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Maki Wardle

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BSc Dissertation:  Inside the Metallurgist’s Workshop

 WebGL Heritage Reconstruction.

Runtime approx. 3 minutes.

Developed in collaboration with the Casa del Alabado Museum of Pre-Columbian Art In cooperation with the Casa del Alabado museum in Quito, Ecuador and Dr Emilia Ferraro of Dundee University and the British Museum’s Endangered Material Knowledge Project, in my BSc Dissertation, I developed an interactive reconstruction of a Pre-Columbian smelting workshop. The reconstruction establishes a new pedagogical tool for Ecuadorian educators teaching indigenous heritage. One of the design challenges navigated in the development process is constructing a critical approach to visualisation, which responds to the problem of building virtual reconstructions of the past using fragmentary evidence. To this end, the project combines 3D scans of museum objects (evidence) with hand-drawn elements (hypothesis and interpretation).

User-centred design and evaluation methods were deployed in collaboration with researchers and local museum educators to devise a tool that can have a meaningful impact on their work. Evaluations with experts revealed the virtual workshop as an effective pedagogical tool that offered inherent advantages compared to ‘static’ learning materials: museum objects are discovered and recontextualised through interaction, exploration and use, allowing learners to better imagine how they would have been used and to insert themselves in an imagined past world.

The project was showcased at the Casa del Alabado museum between June and September 2024 as part of the Keeping the Hammers’ Voice Alive exhibition.


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©2024 Maximiliano (Maki) Wardle