Image: A visitor at The Film Catcher (Eye Filmmuseum, Jordi Wallenburg)
The 2023 Museums + Heritage Award winner used AI and immersive projections to allow visitors to explore thousands of videos from its vast collection.
Based in Amsterdam, The Eye Filmmuseum’s collection of over 54,000 films presented a challenge; how to coherently present such a collection to its visitors.
The museum for film and the art of the moving image in The Netherlands decided on a solution which would surround visitors in an immersive space, capable of displaying thousands of semantically related visuals in every direction.
Its resulting 360° projection installation, the Film Catcher, allows visitors to immerse themselves in images from Eye’s collection and search the collection using one of nine tablets placed in the room as a remote control.
A thousand films from the collection were processed through an artificial intelligence program, which generated data from video clips based on faces, actors, objects and emotions and film-specific features such as scenes, shot framing and rolling credits. The software analysis made large amounts of films searchable to visitors by just visual characteristics.
The winners of the Best Use of Digital International sponsored by @Convious is… @Eye_film, Studio Louter and @kissthefrog_nl for Film Catcher! Congratulations! #MandHAwards2023 pic.twitter.com/wsZNVApKAC
— Museums + Heritage Show & Awards (@MandHShow) May 10, 2023
Earlier this year the museum took home the Best Use of Digital – International Award at the Museums + Heritage Awards for the project.
The judges commented: “Breaking the boundaries of the traditional view of access to collections, the judges were impressed by this innovative approach to giving unmediated access to a rich and extensive collection of film.”
The museum saw an increase in visitors following the project’s opening and now aims to achieve 120,000 visits to the project and relating Permanent Exhibition, representing a 20% growth compared to its current visitor numbers.
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