Tactile relief of „The Kiss“ by Gustav Klimt
In Austria, art and cultural heritage play an important role in society. Hence, the question of how to make them accessible for all audiences is crucial. This is why VRVis has researched new inclusive ways of making art and elements of cultural heritage accessible and enriching for all museum visitors through exploring 3D technologies and inclusive digitization. We translate artworks into digital 2.5D tactile reliefs, which adds a tangible dimension and enables people to experience and explore art in a new way. This tactile relief showcases the famous painting “The Kiss” by Austrian artist Gustav Klimt. The original is displayed in the Viennese Belvedere. The tactile relief offers an opportunity for blind and visually impaired people to perceive and explore the artwork. The original relief is milled from DuPont Corian®, a highly durable material, suitable to be touched by many people. Through its yearlong research on inclusive digitization and multimedia solutions, VRVis provides better access to artworks by means of visual computing. We create digital relief models of objects from either 3D scans or photographs of the original, and thus, support museums to become truly barrier-free. VRVis custom-builds tactile reliefs of paintings, photos, sculptures or even cityscapes.
Name: Daniela Drobna, Andreas Reichinger / VRVis Zentrum für Virtual Reality und Visualisierung Forschungs-GmbH
pr@vrvis.at
Through our yearlong research on inclusive digitization and multimedia solutions, we provide better access to artworks by means of visual computing technology. We help museums to become truly barrier-free by creating digital relief models of their objects from either 3D scans or photographs of the original. We custom-build tactile reliefs of paintings, photos, sculptures or other pieces of art, even of cityscapes. These tactile reliefs open up totally new spaces of exploration as they not only make art accessible for visually impaired and blind people, but offer new dimensions to children, people with cognitive impairments and basically every museum visitor. VRVis’ research contribution with regards to barrier-free art communication is in line with two of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals of the UN: it supports SDG 4 “Quality education” and SDG 10 “Reduced inequalities”. We have already designed over 35 tactile reliefs which are exhibited in more than 15 European museums and cultural institutions.
VRVis can create digital reliefs of artworks from a photograph or a 3D scan. Once the digital relief is created, it can be printed or milled in various sizes and materials – which offers new opportunities with regard to creating sustainable as well as interesting and barrier-free exhibits, addressing various target groups, and offering innovative ways of interacting with art.
As a result of users´ demands and to further enhance this experience, we have designed a tactile Multimedia Guide, combining vision, audition, and the sense of touch. It has a technically simple setup and provides background information on the exhibits in sign language videos, audio files (with/without subtitles), as well as texts in various difficulty levels. We are currently refining our Multimedia Guide within the international project BeauCoup (short for Building Active User Experiences to Bring Culture to the People). It aims at creating low-threshold, multi-sensory and inclusive solutions that support senior people in exploring and interacting with cultural heritage.
A great additional feature for enhancing our project would be a device able to produce temporary tactile reliefs by mechanically adjusting pins. These reliefs are no longer milled but clamped in an adjustable frame after the pins have been mechanically modeled by the device. This could make the relief medium reusable as often as desired.