Connecting Early Medieval European Collections - Launch 19 April 2017
Connecting Early Medieval European Collections (CEMEC) is an EU-funded digital collaborative project between eight European museum collections, seven universities and six technical partners that aims to examine the connectivity between Early Medieval objects and the objects’ regions of origin with the aid of innovative digital technologies. This Digital Culture EA-EU Creative Cultures project includes input from Ireland, through a collaboration between UCD School of Art History and Cultural Policy, the National Museum of Ireland, Waterford Museum of Treasures, Noho and the Discovery Programme.
Drawing on objects from participating museum collections, the project will produce ‘Crossroads: Europe 300-1000’, a travelling virtual exhibition focusing on connectivity and cultural exchange in Europe during the Early Middle Ages. This transnational exhibition will explore diversity and connectivity in Early Medieval Europe, between different regional cultures in Europe and around the Mediterranean, from Ireland to Egypt and from Spain to Hungary and Greece.
The Cross Cultural Timeline system has been designed to highlight the many connections that can exist between artefacts within a museum collection. Whether those connections be temporal, stylistic or based on an object’s function, the CCT empowers the user to explore patterns that might otherwise have remained obscure or hidden. The CCT puts the user in control. They are free to browse museum collections as they wish, creating their own personalised experiences and bringing a new level of engagement with our material past that is made possible by the innovative employment of digital techniques.
The CCT has been developed as part of the CEMEC project by Noho Ltd. It is composed of a central processing unit that manages the system’s database and presentation functions. The system can be connected to up to three separate displays, which can be any combination of projectors, large screen displays, as is the case here today or touchscreens. The CCT customer can choose the display configuration that best suits their exhibition narrative, their budget and the expectations of their visitors.
