Interacting with Abydos
Interacting with Abydos
 

Interacting with Abydos

Welcome to Interacting with Abydos! In this exhibition, we tell stories uncovered by the North Abydos Expedition through interactive experiences. We present the 5,000-year history of Abydos, Egypt based on what the artifacts excavated at the site tells us. The cutting edge technology used by the archaeology team at Abydos provides us with fascinating details, insights, and stories about the everyday life of people in Ancient Egypt.

The physical installation, shown through 3D renderings of the space, imagines a large-scale exhibition where people can learn about the Abydos excavation site and findings in person. The digital interactive adapts the journey of the exhibition into a desktop experience.

 
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Exhibition Renderings

 

In these renderings we are envisioning a physical space for the exhibition. The space reflects sketches we made prior to the pivot in our project due to COVID-19. Certain elements of the physical space were reimagined in light of our new digital platform, while many remained the same. 

 

Entrance to exhibition

 

Visitor flow

 
 

Interactive Experience

Move through the space by clicking to move forward and dragging to look around. Approach the 3D Artifact Station on the table and the Sliding Excavation Site on the wall to enter each interactive experience. 

 
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Prototyping

Our prototype of the Sliding Excavation Site represents a cross between the proposal for our physical exhibition and the digital interactive experience. Fabricated at home during the COVID-19 pandemic, the slider box has five knobs that can be adjusted to control the visuals projected on the wall, which display a representation of land as stacked layers. Users will be able to slide a knob to hide and reveal different layers over time and see the artifacts found from each of these layers. We are using the slider box to mimic the imagined physical installation by allowing users to control which layers and artifacts they see in the wall projection. The prototype connects the physical control box to the Unity program we created for the digital experience.

 
 

About the project

Abydos is one of the oldest and most important cities of Ancient Egypt. The site has a 5,000-year history and covers around 7 square kilometers, making it a very old and large archaeological site. We collaborated closely with Matthew Adams, a Senior Research Scholar at the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University, and co-director of the North Abydos Expedition in Egypt. He provided us with broad information about the history of the site as well as specific details for individual artifacts. All of the photographs and photogrammetry files of artifacts used in this project belong to the North Abydos Expedition Team. Learn more about their work at Abydos at abydos.org.

One of our goals for the project was to leverage innovative technology already being used by the archeology team at Abydos to create interactive experiences that demystify life in ancient Abydos. We focused specifically on photogrammetry files the team has been working on developing for the past few years. Our team worked to support Matthew’s hope of reinvigorating interest in the field of archeology by creating an engaging experience to demonstrates the field is current and exciting.

Special thanks to Matthew Adams, Brett Peterson and Blair Simmons for helping us bring this project to life.

 
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