Interactive exhibition on botanist Dodoens
The library of the Catholic University of Leuven, Belgium, in 2017 celebrated the 16th century botanist Rembert Dodoens, himself once a student of that ancient university. A modern day student used MuPop to set up an interactive exhibition that combined imagery from books of Dodoens and contemporaries, with the more generic theme of caring for and preserving old books and documents.
The MuPop installation was placed in the hall of the university library, providing an appetizer for those visitors and passers-by with an interest in the themes of Dodoens and caring for old books. Using their own smartphones, they could view the images and listen to explanatory audio commentary. And, of course, use the digital exhibtion as an inspiration to explore further in the library’s special collections.
MuPop has proven to be an excellent and low threshold medium to give the general public the opportunity to view and get detailed info on digitised art and other materials. Apart from getting a quick overview, there is also the opportunity to view high resolution images, which can be very interesting if one wants to study the minute details of paintings, for example.