Room of Echoes

The Room of Echoes project recreates different iterations of one room in Liberty Hall Museum over four centuries using interactive 3D media and makes them accessible.

TEAM

Project Director: Professor Ed Johnston, Michael Graves College, Kean University

Liberty Hall Museum Staff

Lead Design Researcher: Liam Elias

MGC Researchers: Lilian Agutu, Megan Laughlin, Katie Maloney, Mark Matarese, Sandra Rodas, Eric Vita, Erica Whyte, James Wright

Introduction

Liberty Hall is an 18th-century American historic site built in 1772 by William Livingston, New Jersey’s first elected governor. It was visited by George Washington, Martha Washington, Alexander Hamilton, Marquis de Lafayette and John Jay among many others. The site houses extensive collections of antique furniture, ceramics, textiles, toys and tools. Over four centuries, Liberty Hall has gone from a fourteen-room Georgian-style house to a fifty-room Victorian Italianate mansion. Many changes have happened to the site, which go unseen to visitors and regular patrons. Also, as Liberty Hall Museum continues to organize and exhibit its collections, the arrangement of items throughout the main building and the surrounding landscape will continue to change. A priority of the museum is to digitally preserve these changes and arrangements and find ways of sharing that preserved information with the public.

Design Challenge

The Room of Echoes project enables visitors to learn about different iterations of one room in Liberty Hall Museum in Union, New Jersey over the past four centuries using interactive 3D media and enables audiences to learn about those spaces from museum specialists anywhere on the grounds.

One challenge for visitors with mobility concerns is that they cannot get up to the main floor of the museum. Our research team collaborated with museum staff to create three historical visualizations which could be experienced on tablets in the accessible visitor center.

Impact

Museum Director Rachael Goldberg’s account of the impact of having this resource at the museum:

"We recently had a 'Transition to Kean' class visit the museum for a tour. In order to get into the museum, one has to complete a five minute walk up to the house and go up eight stairs to enter the main floor. One of the students was in a motorized wheelchair and because of the gravel and lack of accessibility, she was not able to go on tour. Thanks to one of our tour guides and interactive experiences on an iPad, she was able to not only learn about the history of the house but was able to see the inside of the house as the rest of her classmates did. This was the first time since our interactive content has been implemented that we were able to let a visitor see the house without having to be in the house."