We build interactive installations for museums and exhibitions, and develop for augmented, virtual and mixed reality. Both connect software and digital content with a physical place. Insurgent Studios is based in Edinburgh, and our installations were made for a museum there.
What we build
- Touch and gesture installations. Experiences visitors control by touching a surface or moving their hands.
- Digital models of real objects. Detailed 3D recreations that let people handle things too fragile to touch.
- Historical reconstruction. A place as it was in another century, shown where the visitor is standing.
- Bespoke hardware. The screens, cameras and custom hardware an installation needs, as well as its software.
- Headset applications. Software for Magic Leap and Oculus devices.
Museum installations
Field Marshal Earl Haig Collection. Developed for the City of Edinburgh Council and the Museum of Edinburgh, this installation used touch technology to turn the glass of an existing display cabinet into a way of exploring the objects inside. Visitors could manipulate detailed digital models of items in the collection while the originals remained in the cabinet.
Window on the Past. An augmented reality installation for the same museum. A large screen, cameras and gesture control let visitors explore the history of the museum’s courtyard, from a seventeenth-century garden to nineteenth-century industry.
The two opened together in June 2015 and offered a choice of languages. Our project microsite preserves photographs, model comparisons and demonstration films of both. INSCREENIT is our internal platform for this kind of work, bringing together interactive technology and custom hardware for museums, exhibitions and retail settings.
Augmented, virtual and mixed reality
The Reality Lab. A proof-of-concept mixed reality teaching platform, supported by Innovate UK, for delivering practical lessons remotely. The same lesson ran on Magic Leap One and Oculus Quest.
Edinburgh College of Art’s animation archive. We used 3D scanning and modelling to recreate fragile stop-motion puppets digitally, and developed a virtual animator’s studio where people could work with them, on Oculus VR and Magic Leap.
Square Slice Studios. Our venture with the author Grant Morrison, an early Magic Leap partner, developing entertainment conceived for mixed reality.
How an engagement runs
Each of our installations was built around something already there: a display cabinet in one case, a courtyard in the other. Our mixed reality work has started as a proof of concept, with funding we applied for.
If you have a collection, a space or an idea in mind, tell us about it. Our other services are described separately.