During the first week of October, the MA Digital Narratives’ students did an excursion to the @mfnberlin Museum für Naturkunde Berlin as part of their “Production Exercise” in the first semester of their studies. As part of a cooperation with Mediasphere For Nature, the museum’s multimedia application lab, the students have been tasked to produce experienceable prototypes for digital project ideas that bring two datasets from the Museum’s collection to life. The Museum für Naturkunde Berlin is the largest natural history museum in Germany. The collection includes about 30 million mostly analog objects, many of which have already been digitized.

The students have been working with two datasets from the collection: A set of 10,000 out of 35,000 insect drawers (boxes containing specimens of different species grouped taxonomically e.g. beetles, butterflies) that have been digitized through high definition photos. Approximately 3000 images of historical drawings of Christian Gottfried Ehrenberg (1795-1876), a zoologist, botanist, geologist, physician and one of the most famous and productive scientists of his time. We can’t wait to see what they come up with!