Bring XR
Draw & Code are excited to announce our involvement in an ambitious museum slated to open in Mexico in 2020. Located in San Pedro Garza Garcia, the Cretaceous Museum of Vallecillo is a paleontology attraction that is going to be infused with immersive technology, animation and experiences that bring the prehistoric world vividly to life.
As immersive technology consultants on the project, Draw & Code are partnering with Silicon Valley-based emerging technology specialists Dave Martinez Ventures. The driving force behind the project and a major proponent of the potential of augmented reality, Dave Martinez and his eponymous company are assembling a team of creative technologists to assess how best to implement immersive technology for museum environments.
After the success of the Terracotta Army’s visit to Liverpool, the smash-hit exhibition that featured Draw & Code’s project AR and animation, we are keen to leverage this experience as part of the team delivering the immersive content for the Cretaceous Museum of Vallecillo.
The museum is the first of three planned museums in the region, situated near Monterrey. The project has been commissioned by the incumbent Mayor of San Pedro Garza García, Mauricio fernández Garza, who has embraced the use of innovative technologies in culture and heritage. However, this is a privately funded project with no government money being spent on the museum.
Work has already commenced on early-stage R&D into how immersive technologies can be used in the museum. Draw & Code and Dave Martinez Ventures have made two site visits while the Mexican team have travelled to Europe, sampling the latest tech here in Liverpool and in Germany too.
To Mexico Museum
The first stage in the project is to take the architect’s models for the museum and to turn them into a virtual reality visualisation. This has been used as a planning tool to allow the designers of the installations to experience the vistas and scale of the room. The interactive model has also been transferred into the Igloo shared VR environment. This has allowed collaborative work that still retains the immersion of the headset-based VR and has proved ideal for consulting with suppliers to give them a very vivid taster of the layout of the museum.
Dave Martinez said, “This ambitious project represents what Dave Martinez Ventures is all about – an international collaboration that brings together the best of Mexico, the US and the UK to produce something unique.”
Working out of San Francisco but with Mexican heritage, Dave Martinez is relishing the opportunity to spec what promises to be a technologically-advanced and creatively spectacular museum.
The entrepreneur has searched far and wide for the ideal partners for the delivery of the project. “Draw & Code are ideal partners for the Cretaceous Museum of Vallecillo with their mastery of delivering cultural content using immersive techniques.”
The technology that will be created for the paleontology museum will enhance the visitor experience, it will also enable virtual tours with digitised artifacts and experiences that can be enjoyed at home. The intention is to tell the story of the fossils that are on display, seeing them in context and in their environment.
Draw & Code’s creative director Andy Cooper said, “The opportunity to work on museum installations from such an early stage is incredible – the commissioning team share Draw & Code’s vision of taking visitor experiences into the 21st century.”
