MIND'S EYE. DIGITAL VIRTUAL OLYMPIC MUSEUM

In capturing the spirit of the Beijing 2008 Olympics in a virtual environment, this digital experiment offers readers a fascinating introduction to museums and their architecture in the 21st century. Architects, IT and communication specialists at Darmstadt University, Germany developed a prototype museum, which they named the Virtual Digital Olympic Museum. This virtual museum, free of the constraints of bricks, mortar and display cases, was able to showcase a new hybrid museum architecture offering its 'visitors' a completely different take on one of the biggest events of this century. The virtual exhibit drew the visitor more deeply and more satisfyingly into the 2008 Olympic Games than even the blanket global TV coverage could allow. Like an intelligent building from a science fiction movie, this information-based building was packed with interactivity at every turn, thus, thus dissolving the barriers between the museum visitor, the building's architecture and the information contained therein. This book documents the development of the museum from its origins through the subsequent prototypes and offers an exciting vision of the future possibilities for recording and representing past events.