What a museum night at the Erlacherhof in Bern. With around 1,500 visitors at the Erlacherhof, half of whom certainly went down the steep stairs to us in the basement of the building.
The interested parties got an interactive insight into the world of accessibility and searchability of historical photo stocks using stereography, artificial intelligence, and virtual rooms.
All three stations in the basement were actively used. A predefined photo collection from the Bern City Archives was made accessible in a museum-like interactive presentation using VR glasses, and one or another photo was even virtually taken off the wall by the visitors.
The same photo collection could be searched with the help of a special online search interface called Archipanion. The catch, an artificial intelligence searched the photo collection for the searchers, without knowing the content of the photos. This often led to surprising discoveries.
And a 19th-century analogue 3D pair of glasses completed the experience with the illusion of a three-dimensional room using a stereographic photo shot.
Great conversations with curious visitors from various generations ensued, a small common time journey from the 19th century to the near future.
A guest performance by the Department of Mathematics and Computer Science | University of Basel and Archipanion from Basel (4eyes GmbH) together with the Bern City Archives.
Indeed, a journey through time and space!