Archiving Process

Artifact scanning
A core part of our team's archiving and restoration process included brand new and high resolution 3D scans of the Sensorama, Ivan Sutherland’s HMD and the NASA Viewlab headset. Our team's goal of doing these 3D scans was to allow the inventions to be viewed and experienced at scale in a modern-day headset.

Physical Archive
‍Immersive Archive began with an interest in archiving and restoring the work of Mort Heilig, often cited as XR’s first practitioner. Mort’s seminal Sensorama device, as well as a full collection of his inventions and journals, are held by USC’s HMH Foundation Moving Image Archive, where restoration of Heilig’s devices and experiences is now underway.

Digital Archive
Restoring and digitizing  Heilig’s early XR materials led to archiving the 1960s breakthroughs of XR’s other founding figure, Ivan Sutherland. Digitizing Heilig and Sutherland’s materials – the foundation of early XR research and development – laid down the first tracks of a comprehensive digital archive of the source materials of XR’s history.

Structure

The main concept is to arrange projects through a cylindrical representation of timeline that connects them vertically. The timeline runs through the center of each project, making it easily accessible. The current versions of architectural space iterations revolve around the idea of having core experiences closer to the center, and as one moves outward, they would start digging into more detailed aspects of each project and archival materials.

User Experience

When crafting the user experience of the Immersive Archives, we wanted to ensure that the user has agency to navigate the experience in the way that is best suited for them. This is why we have created two modes: Story Mode and Tour Mode.

Story Mode is a linear experience that uses narrative storytelling to guide the user through the exhibit to get a better understanding of the context in which these inventions came to be, as well as utilizing the virtual reality space to create delightful and memorable interactions.

Tour Mode is for those users who want to navigate the exhibits on their own terms, being able to bypass storytelling elements and explore the space and artifacts in whatever order they like.In terms of user interface, we kept it very simple and easy to follow as guides. We want the main focus to be on the experiences themselves.