Citi Money Gallery – A recap

Animation showing Computed Tomography of coin hoard and visualisation of the hoard from Digital Economy USRG on Vimeo. Animation created from 3D images of the Selby area hoard inside one of its two pots (c) University of Southampton 2012. A higher quality version can be seen on my gallery page.

The video is a combination of CT Scanning of the Selby Hoard, produced and processed by Richard Boardman and Mark Mavrogordato (mu-Vis CT centre: southampton.ac.uk/muvis/), arranged by my colleague James Miles into a short sequence of animation and then an accompanying 3DS Max animation completed by myself. Both myself and James work out of the Archaeological Computing Research Group at Southampton University Archaeology Department. We are also grateful to all of the museums and other bodies involved and in particular to the Portable Antiquities Scheme (finds.org.uk) and the British Museum (britishmuseum.org).

About a month ago now, I went over to London to see some of my recent animation work in the British Museum, which can be seen above at the end of the video from around the 35 second mark onwards. The opening of the exhibition was on the 12th June and featured a variety of speakers, including the governor of the bank of England, Mervyn King. They spoke about the history of money, it’s place as a commodity, it’s symbolic nature and also about how it’s influence has changed since it’s conception as a form of exchange. The evening lasted for around two hours, beginning with the speeches and then ending in a walk around the gallery, which allowed networking and discussion over it’s contents. It was interesting to see the Museum in a way I had not witnessed before and walking through the grand atrium without the public actually made the place feel a lot more clinical than I was used to. The exhibition is very close to the entrance of the museum, sitting on the right of the exit from the main staircase and I was in fact told by people on the night that it sits in one of the most visited areas of the museum, which bodes well for exposure!

All in all it was a very successful event with a series of well placed anecdotes and jokes by the speakers and an interesting selection of attendees ranging from prominent members of Citi bank to curators, money collectors and other academics interested in the study of anything money orientated. Below are a few photographs from the night, apologies about the quality, we only had an Ipod Touch to take images with.

Above: A cheeky shot of Mervyn King speaking in front of the Olympic medal collection

Photograph of the Selby Hoard Display, with the animation mounted at the top left.

Photograph of the mounted Animation

One thing that I was pleasantly surprised about was the actual quality of the screens they had used within the exhibition. Although it doesn’t look like it in the image above, there were actually very few reflections in the glass and the display was incredibly clear. I was informed that they had actually mounted a series of Ipads, masked by a black frame into the cabinets and it seemed to be a very successful way to add moving imagery into the exhibition.