Virtual permanent exhibition: The digital Humboldt
20 November 2019
Photo: Dataport AöR, Matterport, Inc.
At night in the museum - or around the clock: no problem thanks to 3D scanning technology.
Explorer, writer, diplomat: In the Humboldt anniversary year 2019, the special exhibition "Humboldt Lives!" put the focus on Alexander von Humboldt's famous voyage to South America. Parts of the exhibition can now also be viewed virtually: The public service provider Dataport has digitized the "Animals in the Tropics" section of the exhibition in 3D.
Alexander von Humboldt attempted to measure the world and viewed nature as a complex, interconnected system. As an explorer, he was already a legend during his lifetime, but posterity has often exaggerated him in heroic terms. From the beginning of May to the end of September 2019, the special exhibition "Humboldt lebt!" accompanied the German naturalist on the occasion of his 250th birthday on his most important research trip to America in the years 1799-1804.
Special exhibition remains virtually intact
The exhibition section "Animals in the Tropics," which in particular discussed Humboldt's animal observations, drawings and findings on his tropical voyage, can now be visited in detailed 360-degree images around the clock. The entire exhibition can be viewed on a virtual tour - including spatial orientation in the Zoological Museum. The special exhibition visited by numerous guests thus becomes a virtual permanent exhibition and remains digitally archived.
Digitization of cultural assets
The scanning process was initiated by Dataport, an information and communications service provider for public administration, as a project with the Centrum für Naturkunde. A mobile scanning device was used to digitally capture the Humboldt exhibition piece by piece several times for this purpose. At those times, the Zoological Museum was mostly closed to visitors. Otherwise, numerous guests would have been visible in detail on the images. Dataport is currently running several projects in the area of digitizing cultural assets. For example, Hamburg's Speicherstadt warehouse district has already been digitized using the 3D scanning process and made virtually experienceable.