An immersive journey to (re)trace collection and curration of Asian cultural heritage in the West

The project aims to digitise and document the Slovene Ethnographic Museum’s Skušek collection using digital technology. A structure-from-motion approach called “Image-based photogrammetry” thereby plays an important role, as it allows for the creation of precise digital 3D models, which basically act as a digital twin to the original object. These twins, in combination with manual, more conventional documentation methods, such as sketches, annotated drawings, photographs and videos as well as descriptive texts will build the baseline of our digitisation effort, while also serving as both documention and preservation of the collection’s current condition.

An additional goal is the reconstruction of the collection’s early history and the motivations of the Skušeks, both Ivan’s and Tsuneko’s. Unterstanding the broader picture will be paramount for gaining a better understanding of their selection process when displaying, exhibiting but also using such wide variety of objects and art pieces as part of their everyday life.

Additionally, we aim to use digital technology to develop new means of presenting our research findings. By connecting our gained insights with the created digital twins, thus transforming them from simple representations into small databases, knowledge models, so to speak, we aim to make our findings and results universally accessible. This will be done by using the virtual space as a stage to create a digital museum. It will house the objects not only as virtual representations of their forms, but also as media conveying their intangible properties, that is historical and art historical, or – as in the case of Buddhist sculptures – also their religious significance. The virtual exhibition space thereby becomes a spatial field of experience which reaches beyond the pure digitisation of forms and is at the core of our dissemination strategy.