The Arc

Arctic Preservation

A project by Arctic Memory

www.arcticmemory.com

Content

01 02 03 04 05

Introduction Location Architecture Exhibition Project Branding

Introduction

Over the last two decades, Svalbard has become a cradle of world preservation.

The Global Seed Vault and the Arctic World Archive stands as unique institutions in a world in rapid change.

We want to tell the story of preservation at Svalbard – in the past, in the present and in the future.

The ambition for the project is to develop a unique visitor center of international class, focusing on bringing the peculiarity of Svalbard and the Arctic together in one experience.

Content providers

Natural History Museum

The Global Seed Vault Nordgen/Crop Trust

Arctic World Archive Piql AS

Arctic World Archive

Piql, based in Norway and established in 2002 with a purpose of developing a unique machine for analog film. The product, known as the Cinevator revolutionized the method of how the movie industry produced films. In addition to preservation and presenting images and sound, film is a unique medium to preserve irreplaceable information. With this in mind, Piql went further to focus on data preservation using film reels. Piql has developed a technology to transfer digital images and data to a photosensitive 35mm film since establishment in 2002. The film reels can usually store information up to 500 years, and up to 2000 years when stored in optimal conditions. Piql works with a point of departure of developing something greater than themselves. The technology developed by Piql can contribute to securing world heritage with a safer and more unique technology than priorly seen. Therefore, Piql has already secured art institutions and authorities as their customers. In addition to further developing this data preservation center, Piql is aiming to create a visitor center down the road. It will be a center for arctic preservation, it will also have a wider focus than Piql’s business.

The Global Seed Vault

Global Crop Diversity Trust (The global organization for crop diversity) is an international organization working to eradicate poverty and preserve the environment through securing preservation of seeds and genetic material from plants with an importance for the world’s food supply. The focus is on ensuring diversity, as it is believed that it is of the utmost importance to achieve sustainable and productive agriculture. NordGen (Nordisk Genressurssenter) works with preservation and use of genetic resources within agriculture and forestry in the North. This involves preserving seeds from varieties of agricultural plants, cultivation of plants with vegetative propagation and information work on genetic diversity. Crop Trust and NordGen are important partners in the daily operation of the Global Seed Vault. Exhibitions and experiences about the Seed Vault will show the fascinating history of agriculture and how we have become increasingly better at growing crops. It will also explain our ability to secure the world's food supply in the face of climate change, including through the Seed Vault's collections. The exhibitions will show that we are dependent on preserving genetic diversity, because we don’t know what we will need in the future. This part of the center will explain how the seeds are preserved, who owns them, their origination and how they are a part of a greater global agricultural system.

Natural History Museum

Svalbard as an archipelago has a special position in geology due to its migration in plate tectonic history. There is an enormously rich history preserved for eternity within the vast mountain massifs of Svalbard. Geological excavations over the last 200 years have first revealed a valuable layer of coal that has provided a livelihood for the archipelago, and in recent times fossils of plants and animals have been uncovered that testify to a quite different and tropical past. Throughout the history of the globe, Svalbard's tectonic plate has moved from Antarctica, crossed the equator and finally found its current position in the Arctic. Throughout this extensive history, Svalbard has been a very fertile archipelago that has inhabited everything from tropical sea creatures to large dinosaurs. In this context, we are not only a human being in the normal world, here and now. We are animal creatures that roam this planet in the middle of the galaxy. Through mining and archaeological excavations, some layers of history have been removed on Svalbard and used for human needs and research. With the establishment of the Arctic World Archive, we preserve some of the world history, albeit just a small glimpse of it, layer by layer. During the construction of the associated visitor center, this analogy will be visualized, and we will be better able to understand our own past - present and future. The visitor center will make us see the word with new eyes.

Location

Longyearbyen Svalbard 78°N 16°E Population 2310

Site

The Arc is located in the hillside between Longyearbyen airport and Platåfjellet, midway between the Svalbard Global Seed Vault and the Arctic World Archive. The site is surrounded by a massive bowl-shaped landscape wall to the south, while to the north there are spectacular views over the Adventfjord.

The Arc

Svalbard Global Seed Vault

Gruve 3 Artic World Archive

Svalbard Airport

Gruve 3

The Global Seed Vault

The Arc

Longyearbyen

Architecture

The Arc unites an insight into the world's natural and cultural history with an awareness of the planet's climate and food security.

The building creates a unique gathering place for knowledge and new perspectives for the past, present and future.

Project Purpose

The Svalbard Global Seed Vault, the Arctic World Archive and Svalbard's geological history each contain a vast number of fascinating stories, but these stories are largely inaccessible to the public, wrapped inside fossil layers and stored deep within the permafrost vaults. The purpose of this project is to bring these stories to life through a series of interactive exhibits in a building that enhance the experience and facilitate new knowledge, reflection and contemplation.

The Vault

The Ceremony Room

Entrance Hall

Tunnel

The exhibition

Though the material of preservation is from the past, it is always an effort made for the future.

A curation of featured archive items tell the important preservation work being done in the Arctic World Archive and The Global Seed Vault.

Exhibition framework

The Svalbard Archipelago

Memory of the World

Future Food Security

Learn about the efforts that are being made to ensure that our digital memory is made available for future enerations. Explore the various kinds of data that are being stored in the Arctic World Archive.

Discover the achievements and inner workings of the Global Seed Vault and gene banks. Learn why these efforts are essential to ensure the crop diversity required for humanity to be able to feed itself.

Explore the vast history of the archipelago by immersing yourself in large-scale 360° projections and immersive spatial audioscapes that take you through four different chapters of Svalbard’s geological and paleontological past. The signal tree in the center of ceremonial space invites you to contemplate climate change and the fragility (but also resilience) of life on Earth.

Exhibition Elements

Arctic World Archive

Ensuring that our digital memory will be available for future generations

Browse the archive

A curation of featured archive items tell the important preservation work being done in the Arctic World Archive. The collection should be browsable through themes such as Brazil’s law abolishing slavery, Munch’s Scream, Norwegian folk tales, Earth Remote Sensing data from ESA, Hanna Papyrus from Vatican Library, and etc. When one or more tables are not being used, they go into an autoplay mode shuffling the catalog and lighting up many virtual drawers in animated patterns. A bespoke audio solution creates a location-specific spatial auditory experience tailored to each station and an ambient experience for the surrounding parts.

Using touch screen tables

1. A visitor selects an item from the catalog 2. An image of the item is projected on its virtual drawer high up on the wall of the vault 3. A high resolution version with accompanying audio and descriptive text is presented on the touch screen for close examination and learning

Pledge moment

After exploring the content that is stored in the archive, visitors transition into a more solitary experience. Here, they are thinking of themselves as a single consciousness in the history of millions of people and the future of millions more. The visitor is prompted to place their hand on the touch screen, and as their hand as a pledge, they show their commitment to preservation of nature and human culture. As they place their hand on the screen, an image of their hand crosses the projection of the aurora borealis into the vast height of the room that shows the other hands of people who visited the center before. Only the vertical part of the wall that is in front of their station is being taken over by the aurora borealis projection. If multiple people pledge at the same time, the whole wall will be filled with the projection, creating a sensational collective moment for the visitors.

Content management

The projection surface and the grid structure in the space allow for variable sizes and ratios of content. Contents can cover one grid panel, or span over multiple ones. The content is driven by a custom-built online content management system allowing Piql to update the contents on demand. The system automatically scales and adapts the content to the grid. The content could be hosted on an off-site web server which enables the team to modify the content in the exhibit remotely.

Svalbard Global Seed Vault

Without crop diversity, humanity will not be able to feed itself.

Walk through the Vault

The visitor can experience the interior of the Seed Vault through a VR experience. To also give bystanders an immersive experience, high-res life-size imagery of walking through the chambers of the Global Seed Vault is projection-mapped onto the inside faces of the architectural recess. Through conveying the feeling of actually walking through the vault, visitors can explore the vast collection of seeds. By using their gestures, visitors can control the walkthrough themselves. An immersive audio experience that accompanies the walkthrough creates the feeling of actually walking through the chambers. Selected seeds from the Global Seed Vault are projected to the sides of the walkthrough experience and high up on the walls of the room. When in idle mode, the walkthrough will autoplay, highlighting selected items from the Seed Vault. If an online Content Management System would be useful for adding new plants or thematic collections, it is good to know that 3D models require the creation of custom artwork.

Explore the seeds

Visitors can explore a curation of crop plants including both the top seeds that feed the world and a selection of crops that have local cultural significance. Using their gesture 1. The visitor selects an item from the vault 2. The selected item is projected to the side as 3D model or high-res photograph/animation 3. Gesture interactions let the visitor explore the seeds and crops from every angle as if they are holding a giant version of it themselves. Additional pedestals show 3d printed plants of the top food crops that feed the world, as well as some lesser known, local varieties.

The Svalbard Archipelago

A Billion years of history archived in the landmass of Svalbard

Ceremonial Hall

Signal Tree

Ceremonial Hall: 360º Cinema Content

Project Branding

The projection surface and the grid structure in the exhibition space allow for variable sizes and ratios of content cover one grid panel, or span over multiple ones.

Contents can cover one grid panel, or span over multiple ones

This principle also makes the foundation for the identity and branding of the project

A project by Arctic Memory

www.arcticmemory.com