We created Window on the Past, an augmented reality installation for the Museum of Edinburgh, to let visitors explore the history of its courtyard through simple hand movements. A large screen in the courtyard gallery connected the physical setting with digital recreations of its past.
The experience moved between different periods in the life of the building. Visitors could encounter a seventeenth-century courtyard garden and then explore the changes associated with nineteenth-century industrialisation. Cameras, gesture control and virtual models brought these historical scenes into an experience tied to the place where visitors were standing.
The installation was unveiled alongside our Field Marshal Earl Haig display in June 2015. Launch coverage also reported the reopening of the courtyard after more than a decade, with landscaping supported by local volunteers and community service workers. The digital experience gave that newly accessible space a further way to tell its story.
Our original microsite preserves views of the courtyard in the present, the nineteenth century and the seventeenth century, alongside installation photographs and a demonstration film. It records the contrast between the two museum projects: one centred on objects in a cabinet, the other on the changing history of a physical space.
Explore the project: Visit the original museum microsite or read the June 2015 launch coverage in North Edinburgh News.