Join us in exploring the Murrook Culture Centre in Australia, a project that won Art of Multimedia and Command Digital Systems the Inavate APAC Award 2024 for the Visitor Attraction Project category.
Worimi Local Aboriginal Land Council (WLALC) constructed and self-funded the development of Murrook Culture Centre at Williamtown, New South Wales, Australia to serve as a central point of knowledge and information about the Worimi people. The aim of the Centre is to explore the greater region with an appreciation of the Worimi and other traditional owners of the Hunter Region.
Murrook Culture Centre was envisioned as a collection and keeping place, a space for cultural demonstrations and performances, and a place to host workshops with local artists and artist-in-residence programs. The Centre was also to be a space to host varied educational groups and one that supports training and business development for the Worimi people around partnered activities catered for by the Cultural Heritage & Education Team (CHE) and Sand Dune Adventures (SDA) Social Enterprises.
WLALC commissioned Art of Multimedia to provide interpretive consultancy and exhibition design services. Command Digital Systems served as the project integrator.
Beata Kade, managing director at Art of Multimedia, says: “This is in many ways a very special and a very different project from the others we have done. We had the chance to work directly with the community and they were funding this project with their own money. A lot of the times, projects and culture centres are funded by government agencies and investment, and then they are professionally managed with passion by people who work to ensure these spaces tell the stories they need to. But Murrook Culture Centre was special because the community was entirely in charge and you could feel the personal nature of the project from the start.”
Art of Multimedia began its work by delving into how to convey the culture and tradition of the Worimi authentically and with respect. Kade elaborates: “Australian First Peoples’ stories are unique, and their storytelling has always been centred around oratory. For the Murrook Culture Centre project, we worked in partnership with the CEO, the Board, and the Elders to determine what cultural stories and traditions would be shared. We were very excited to have the honour of telling their stories digitally and to give them a way to convey their stories directly and thus authentically. The digital medium gives a wider audience the ability to engage and interact with their stories which we believe is an important part of ensuring the culture continues to be appreciated and flourishes.”
The project’s intent was to develop a community-led, cutting-edge digital interpretation experience where Elders welcome visitors, sharing intimate family stories and Worimi history, capturing the Country in its splendour, and where large-scale interactive cultural stories immerse the visitor in Worimi Culture and Gathang language. Several rounds of meetings with the WLALC Board, Elders, and Community were conducted to gather preferences for themes, stories, proposed ideas, and options for implementation.
Archival research of public archives and Worimi’s Professor John Maynard’s publications was conducted to gather interpretive resources and establish appropriate display content via a thematic structure and exhibition narrative specific to Worimi Culture and Place. This stage also included filming 14 personal oral histories, thus capturing some of the community’s personal histories. Kade details: “We had the whole community involved in the project across different levels and not just with the decision-making process of what the Culture Centre would be. We worked with the Elders and different people from the Community when recording stories and oral histories, music, and narration. The curator conducted workshops with children, where they drew the fish which became part of the content we created. There were touch points across multiple levels and the Community had an opportunity to be involved.”
Community messages start the experience at the Murrook Culture Centre. Kade says: “We designed welcome kiosks which provide an interactive experience for visitors coming through. We filmed Elders welcoming visitors to Country and Murrook, which means ‘a happy place’, inviting them to explore and Wakulda or ‘walk as one’ with Worimi on their journey through it.”
The Murrook Culture Centre’s centrepiece is a space featuring two curved LED videowalls, each measuring 9m by 2.4m. Jason Stevenson, creative and technical director at Art of Multimedia, details: “The LED walls are quite impressive and their size definitely has a wow factor. The LED system has been built with our own custom show control software developed with TouchDesigner and handles the scheduling and playback. The space also has multiple cameras on the top of the walls. These work as depth sensors that track where people are in the space and trigger interactive content accordingly. These triggers reveal deeper layers of content underneath the first visual layer that is presented. As people are walking through the space they are inadvertently activating content which gives the experience an immersive feeling.”
Kade adds: “The visuals transport people to different natural sceneries. We filmed sequences of aerial films to surround the visitor in the Dunes, the River, and the Coast of Worimi Country, with a soundscape that incorporates Worimi music and natural sounds. As visitors approach the walls, sensors trigger dynamic footage of the same environment filmed at a micro level, increasing this intimate connection to Country. These details could easily be missed, so their inclusion here really elevates the layered experience of seeing and discovering Country, bringing art, technology, and cultural storytelling together in a very special way.”
The mix of LED and projection was something that Art of Multimedia carefully crafted for the Murrook Culture Centre. Stevenson explains the thought process: “Our original concept within the space was to have projection on the floor and the walls to create a fully immersive environment as this was a central component of the exhibition. However, when we analysed the area, we noticed a large bulkhead was situated there and there just wasn’t enough space to place projectors. As we talked with the client, they also wanted the space to be flexible with the option to change the orientation of the displays which meant fixed projectors would not work. Light was another consideration as there was a lot of light leakage into that area which made projection not really viable. We still wanted an immersive space, so, we moved onto LED as the alternative as the displays are way brighter and a better solution. As the project progressed we gained more confidence that it was the right decision.”
In addition to the LED wall experience, there is a corner projection system that uses four laser projectors to create a digital canvas that spans both the walls and floor. The visuals depict five interactive scenes, each representing a different time of day in the Mullet Run, a key cultural story of the Worimi. Stevenson continues: “In the far corner of the exhibition space, which is much darker, we have used projection for the visuals. The wall-to-floor projection creates a highly immersive environment, and the flexibility of projection really helped us do that.”
Stevenson goes into further details regarding how the projection system functions: “The projection system is running TouchDesigner as the main show control system while the environment and scene rendering is handled by Unreal Engine. Getting both systems to communicate was quite challenging to execute and needed a lot of custom programming to integrate and make work.”
This particular component of the project posed challenges and Stevenson elaborates: “There were definitely some roadblocks that made us change direction during the development. There’s a lot of things that you just can’t plan for, and it’s not until you are knee deep in the project that you realise you have to find a new path to achieve the outcomes you’re after, and there were definitely some moments like that for us on this project. But in the end, it was a massive opportunity for us to learn and grow.”
Completing the experience at the Murrook Culture Centre are two interactive story pillars, showcasing a WLALC history documentary as well as 14 individual oral history videos, and a 2.5m multi-touch table containing the Worimi photographic collection in a timeline format, and additional videos, all forming a key public repository for Worimi history. All are designed with the capacity to continue adding content as more personal and collective assets become available as the WLALC and Worimi Community continue to create contemporary history. These interactive elements and the digital signage at reception and outside the building are powered by Intuiface.
For audio, Browns directional speakers are used extensively. Stevenson talks about the audio systems: “The Murrook Culture Centre is a large space and it has many hard surfaces making it very reflective, so we had to pay special consideration to the audio. We also didn’t want a lot of audio bleed for the different sections of the visitor journey so we ended up using directional speakers to get the audio outcome we wanted.”
Regarding the challenges faced during the course of the project, Kade says: “There were a few key deadlines for the project before the opening of the Centre, which were important to the client. This meant that we had to have a tiered rollout and that meant that we had to change some decisions and plans to ensure that we could deliver to these deadlines. It was tricky because we had to make programming decisions specifically which would not have been considered optimal, but taking into account the wishes of the client, they were what had to be done.”
Kade concludes: “The end result is great and we have deployed a technology system that is very powerful and capable. We have incorporated data collection and analytics for a lot of the content pieces that we have in terms of the stories and the touch table, which provide insight into how visitors interact with these elements. And this means that we and the client can make informed decisions on how to improve the engagement with their content in the future based on real data.”