The staging of The Mejlby Stone consists of projections on the stone and on the floor in front of it. The careful alignment of the projection on the stone, including the matching of the physical, carved runes and the projections of runes, is one of the unique elements of the installation. In this way, the historical artifact and the projection are fused. The visual effects are supported by an audio component including both music and sound effects. Trough this visualization the runic stone becomes almost alive. The Mejlby Stone normally residents at Kulturhistorisk Museum Randers, Denmark, where it a daily basis engages the museum visitors in new ways, because the digital layer comprehensibly communicates the story of the stone.
The magic of the Mejlby Stone
The visualization of the runic stone is divided into several stages. At first the stone is in a sleeping state, but when awakened by the museum visitor it shows a silhouette animation that tells the story of the runic stone, afterwards the runes appear on the stone as they are carved, showing the direction of the written text. This is followed by a more magical sequence, which visualizes the passage of time: Rainstorms, frost, and fire progressively efface the runes from the surface of the stone. At the end a interactive rune game begins. Here the runes fall down on the floor and the visitors are supposed to kick the runes back to the stone. When all the runes are restored to their correct positions, they transform into Roman characters, legible to a present-day audience.
Meaning Making Experiences
It is a collaboration between Central Denmark Region (Region Midtjylland) Kulturhistorisk Museum Randers, and Centre for Advanced Visualization and Interaction, (CAVI), which have resulted in the consortium MMEx (Meaning Making Experiences), with the purpose to establish a competency, knowledge and facility centre for digital communication of cultural heritage. The Mejlby Stone was the pilot project in this consortium, and the installation indicates that the parameters for cultural experiences have changed. For example museums today not only communicate cultural experiences they also produce them. MMex is about investigating in these changes. The runic stone has been at Kulturhistorisk Museum Randers in a long time, but have now been rediscovered by the museums visitors. The Mejlby Stone communicates some old and more static cultural heritage in new dynamic ways.
The Mejlby Stone on YouTube
The stone acquired a life of its own on the Internet: A video presentation of the project uploaded to YouTube has so far been viewed almost 30,000 times, and over than 200 blogs all over the globe have mentioned the installation and linked to the video.
CAVI
