Moritz

Mobile Round Tours in European Textile-Industry Centers
www.m2c-bremen.com/nordwolle/

Funded by: Programme "Culture 2000“/ European Union
Duration: 01.10.2006 – 30.09.2007
Total volume: 240.000 Euro

Chosen as "Best Practice in Creativity and Innovation of EU Programmes".
Presentation of the results in Brussels 2009 by Martin Koplin (M2C) and Prof. Dr. Helmut Eirund (M2C), attended by members oft the EU parliament and the EU commission.

To extend each museum’s exhibitions into the various industrial sites and their urban environment, we developed PDA applications, thereby allowing the visitors to explore each historical site and its environment, to interact with monuments of industrial heritage and to deliver multimedia content directly to the point of origin. The innovation lies in the development of both: a cultural and a technical concept, which are transferable to different sites, within the existing European network of textile industry along the European Route of Industrial Heritage (ERIH).
The PDA assistants are developed as a fully transferable method for all three mobile systems in the three museums in Lodz, Riga, and Delmenhorst on all levels:

• Historical – Content - Design - Interface - Technical

• Presentation of the common European and of each local history

The mobile assistants have been put into operation in autumn 2007. The knowledge, ideas, methods, and solutions from MORITZ can be used in any cultural institution and museum in Europe:

• In the Project eMUSE: mobile information system for the Neues Museum Weserburg Musem of Modern Art in Bremen with changing exhibitions

• In the Project MaX – Museums at Access: visitor interaction and citizen participation in the museum

The mobile round tour MORITZ, developed as a transferable method for the three cities Delmenhorst, Lodz and Riga, enhances the museum by a medium that allows the visitors to get information referring to all three aspects – production process, work and design – in authentic industrial heritage sites. These are characterized by vast areas and long distances. With the mobile device the museums reach these areas, visitors gain mobility and are enabled to encounter the sites of industrial heritage immediately. The mobile device connects impressions of the past with the original venue by views of the historical sites, by photographs and videos of the workers and by supplementary annotations and reports, which refer to contemporary witnesses.

The historical sites of textile industry in Lodz, Riga and Delmenhorst are connected by the shared experience in the fields of production processes, work and design. All these three cities have one thing in common: not only enormous machinery and site development for carriage tell their stories of former times but the life stories of the people involved in the process of industrialization. Above all: the beginning industrialization launched a new design process, from its origins in folklore to modern nearby mathematical-formalized design principles throughout Europe.
The mobile museum round tours are methodically developed according to common cultural requirements. It is a collaboration between the involved institutions and its actors, museum education officers, historians, cultural scientists and computer scientists.

The three museums in Lodz, Riga and Delmenhorst try to reconstruct and re-experience the cultural and historic information. In general, the accustomed exhibition practice takes place with original exhibits and information panels. But exhibits of industrial heritage only become authentic in original locations. In these locations, mobile devices provide supplementary information, where otherwise the bare evidence of exhibits can hardly be accessed by ordinary persons. The operation with a mobile device provides the visitors with individually available and personalized information directly on-site. Temporary and spatial correlation can be displayed and interactively experienced. One special feature deserves closer attention: information is provided in variable levels of details to satisfy different target groups according to age, knowledge and interest.


Project partners

M2C Institut für angewandte Medienforschung, Bremen

Nordwolle Delmenhorst - Nordwestdeutschen Museum für IndustrieKultur

Hochschule Bremen - University of Applied Science

Museum of Decorative Arts and Design, Riga

Central Museum of Textiles, Lodz

Riga Technical University

University of Applied Sciences Gelsenkirchen

AgitPolska Polnisch-Deutsche Initiative für Kulturkooperation e.V

Westfälisches Industriemuseum

The Museum of Science and Industry in Manchester

The Greater Manchester Archaeological Unit