Cultural heritage. You don’t see it until you see it

Cultural heritage. You don’t see it until you see it

by | 13 Jun, 2023 | Visual stories for visitors

Most heritage looks like old stuff.
And it is. Until you prove that it is relevant, that it has something to tell us.
Best start by putting future heritage visitors into the right mode, for example by making heritage visible in educational materials for schools. It should contains basic knowledge: once we were at war, Holland has a coast, Germans were afraid and built bunkers. And then you show those bunkers.
The usual way to show stray concrete in the dunes is to add a plate with a number (Aggregate bunker type M183). That’s something like “Still life with pheasant, oil on canvas, 1665” on a museum sign. What do you expect people to do with that?

Get your audience in the right mood in 4 steps

Step 1: reveal the connection with a simple question

All those loose bunkers in the dunes have different roles. You can see those roles when you ask a simple question, such as “there’s an English warship coming, what needs to be done to be able to shoot at it? Then you’ll see binoculars (and a high point), fire control (and thus officers), loaders (crappy job), aiming (technology), ammunition storage (that thick bunker), and lots of concrete (yes, those English shoot back).

Step 2: “…and what else do you need?”

We shot at the ship. That will make you hungry. So close to the bunker complex is also a kitchen, a mess hall, men’s quarters. You have to supply those, that’s why there’s a road.

Step 3: “and what do you have to do for that?”

To pave that road, we pull all the clinkers from the streets of IJmuiden, leaving only sand. And when the soldiers’ food runs out, it is not the soldiers who have to go hungry, but the civilians. To defend the bunkers on the land side, we place cannons. And oh yes, we demolish houses to clear the line of fire, and lay barbed wire and minefields. Living in IJmuiden anno 1943.

Step 4: “and what does that have to do with me?”

Says one student, “I still think it’s stupid, such a lesson about old stuff. It’s nice weather outside, we’d rather go swimming!” Let an 80-year-old IJmuiden resident tell where they went swimming then. In the canal? You couldn’t, there were mines there. In the sea? You couldn’t, on the beach you would get shot. So, straight home from school, through those streets of sand. If your house was still there. With the personal story, you will get the class’ attention.

Now that the class has been warmed up with prior knowledge, the students are ready for a field trip. Because heritage still makes the most impression in real life.

Let’s go!

Projects by Explanation Design (my previous company)

atlantikwallindeklas.nl (interaction design by Ruben Daas, digital stuff by Studio Alloy, style by Manon Den Hartog)
stellingvanamsterdam.nl (interaction design Ruben Daas, digital stuff whizzweb.nl)
mediaspoor.nl (interaction design Ruben Daas, corporate identity Manon Den Hartog)

What to show your audience, in what order? That question must be resolved. Then, like in this digiboard lesson, you still have to figure out what the students should do next. In this case: drag the correct term into the box. For this conversion of knowledge into action, you need specialists, both to conceive it (interaction design, in this case by Ruben Daas) and to get it working technically on all those different devices in schools (done by Alloy, an excellent digital agency)

A look inside Fort Vijfhuizen: the officers and soldiers, where do they sleep, what are they wearing, what hangs over their beds? Clicking on this “school record” will take them to short assignments.

 

Heritage educational visibility

Digital educational materials should be easy to use, as well as suitable for short and long lessons at different levels. Whether it works, you have to find out in the field.

 

To reiterate the importance of interaction design, this sketch shows what you need to take a shot at a ship from near IJmuiden.

Heritage educational visibility

This is what the interaction designer makes of it: only after the crew has each been given their tools (a radio, a grenade, a scope) the gun can be fired. Interaction design by Ruben Daas.

Heritage educational visibility

Animation also works well. When the enemy comes we flood the place (left) and remove the structures from the line of fire (right). Each animation in this series follows the same pattern: ‘what do we do when the enemy comes?’ (From: Stellingtour, a game about the Defence Line of Amsterdam)

 

Heritage educational visibility

From the educational material for the Defence Line of Amsterdam: how much food should you bring into a Fort per week?

 

 

 

Is your scientific work visible enough?

Is your scientific work visible enough?

by | 13 Jun, 2023 | Visual stories for visitors

I can be quite smug about it, I think. Science is a tyrant, wielding intimidating texts and tables. But the two fields I love, – ecology and geology – source their knowledge from a reality you can easily reveal. If one’s task is opening up science, that’s a bonus.
The ground under our feet has been laid down over millions of years. That’s easy to explain. And ecology: who doesn’t sense that all plants and animals are connected? What could be more enjoyable than visiting the product of geology and ecology – the landscape? Yet I can’t help but worry about the preservation of special and fragile geology, ecology or heritage. For how is it that cyclists ride past it, schoolchildren find it boring and voters overlook it?

Apparently, it is not visible enough. The language and images used by professionals, once beyond the borders of academia, just can’t cut it.

What do you need, to grasp geology or ecology?

Nothing more than a few clues. A dash of knowledge. Preferably administered on the spot by a human guide.
“Do you see that the salt marsh is higher than the polder behind the dike?”
“Did you notice there are no godwits near trees?”
Yes, they do see that. Nice. Right now all you have to do is to come up with an explanation for that height difference or that bird behavior. And in terms that your audience understands. If only you could put a geologist next to every phenomenon.

To simplify, but not too much

The next best way to see an area is through a paper or digital guidebook, with photos, illustrations, maps and text. An atlas, an app, a travel guide. (Whether the thing is paper or digital doesn’t really matter, it seems to me. But something that you click away in an instant is a message you forget in an instant).
Either way, digital or analog, you want to unlock scientific knowledge in an easy, visual way. You want to simplify, but not too much. Reality is complex and readers may have little time, but they certainly don’t want to waste it on information or stories that don’t teach them anything.

This way, this “opening up science” of mine will still be quite a job. Good thing the reward is so great: once people see geology or ecology, they keep seeing it everywhere.
That’s riches.

Talking geology at a party

Fun anecdote: one of the professors who collaborated on the Canon of the Dutch Landscape gave me a great reason to do my job. He said “thanks for your work, now I can just explain what I do at a party”. This also indicates that the scientists themselves find a short version of their work very useful.

Atlas of the Netherlands in the Holocene, block diagrams of braiding, meandering and anastosomal river.

Block charts and maps can look very friendly. How simple can visualizing science be? When do you go from accessibility to “telling too little”?

Canon of the Dutch Landscape, a folding sheet of 16 faces, created with 20 professors and specialists, each of whom could write a book about it.

science visualization accessible

The content is tightly bound: each plane of the folding sheet has an introduction, a description of a phenomenon, and some location text of where that phenomenon occurs. The block diagrams visualise the phenomenon.

 

science visualization accessible

I still think this “leaflet” is a good example of how information can be transferred from pure text to photo, map, illustration and timeline.

 

There is a separate section for human additions to the landscape, on top of sand, clay and peat.

science visualization accessible

‘Het ontstaan van Zeeland’ (the origins of Zeeland) lets you browse from the past to the present, getting a good look at how Zeeland became dry land, washed over again and eventually slowly became diked.

science visualization accessible

Online you would do this with a slider, such as topotijdreis.nl, but browsing by hand naturally gives you a fine object.

 

There is also such a thing as scientific posters, for use at conferences. For a few geomorphologists, I made a dozen, prioritizing the visual. After all, the landscape itself is visual.

science visualization accessible

It can also be a lot more abstract: the port of Rotterdam (tilted), from the “Climate as an Opportunity” project. The sea level is rising and the Netherlands must be designed accordingly. Blue shading = water storage.