RETOLD

It’s the first Friday of the month! And that means it’s time to listen in to the latest episode of Finally Friday, where this month we’re joined by two partners in the RETOLD Project to talk about the importance of digitisation, documentation and sharing.

Julia Heeb is one of the key figures in the RETOLD Project and also works as the exhibition and research manager at the Open-Air Museum, Museumdorf Düppel, in Germany, a partner institution on the project. In addition to her work as part of the RETOLD Project, Julia also has a PhD and MA in Experimental Archaeology, focussing on experimental approaches to shafthole copper axes from south-eastern Europe.

As part of the RETOLD project’s survey of the state of digitalisation and documentation in European open-air museums, our partners representing Nuwa Digital Media travelled to the Middelaldercentret (DK) for a week of field work and photogrammetry this past August.

Since the museum is packed with craft demonstrations by staff and guest volunteers, we took the opportunity to try out possible formats for documenting craft activities.

After 18 months of working together digitally, we finally were able to meet in person in Barcelona at the beginning of June. Paloma González-Marcén and Clara Masiera Esquerra as well as the rest of the team at the Universitat Autónoma de Barcelona (ES) were our welcoming hosts for the conference.

The aim was to introduce the RETOLD project to a wider public of specialists and students as well as to test the prototype.

On the morning of 7 June 2022, we started with a series of lectures around digital archaeological heritage presented by several keynote speakers. At first, EXARC director Roeland Paardekooper introduced the RETOLD project and its importance.

With already a year of exploratory research behind us, Nüwa have set themselves a deadline for our first in-person RETOLD meeting in June: We aim to construct a first design prototype for our proposed Digital Archiving and Documentation application, made specifically for use in Open-Air museums.

Through UX (User Experience) analysis and user interviews, we had already found out that most existing digital archiving solutions are more suited to “static” collection-based material, while open-air museums deal with the task of ongoing documentation of outdoor exhibits, often over several decades.

To ensure an ideation process that is focussed on the potential users of our design, we derived user personas from our interviews - the curator, the student volunteer, the craftsperson, and last (but perhaps not least) the museum director...

One of the products of the RETOLD project is a small presentation / exhibition at our three museum partners, explaining the project and what we want to achieve. In October 2021 we decided to make it in three steps, adding each year another chapter. The exhibitions will consist of banners 100 x 200 cm, in both English and local language.

In the first step we produced general banners introducing the partners and the RETOLD project. By March 2022, two banners per partner were made...

Following the vlogging seminar back in May 2021, RETOLD partners have been testing their new skills and creating RETOLD related videos, either about the project or documenting activities and events taking place. The first phase of vlogging was meant to learn the tricks and be more comfortable with vlogging and video taking and editing.

EXARC is helping with the general look, and the visibility rules of the project, while Stadtmuseum Berlin is helping with technical aspects, and answering questions from the partners.

The Museumsdorf Düppel, one of the six partners in the RETOLD project, provides us with an insight into their work of the first year.

The first step, before creating the new forms for the documentation of archaeological house models, was to research documentation strategies in other archaeological and ethnographic open-air museums. This one was done together with the other partner from Romania. The results can be found in a report published in the EXARC Journal...

With the first year behind us we look at the progress made within RETOLD project. Every partner has their own tasks to complete within the project.

The Museumsdorf Düppel has been looking into the survey and questionnaire of houses for the documentation app. Which questions are relevant, which aren’t? What do we want to document and how? These questionnaires will be the foundation of the information implemented in the app. You can get an insight into Julia’s work in their recent Youtube video on @dueppel_ev 

EXARC and the other RETOLD partners (Complexul National Muzeal ASTRA (RO), Museumsdorf Düppel (DE), Nüwa Digital Media Content Production Studios Ltd (IE), Steinzeitpark Dithmarschen (DE) and Universitat Autónoma de Barcelona (ES)) had a very successful online conference at the beginning of October 2021.

Even though we would have loved to meet in person, due to the still ongoing pandemic, we decided to host our first conference online. The plan was to meet at Complexul National Muzeal ASTRA, and we hope to go there in October 2022...

Short bits of film, especially vlogging, is increasingly popular. Open-air museums can use this very well to engage their audience, but it works just as well for experimental archaeologists and other people who reconstruct items or do living history. In our European cooperation project RETOLD, vlogging has a special place for documenting and sharing stories of our museums.

The Steinzeit Park Dithmarschen (Germany), one of the partners in the RETOLD project, creates little videos about life in the Stone Age. This particular one is about the farmer Basti who is working in an antechamber of one of the houses when he realises, he’s hungry. He starts making flour by ...