E-makimono: XR Scroll for Interactive Museum Artifacts

E-maki is a collection of ancient, painted scrolls accompanied by a cross-reality app that give contextual information and interactive experiences to museum exhibition's audiences. We used and took inspirations from the "Four Seasons" hand scroll made in the Edo period by Nishikawa Sukenobu that highlights a vast majority of Japanese historical objects from tablewares, musical instruments, to clothing and textiles in multiple scenes. Information gathering, photogrammetry, and 3D modeling were performed to the various artifacts found in the MFA Boston: Arts of Japan Collections that belong within the same period as these scrolls.

We then designed augmented and virtual reality apps that connect several markers spread across the scrolls to their information and 3D visual representation and provide ability for the users to explore forms and textures of the selected museum artifacts in detail. By transporting the audience into a Japanese decorated room and garden, we also created  a contextual audio-visual digital environment that immerses the users based on the artifacts, narrative, and seasonal settings of the scroll.

This project is supported by the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston as a part of Computational Design Lab/Design Experience Workshop.