Surgeons’ Hall Exhibition

The Brief

The Surgeons’ Hall Museums are owned by The Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh and consist of the Wohl Pathology Museum, the History of Surgery Museum and The Dental Collection.

With support from the Heritage Lottery Fund in 2014, the Museums underwent a major redevelopment that focused on the College’s heritage and helped create a new and enhanced public space within the Museums to inform and share with the general public the historical journey of surgery and its advances.

The Museums also feature exhibits that inspire public engagement through interactive computer simulation, audience participation devices, film and user-friendly textual explanation, encouraging people to think about health and wellbeing.

Challenges

Mediascape was selected via competitive tender to design, supply, install and configure the AV design for the new central exhibition in the History of Surgery Museum. All AV technology, configuration, set up and control provided by Mediascape; Multimedia creation was provided by Heritage Interactive.

The centrepiece of the project would be a 3D model of a human body onto which 2D graphics demonstrating an autopsy would be projected. This was designed and built to our specification and then coated for rear projection. Working within tight tolerances, we blended bespoke multimedia and used 3D geometric correction to display dynamic multimedia and created AMX timeline links to trigger video displays.

Solutions

Heritage Interactive created and delivered 26 touchscreen interactives. The software included a large format 3D model of the human body, interactive timelines, layered content interactives for surgical specialisms, and a live interactive news feed application.

Heritage also created footage for 10 different film stations throughout the museum. A total of 39 short films were used showing various aspects of surgical practice. Each film was edited to ensure content was appropriately paced. Title graphics and subtitles were added for accessibility. To enable museum staff to update the interactive timeline, Heritage Interactive developed a bespoke CMS that allows for adding new items to the timeline, and update existing items, adding text and imagery.

This software and footage were all setup on the digital displays and touchscreens provided by Mediascape.

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AV hardware used on the project included multiple interactive installations using large touch displays; 17″ touch screen kiosks and 10.1″ displays with associated audio.

Outcomes

This was a high-profile installation opened by HRH The Duke of Edinburgh and broadcast on national news channels, both on TV and online. The team at Mediascape is proud to have successfully tendered for the project and we are glad to have delivered such an interesting, interactive AV experience for visitors to the Surgeons’ Hall Museums.

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