News

EXARC had originally planned a conference in Berlin (DE) in March 2020, with Museumsdorf Düppel as our co-host, on Documentation Strategies for Archaeological Open-Air Museums. About 75 people were already registered when, two weeks before it should happen, reality caught up on us, and we had to cancel going to Berlin and decided to go digital instead.

This meant for every speaker to record their presentation, which led to very different approaches. Truth is, they had to step (far) out of their comfort zone to change format under challenging circumstances. A call for volunteers (“all hands on deck”) led to about 15 people volunteering to spend about 500 hours in only two weeks time...

As postal services do not guarantee delivery for the time being, EXARC decided not to send our members the EXARC Journal Digest this Spring. However, if all goes well, we plan to bring you a new and thicker publication in Autumn. Articles already prepared for the Spring Issue will be published together with the best of journal 2020/2 and 2020/3. This will not be just an improvised solution for this year :-), but the result of a relaunch of our journal which we had planned already. Maybe this is a few months earlier than planned, but we want to use our time well during the pandemic to reevaluate what we do, and come with better solutions. We hope to also increase the number of pages from 60 to 90 pages a year...

Good news from our EXARC member Bostel di Rotzo in Northern Italy: they received EU funding for a large project. The money will be used for new reconstructions of buildings and for guided tours with VR, AR and gamification.

In summer 2021 (and Covid permitting) at Bostel you can:

Live a DIRECT experience of entry and exit between real world and augmented / virtual reality through gamification: a role-playing maxi-game to be played alone or in a group;
See another 1:1 scale Iron Village building rebuilt;
Try to solve the new educational escape room.