5 days ago
- Entertainment
- New Indian Express
Thiruvananthapuram museum to offer India's first digital guide for visitors
THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Ever been to a museum to see a different view of life, but came back disappointed because you couldn't quench your curiosity? You saw the skeleton of a huge animal on display, but you received no information of how it is important to your land or ecosystem.
No worries about that if you are heading to the Natural History Museum in Thiruvananthapuram as you will be provided a multilingual digital tour guide on a tablet phone. The country's first audio-visual digital guide for a museum, which was inaugurated by Museum Minister Kadannapalli Ramachandran last Wednesday, is expected to be open to the public in a few months.
As part of the digital tour, you will be given a tablet phone and a pair of headphones. An app will be installed in the tab, containing videos with voiceovers regarding each section and element of the museum. The voiceover is available in four different languages -- English, Malayalam, Hindi and Tamil — which will be beneficial for the visitors not only from other states but also foreign tourists, said museum superintendent Vijayalekshmi P V.
'Most of the wildlife related videos installed in the tab were shot exclusively for the project. We have only used a minimal amount of stock footage,' she said.
The digital tour begins with a detailed explanation of a 2-crore-year-old fossil wood. As you step into the world of bones and skeletons, you will be viewing the skeletons in person and its original species on screen. After that, you can proceed to the birds' gallery to see the stuffed birds from various landscapes, while the 1-5 minute-long videos will tell you more about their history and relevance.
Never miss a sight as you take the stairs to the first floor -- for your guide will be explaining about the extinct animals carved on those walls, with the help of AI-generated visuals and animations. The range of extinct animals varies from the fear-invoking T-Rex, mammoths and big cats, to the fondly remembered Dodo. Mammals gallery, fishes and so on follow. What could've otherwise been a boring passive tour for non-biology students, has now become a site for wows, thanks to the digital guide.
