumerian Game of 1964,
for example, was largely a text-based strategy video
game designed by elementary school teacher Mabel
Addis (credited as the first woman game designer)
and programmed by William McKay for the IBM
7090 time-shared mainframe computer using a
teleprinter to input commands (Willaert 2019). The
game, set around 3500 BC, has players act as three
successive rulers of the city of Lagash in Sumer
over three segments of increasingly complex
economic simulations.
A long-running precursor to serious games, The
Oregon Trail also started as a text-only computer
game programmed in BASIC and designed by three
history teachers. Released by the Minnesota
Educational Computing Consortium (MECC) in the
Figure 8: A screenshot from the ideal city project. A user
1970s, the game casts the player as an American
is approaching an interactive machine and operating it.
All other users are aware of his movements and his settler in 1848, whose goal is to travel by wagon train
actions over this particular object. from Missouri to Oregon facing various challenges en
route based on historical facts (Djaouti et al. 2011).
Even if the Science Museum lacked the resources The game was re-released several times with a
and the will to develop the project beyond the graphical version of the game in an open-source
prototype phase, both projects demonstrated that a format, followed by versions for Apple, Atari,
cooperative virtual environment, where users can Commodore, and Radio Shack computers. In 2010,
interact with each other and interact with exhibits, mobile phone versions of the game were released on
has a strong educational value and is, therefore, Windows, Android, iOS, as well as Facebook.
useful to pursue. Whether this has to be done by
building your own virtual environment, as we did, or Although these early computer games were
by using an already existing environment, as some influential in shaping subsequent developments of
museums are doing with Minecraft (Charr 2021), is serious games, it was not until the 2000s that
still open for debate; both solutions have pros and serious games became truly popularised,
cons. However, in the end, we believe that culminating in internet, mobile-based, and VR
museums will be an important contributor to (Virtual Reality) examples, in line with increasingly
developments in the new metaverse. accessible and affordable technology platforms.
Developments such as the Serious Games Initiative
(Wilson Center n.d.), founded in 2002 at the Wilson
4. THE 2000S Center in Washington, D.C. (Djaouti et al. 2011) and
the growth of academic studies on serious games
In the 21st century, mobile devices have become
within digital culture reinforce their educational role.
increasingly important for the digital interactive
provision made available by museums (Filippini-
Serious games have been variously categorised in
Fantoni & Bowen 2008) and for cultural heritage in
relation to their increasing presence in digital
general (Boiano et al. 2012). The rise of serious
heritage. Anderson et al. (2010) proposed a
gaming in the cultural sector has a significant history
taxonomy of prototypes, demonstrators, virtual
associated with mobile and desktop devices largely
museums, and commercial historical games.
developed for widespread use during the 2000s.
Mortara et al. (2014) categorised serious games as
Online Serious Games supporting cultural awareness, historical
reconstruction, and heritage awareness. Paliokas &
The term “serious games” can be credited to Clark Syliaou (2016) proposed a framework to describe
C. Abt (1987), originally in 1970, who referred to the features of serious games in digital heritage,
(video) games created for purposes other than including elements such as technologies, categories
entertainment, especially for learning and education, of users, user experience, and game content. Rowe
training, skill transfer, or persuasion. Serious games et al. (2017) focus on serious game design in
have since become pervasive in military, education, science museums, highlighting the importance of
healthcare, engineering, and cultural sectors, among free-choice learning environments. Wang & Nunes
others. (Borda & Bowen 2019). (2019) considered educational goals and genres.
Precursors to serious games in digital heritage The use of emerging VR has become a prominent
reveal an integral relationship to early computing characteristic, often focusing on the preservation of
and video game technologies (Djaouti et al. 2011; historical structures and artefacts reminiscent of
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Stefania Boiano, Ann Borda, Jonathan P. Bowen, Giuliano Gaia & Tula Giannini
past cultures. Such preservation has been mainly heritage environments like the Google Art Project
“through digital capture or detailed reconstructions, launched in 2011 (now Google Arts and Culture)
both having digital accessibility as an outcome” where users can take virtual tours through selected
(Ch’ng et al. 2018). museums via web-based browsers.
For example, The Virtual Egyptian Temple Early mobile serious games like Art Tournament
(launched in 2004–5) presented a realistic 3D model (Froschauer et al. 2012) ran on mobile device
of an ancient temple to understand ancient Egyptian platforms, which were becoming more ubiquitous
life and culture (Jacobsen & Holden 2007). Two post-2010, but offered less computing power for
versions were implemented: a VRML lightweight immersive capability in older mobile devices.
application and an Unreal Engine (Epic Games n.d.),
supporting a higher level of visual detail and Rather mobile geo-locative games were readily
multiplayer capability networked over the internet, being adopted for outdoor exhibitions and self-
where each player drives a humanoid avatar. guided tours and games, such as M-Heritage Hunt
(Tan et al. 2011), an app to explore the cultural
Similarly, The Forbidden City: Beyond Space and history of George Town in Penang, Malaysia, and
Time (IBM 2008) was an educational VR game Eye Shakespeare (Creative CH 2013), an Apple app
where players can interact as avatars and explore developed by Hewlett Packard for the Shakespeare
the Forbidden City in Beijing, China as it was Birthplace Trust. The American Museum of Natural
during the Qing dynasty (1644–1912, see Figure History launched an innovative mobile gaming app
9). This initiative was a partnership between the MicroRangers in 2015, as a way for the public to
Palace Museum and IBM, utilising a ‘Second Life’- experience the museum’s collections in situ,
like world and built using a Torque game engine. ‘shrinking’ the user down to microscopic size to
combat threats to biodiversity. The app utilised AR
(Augmented Reality) technology, like that seen in
popular gaming apps such as Pokémon Go.
Currently, more highly immersive serious games are
crossovers with VR experience interactives, and
usually the result of a commercial partnership
between a heritage organisation and VR design
companies. A drawback is the need for VR headsets
and/or gaming computers in some instances. The
serious game Chauvet: The Dawn of Art (Tanant
2020) is a project of Google Arts & Culture,
supporting mobile-based AR and VR interactive
narratives and using photogrammetry and physical-
Figure 9: Avatar in the Hall of Mental Cultivation in the based rendering. The Chauvet Cave is a UNESCO
virtual Forbidden City. Image by Mary Harrsch, 2009.
World Heritage Site located in the Ardèche gorges in
Flickr CC BY-NC-SA 2.0. https://tinyurl.com/2p8vbpcu
southern France, with cave paintings dating from
European Union funding contributed further to the 36,000 years ago that are inaccessible to the public.
development of several advanced virtual heritage
demonstrators using serious games and digital Ace Academy: Black Flight is one of several
storytelling. One example is ThIATRO (The serious games developed from the collections of
Immersive Art Training Online) – a prototype of the the Canada Aviation and Space Museum (2017).
Virtual 3D Social Experience Museum exploring the The mobile game is available on Apple Store and
bidirectional interaction between museums and Google Play, and players can climb into a cockpit
visitors on a Web3D basis (Froschauer et al. 2013). to fly with real First World War squadrons, over
ThIATRO was built in the Unity Game Engine and actual historical locations and engage in aerial
3D models designed with Google SketchUp combat. The game won a gold medal in the 2017
(https://www.sketchup.com). ThIATRO aimed to International Serious Game Play Awards.
immerse the player in the role of a museum curator
in a virtual 3D exhibition to find artworks to create Personalisation of the learning narrative in a game
their own exhibition. It was primarily intended to be is a consideration of the Getty Museum’s recent
played online in a web browser. collaboration with Nintendo’s Animal Crossing,
allowing users to import art masterpieces into their
At the time of THIATRO’s development, data for digital homes using the International Image
the game was drawn from newly available online Interoperability Framework (IIIF, https://iiif.io) in an
resources such as the Web Gallery of Art online game activity called Art Generator (Getty
(https://www.wga.hu/). In the context of art history, n.d.). The Generator is also linked to a uniquely
there were already major projects exploring virtual generated QR code that holds information on the
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Vignettes of Computer-based Museum Interactive and Games Software through the Years
Stefania Boiano, Ann Borda, Jonathan P. Bowen, Giuliano Gaia & Tula Giannini
artworks. The Covid-19 pandemic has focused 5. REFLECTION
attention on digital heritage, engaging in one’s own
personal spaces, at a time of social distancing and Cyber Games (by Tula Giannini)
limited access to physical buildings. It is not
surprising that many cultural heritage organisations Is life the game
increased their digital footprint, publishing stories, in a digital frame
games, and quizzes, among other resources Going to cyberspace
(UNESCO 2020). However, as the UNESCO report Choose your avatar face
points out, there remain access issues for lower No place for reality
economic regions and countries, as well as a where love’s a fatality
gender divide in access and use of the Internet.
Come join the game
To date, participatory forms of digital culture have Leave life behind
not relied heavily on serious games as these largely Don’t look back
tend to be single-player games, although multiplayer Stay on track
role-playing game technologies are steadily gaining Revel in your new identity
interest in heritage organisations (Charr 2021). Future serenity
Different types of citizen science approaches have No place for reality
the potential to support more inclusive participatory where love’s a fatality
directions in which the participant has a greater role
in solving problems or actively contributing to Haven’t played games
content (Borda & Bowen 2019). For instance, the since Hopscotch and Double Dutch
gaming experience can serve the analysis of Missing you so much
complex data by leveraging the ability of the gamer Take me back to reality
to perform pattern recognition tasks, such as Oh – a Covid fatality
annotation and identification projects on the
Zooniverse platform (https://www.zooniverse.org/).
6. CONCLUSION
Thousands of participants joined Project Discovery This paper records some case studies of museum-
(EVE Online n.d.), an initiative of the Human based computer interactives and games over the
Protein Atlas (HPA) that aims to map protein decades. The changing technology over this time
expression in the human body. Project Discovery means that these can rapidly become difficult to
enticed gamers to help analyse a quarter-million animate, even if the software is available on some
images of stained tissue samples by embedding media.
the scientific data within EVE Online, a futuristic
role-playing game with nearly a million subscribers It is possible to write emulation or simulation
(Peplow 2016). This type of participation points to software that mimics a computer system, but even
the capability of machine learning and artificial this can have issues (Bowen 2017). Often it can run
intelligence (AI) alongside human intelligence – and faster than the original system and dynamic material
by extension, the possibility of AI-enabled serious may depend on the speed of the emulator/simulator
game applications, for instance (Gaia et al. 2019). as well as its functionality for satisfactory operation.
Simulation can be achieved typically through the use
Serious games have further potential to become of software. Emulation provides much more precise
co-created by participants (Boiano et al. 2019). The behaviour and can be undertaken using
Raices game, for example, involves artists, programmable hardware for example, such as Field
computer scientists, anthropologists, and primary Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs).
school teachers to co-produce a game to help
school children better understand the historical and The redisplay of early digital artefacts can involve
current issues of native Argentinian peoples (Diaz any of the issues described above, depending on
et al. 2014). The Wilson Center has recently the complexity. While a traditional painting can be
curated an overview of digital games that bring physically conserved and then hung for display, the
black history and contemporary experience to life, same process for a digital work is potentially much
most of the examples produced by those with a more complex, even after a period of only a few
lived experience (Newbury et al. 2021). years from its origination. This will be an increasing
added complexity for museums in the future wishing
These examples perhaps highlight the intertwined to preserve their digital artefacts and resources in a
relationship of serious games, not only to meaningful way. Meanwhile, the boundary between
educational goals and technology appropriateness real life and digital will become more and more
but increasingly to the ways in which participation blurred as time progresses (Borda & Bowen 2019;
and learning need to be considered as both an Bowen & Giannini 2014; 2019; 2021).
individualised and community-based experience.
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