Ph.D (M/F) - MuseoXR: Archaeological Exhibits in Museography with Collaborative Extended Reality

This project is situated in the LISN laboratory (https://www.lisn.upsaclay.fr/). LISN owns several immersive viewing environments that are part of the CONTINUUM Equipex+ network (https://www.lri.fr/~mbl/CONTINUUM/), including our EVE platforms (large EVE-Room CAVE and EVE-XR network of personal head-mounted displays). LISN is also a key player of the huge French PEPR eNSEMBLE project whose goal is to explore the future of collaboration.

The main collaboration partners of the project will be a network of scenographers, curators in French museums and a company working in the field of archaeology in the Parisian area. In addition, the Ph.D. student will collaborate with other teams who are part of the ENSEMBLE & CONTINUUM networks in France. Besides that, we encourage the student to spend some time with our world-wide collaborators, especially in North America, Asia and Australasia.

The position is located in a sector covered by the protection of scientific and technical potential (PPST), and therefore requires, in accordance with the regulations, that your arrival be authorised by the competent authority of the MESR.

The practice of scenographers and designers in museography is taking a leap with the immersive medium using eXtended Reality (XR) to curate exhibits. However, for remote and/or inaccessible archaeological sites, the exhibits are often limitedly presented by photographs, 3D printed models and reasonable-size real artefacts at museums. In addition, audiences and public visitors are often left out in this whole process until the final product is finalised and put on display. In this project, using collaborative XR, we aim to bridge this gap by bringing audience (end-users) into the participatory design loop of the dynamic content creation of archaeological exhibits, which, at the same time, helps the scenographic team get feedback on their product from early stages.

We aim to bring in together different stakeholders involved in this curation process for archaeological heritage: museographical team including scenographers and curators at one end, and public audiences at the other end of this symbiosis. Our ultimate goal is to support the democratisation of art with the rise of the digitalisation era. This Ph.D. project is situated in an emerging research area that lies at the intersection of museography, scenography, archaeology and cultural heritage research, human-computer interaction, extended reality, and computer supported collaborative work (CSCW).

The successful candidate will be involved in the design, modelling and development of a collaborative V&AR system for scenography and museography to dynamically create archaeological exhibits. Using user-centred design approach, the Ph.D student will conduct a user research to investigate the current practice of the scenographers and curators in museums. In working closely with a scenographer team, the student will explore novel techniques using immersive technology to help them generate exhibits with virtual content and real objects.

We envision 4 stages in this project:
1. User research on the current practice of scenographic design in museography for archaeological exhibits.
2. Codesigning an effective hybrid collaborative XR framework supporting dynamic content generation with the practitioners in scenography and museography.
3. Investigating novel immersive techniques to dynamically blending multimodal content of scenographic design process.
4. Evaluation of the co-creation of scenographic design workflow using collaborative XR.

The candidate may have various qualifications of Master 2 or equivalent in the field of computer science. The following areas of expertise are in favour, but particular attention will be paid to technical skills and experience in the quantitative and qualitative evaluation of immersive technologies. The ideal candidate must be able to thrive in a fast-paced environment where new technologies and approaches can change rapidly. Skills required include: C#/C++ programming especially in the field of extended reality; experience in developing applications with 3D engines such as Unity3D and/or Unreal Engine.

We are also interested in working with candidates who are motivated, autonomous and have an excellent academic record, and/or research experience. Other qualities of the successful candidate:
• Is fluent in English, both orally and in writing.
• Is empathetic and enjoy working with people from different backgrounds.