Extending Physical Collections Into the Virtual Space of a Digital Dome

The Earth Theater at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History (Carnegie MNH) in Pittsburgh is an all-digital partial dome display, an immersive theater. Our current offerings include an Egyptian temple, a virtual dinosaur exhibit, a Seneca Village, and a simulated Ant Mound. Each one is a three-dimensional virtual world, which a docent can navigate at will while providing a guided tour. Each virtual world is thematically tied to one of the physical collections at the museum, effectively extending it into virtual space. To produce these shows, the CMNH has collaborated with PublicVR (a Boston area non-profit) and the Art Institutes (Pittsburgh and Boston), a chain of colleges in the electronic arts. Under PublicVR’s supervision, students from the Art Institutes earn course and internship credit making artifacts for the environments (Egypt) or the entire environment itself (Seneca and Ant Mound).