Cooperation Offer

Virtual Reality Project: Attersee-Salzkammergut in Upper Austria - mountains, lakes and 10,000 years of cultural and climate change in Virtual Reality

Offer name: 
Virtual Reality Project: Attersee-Salzkammergut in Upper Austria - mountains, lakes and 10,000 years of cultural and climate change in Virtual Reality
Expiry date: 
10/10/2019
Offering LAG: 
Attersee - Attergau (Regatta)
Country:
  • Austria

Looking to cooperate with

Type of partner: 

All EU

Country(ies):
  • Unia Europejska

Project idea

Project type:
    • Cooperation within the country
    • Across regions
Project topic:
    • Innovation
    • Research & Development
    • New technologies
    • Culture & Cultural heritage
    • Forestry
Additional keywords:
  • Virtual Reality, diving, climate change
Context: 

The town of Lenzing in Upper Austria is 80 years old next year and is converting an old building into its first ever museum. The heart of this will be a Virtual Reality room containing a presentation of the climate change of the mountains and lakes of the Salzkammergut area. This has been commissioned from the Austro-British VR directors Dr. Frederick Baker and Sandra Fasolt.

The VR experience is based on the elements: ice, water, fire, earth and vegetation and is based on the scientific results of pollen cores taken from excavations and drilling down silt at the bottom of the lakes. The lake sediments are the memory banks of the landscape. The pollen cores are like memory sticks. The VR will translate the burning phases, the vegetation recovery phases, and the early industry of one of central Europe’s richest cultural and natural landscapes from the raw scientific data into an educational but also entertaining experience that people of all ages can enjoy no matter what language they speak.

A research team led by Professors Timothy Taylor (University of Vienna: PI) and Jean Nicholas Haas (University of Innsbruck: co-PI) and its local, national and international partners has generated large amounts of graphic data analysis (such as radiocarbon dates, pollen cores and pictures of the forest trees identified) and this need to be hung on the walls of the room in which the VR takes place. These walls and the waiting area for the VR need to be designed and built and that is what we are looking at partners for. If there are good 360 camera persons or people who can fly drones then that may be useful in the production of the VR experience.

The aim is to open the Lenzing Museum and the VR work in December 2020.

Project idea summary: 

Presentation of the cultural and natural heritage with the help of Virtual Reality. First time introduction of this technique in the region around lake Attersee in Upper Austria. Qualification for this technique for interested people that work in culture.

Objectives: 

We have the tools to create the Virtual Reality experience, but what we are looking for is a group to help us build the interior fittings for the VR space and to mount an exhibition of the scientific climate work on the walls of the VR room. This means we are looking for carpentry and electronic room installation skills plus some sensibility for design skills. Skills in 360 film and photography and drone filming could be useful. The one other skill needed is people who have a scientific diver certification and help excavate the buried lake Villages in the Attersee. A partner from one of the UNESCO-defined World Heritage ‘Pile Dwellings around the Alps’ communities (present in Slovenia, Italy, France and Germany) would be clearly well suited.

We can offer some VR training in planning for VR, the selection of the right stories and the installation of VR. There is a possibility of showing the VR work in the partner area, if they can buy the hardware and create the technical environment needed to show VR.