'State Museum should have more virtual reality experience'

Kota Kinabalu: The State Museum should look to upgrade itself by offering more virtual reality experience if it wants to attract more visitors, especially the young people."The decline of visitors to museum is not unique to Sabah. All the museums in the region, except Singapore's national museum, had suffered dramatic decline in the number of visitors for years now. We are competing against theme parks, Disneyland, social media.

"People do not want to go out and visit the museum and this is a challenge for us. Virtual reality experience, like hologram, maybe that is something we need to get into," said State Museum Director Joanna Kitingan.

Given the proper resources and enough funds, she said that plan could become a reality sooner than later.

Joanna said this on the third day of the Museum and Sabah Heritage – Past, Present and Future seminar and workshop here, Thursday.

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Universiti Malaysia Sabah (UMS) Kadazan Chair Prof. Dr. Jacqueline Pugh-Kitingan reminded the audience that following the massive destruction of archaeological sites in Syria and other parts of the Middle East by ISIS and other groups, Unesco had proposed reconstruction of these ancient archaeological sites through holograms.

"This is because, even though they are gone, we can reconstruct them through photographs so people can visit these sites digitally. This is indeed something for the future.

"Whether Sabah Museum will be able to do that is another question. But I believe it is something that museums in the region can consider and share with one another. We can bring outside exhibition digitally to our local viewers also through this technology," she said.

Meanwhile, National Museum of the Philippines Assistant Director Ana Maria Theresa Labrador applauded the idea especially because a 3D visual of a certain artefact or site can tell more stories compared to photographic presentation.

"We must not forget also that in addition to warfare and deliberate destruction of artefacts, we need to come to grip with climate change and extreme weather patterns.

"I remember some of the sites in Japan which were destroyed in the tsunami, they are all gone now. Ancient sites that used to be important areas for people to go, to encounter their history and identity. They are all gone," she said.

Therefore, she concluded that there is a need for museums to come up with long term strategies, taking into account all issues, warfare, weather and people's action.

Additionally, Labrador said, it is important for those involved in the project to know why they are doing it because it would motivate them more.

"In terms of digitising foreign exhibitions, I think the best strategy is to minimise facts. We do not need a lot of explanations. Instead, we develop apps that people can download and if they want to read more about it, we provide them links to do more in-depth research."

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Nevertheless, she said it is always a better strategy to encourage visitors to experience the museum complex and develop their visual sense, especially the young people.

"Our young people see so many images that bombard them every day through their mobile phones, televisions and other sources. It helps them to start to look at things more closely and I think museums can actually help them to do this," she said.

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