Do Touch This: Turning a Plaster Bust Into a Tangible Interface

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DOI

Plaster busts are common exhibition pieces in museums, but they usually are off-limits for touch. While modern exhibition concepts increasingly involve interaction, this rarely includes touching a plaster bust. However, there may be a wealth of information associated with these cultural heritage objects, e.g., their making and their creator's craftsmanship, which tangible interaction could make accessible right on the object. We equipped plaster replicas of such a bust with capacitive sensors and developed a tangible prototype in collaboration with two domain experts from the art museum "Staatliche Antikensammlungen" (Munich, Germany), a curator and a sculptor, in an iterative design approach. Then we tested it in a lab study (N=12) and an in situ study in the museum (N=20). We describe our technical approach, which we also made public as a git project, and discuss our study results about busts as tangible interfaces in the art of sculpting.