May 4, 2015

Today’s cultural and museum experiences are increasingly at the collaborative intersection of art, science and technology. As the Deputy Director of National Institute for Experimental Arts (NIEA) at the University of New South Wales, Professor Sarah Kenderdine researches at the forefront of immersive experiences for museums and galleries. On Friday, May 8, she’ll visit as a Rankin Scholar to share the last decade of her research, through which she has produced more than 70 exhibitions and installations for museums and galleries worldwide that utilize interactive new media and alternative approaches to audience engagement. Her investigations into media arts, immersive environments and public culture have resulted in the creation of innovative models that change the way we experience cultural heritage, from augmented reality to interactive cinema and embodied narratives.

Professor Kenderdine also currently serves as Director of the iGLAM Lab (Laboratory for Innovation in Galleries, Libraries, Archives and Museums), as well as Head of Special Projects at Museum Victoria, Australia’s largest public museum. During her free-to-the-public talk on May 8 at 5:00pm in the URBN Annex Screening Room (3401 Filbert Street), she will examine new paradigms for transforming digital cultural heritage archives into immersive experiences. Engaging intangible and tangible heritage, her research integrates groundbreaking work in virtual environment design, interactivity and information visualization, in a new embodied museography.

Her seminal installations and permanent exhibits include The Pure Land Projects: four distinctive works based on interactive facsimiles of the World Heritage Site, Dunhuang Caves, China; Look up Bombay, gigapixel dome work for the Prince of Wales Museum, Mumbai; a data browser for Museum Victoria that creates a 360-degree 3D view of 100,000 objects; the Atlas of Maritime Buddhism, the deep mapping in South East Asia and South China Sea; and South Chinese Kung Fu Archive, the 4D archive of intangible heritage. Click here [PDF] to learn more and to see project images.

Following the talk, Drexel faculty and students are invited to join Professor Kenderdine and Drexel Professors Kathi Martin, Fashion Design, and Nick Jushchyshyn and Dave Mauriello (both of the Digital Media Department) on Saturday, May 9 and Sunday, May 10 for a Design Charrette in which a gigapixel panorama of the A.J. Drexel Picture Gallery will be imaged.  New tools for data capture, analysis and display appropriate for a mobile, digital and interconnected world will be investigated.

For more information about the public lecture or details about participating in the charrette, please contact Professor Kathi Martin at martink@drexel.edu.