CHRONOGRAPH OF THE KOSTOMUKSHA BIRTHPLACE / KOSTOMUKSHA

THE IDEA

Name: Chronograph of the Kostomuksha Birthplace

The exhibition targets at:
- Assisting the development of local community of Kostomuksha, shaping its identity, common consciousness and urban patriotism by constituting a becoming phenomenon of the city cultural heritage which is a system of locally significant symbolic initiatives, achievements, objects, personalities and the dates of their birth.

- Introducing a chronicle of Kostomuksha as a unique settlement that boast short but distinctive history and cultural heritage that can be a source of development for culture, social sphere and economy of the young city by using a unique photo archive and the latest mobile technologies.

- Creating a special exhibition unit within a system of exhibitions and tours of the Cultural and museum center that combines functions of (a) a historical narrative illustrated with unique photo documents, and (b) a reference retrieval system (chronological directory) that guides in the information and cultural environment of the city.

- Creating a friendly high tech information environment within the museum exhibition in order to help the visitors to create their own strategies, scenarios and tours to get familiarized and interact with the city of Kostomuksha, its geography, history, culture, heritage sites and objects, and different aspects of their interpretation and presentation.

Thematic structure of the exhibition:

Born in Kostomuksha:
1. The city (and its elements)
2. Objects (and achievements)
3. Enterprises (and corporations)
4. Organizations (and communities)
5. Monuments (and memorial sites)
6. Happenings (and specific events)
7. People (and "names")
 

THE IMPLEMENTATION

Chronograph of the Kostomuksha Birthplace exhibition is devoted to the history of construction of the mining plant and the city which was built in 1970-1980s by joint efforts of the Soviet Union and Finland and to the today’s life of the young city.

The exhibition occupies two communicating rooms and has two sections:

1) The City is a dynamic exhibition which consists of seven theme sections. Six of them are devoted to one year of the city’s life and the seventh one introduces the local iron ore deposit, its discovery and the iron ore production. Each section has cells with photographs, documents and museum items, a touchscreen control computer, 2 or 3 TV sets with videos and photo presentations. All sections are interconnected into a local information system which runs the touchscreen computers and TV sets. It is also used by the visitors and museum staff to transfer information to the big screen by means of the control terminal and an LCD projector. A dynamic nature of the exhibition is provided by module exhibition equipment and electronic information display. This equipment is quick on responding to new content in the exhibition and allows adding new exhibits (photographs, objects, videos, etc.).

2) The Plant is a movie room with wide-angle screens and three multimedia projectors to demonstrate four films about the mining and processing plant and the city which were produced during the project. Computers in this room are used to create a media library which was started thanks to the project and which contains videos on Kostomuksha. A neighboring TV studio has a video camera, special light, work clothes for visiting the plant and virtual backgrounds with different production sites of the mining plant. In this studio visitors can take photos that imitate their presence at different production sites of the plant and immediately publish them on the web, for instance, in the social networks. A sandbox is another interactive element of this section.

Wi-fi is provided in the whole exhibition.


More photos of the exhibition