Fast forward: Revamped Australian Center for the Moving Image promises high-tech experience

Australia’s National Museum of Film, Television, Video Games, Digital Culture and Art will reopen to the public on February 11 after a 40 million Australian dollar ($ 31 million) revitalization of the on-site and online visitor experience. The Australian Center for the Moving Image (ACMI) has been closed since May 2019 to redesign its permanent exhibition and integrate cutting-edge technology.

ACMI is a newcomer to the Australian cultural landscape, having opened in 2002 as part of the Federation Square cultural district in central Melbourne. What sets it apart is its multidisciplinary exhibition program, ranging from internationally renowned video artists such as Julian Rosefeldt and Candice Breitz to a partnership with animation studio DreamWorks.

“We are integrating visual art alongside cinema, alongside video games, alongside contemporary visual culture,” says ACMI director Katrina Sedgwick. This approach works: more than 1.5 million people visited the museum in 2017-2018. But with the cinemas, galleries and educational spaces spread over four levels, the visitor experience has always felt “quite disconnected,” says Sedgwick.

While Melbourne-based BKK Architects addressed the museum’s physical shortcomings during the redesign, ACMI’s team of creative technologists built a new “experience operating system” connecting galleries to content and online metadata like never before. This digital infrastructure underpins ACMI’s five-year transformation into a “cross-platform” organization, says Sedgwick, who took over as head of the institution in 2015.

The system draws on multiple internet sources, says Lucie Paterson, head of experience, products and digital at ACMI, including the museum’s website and collections management system as well as Wikipedia and databases. motion pictures such as IMDb and TMDb.

Plans to reopen the museum in mid-2020 were scuttled by the pandemic but, according to Sedgwick, the months of lockdown have only primed public interest. In November, ACMI launched a number of digital initiatives: a new online art gallery, an on-demand cinema (available in Australia) and an online extension of the upcoming permanent exhibition The Story of the Moving Image. “The barriers are gone,” she says. “People are very comfortable in a digital space to interact with our content.”

Now, real-world visitors will be invited to create virtual collections of objects and media on display using The Lens, a cardboard disc resembling a Viewmaster reel that can be tapped at touch points throughout. of the exhibition. The free, contactless device allows people to “explore a wider universe of content, but based on our recommendations,” says Paterson.

Visitors can discover the unexpected connections between the films, video games and works of art collected on their lens through the Constellation, an interactive digital installation at the end of the permanent exhibition, or they can access more content hosted by the ACMI Home Online Team.

“Human curation gives both physical and digital rewards,” says Sedgwick. “This is, I think, absolutely essential in explaining why museums, galleries and festivals will continue to exist.”