Oceania Digital

A multiplatform project connecting different disciplines and global communities to create a museum concept for the future

What’s new in our project?

November 24, 2023 – Cooperation partners from Samoa visit us

Our cooperation with the National University of Samoa (NUS) was intensified in June 2023 with a visit from Übersee Museum team in Samoa: With the Citizen Science project “Vaisigano River Citizen Science”, the collection of research data to monitor freshwater quality in the Vaisigano River was started in a multi-day project with volunteers. An app provided support. Since this week, our colleagues from Samoa from the Environmental Science Department of the NUS have been visiting us. We are showing them how we document, digitize and preserve knowledge in the natural history collections of the Übersee-Museum.

October 2, 2023 – Weaving A Narrative Workshop Series
In our digital workshop series “Weaving A Narrative”, together with an international group of artists and cultural workers from companies, associations and institutions, we explored the question of how a museum’s collection data can be used by communities and artists. How can data be linked to emotions, stories, memories, or one’s own family history? What can we as a museum contribute to this? Impressive, touching and inspiring in this context was the premiere of works by Pacific artists who had dealt with objects from the digitalpasifik.org database in advance. Sean set a silent film to music, critically illuminating advertisements for tourism in Hawai’i, and Natasha recited a moving poem to her aunt about tapa, a bark raffia, while painting a tapa. Finally, in the last session, Stacey described her poetic journey through the collections search engine and how she found her family again along the way.

Learn more about the workshop

Objects being held in the camera in an online meeting
Mat unfolded by conservator
Zwei Personen halten eine hölzerne Kawa-Schale in die Kamera, im Hintergrund Vitrine

What’s the project about?

The Oceania digital project accompanies our new permanent exhibition (opening 2024). This exhibition aims to change our perspective, leave the walls of the museum behind and allow people in the Pacific region, to engage with our topics. That is why we launched the Oceania digital project in 2021. Together with our cooperation partner, the National University of Samoa (NUS), we want to explore new ways of collaborating, learning from one another and providing digital access to the museum’s Oceania collection.

Oceania digital is a dialog with our partners from the National University of Samoa and networks of artists, researchers, cultural practitioners and communities in the Pacific. Our project is about human encounters, changing perspectives and the courage to take unusual paths as a museum.

Our partners include National University of Samoa. 

National University of Samoa (website)

You can engage with this project through our Facebook group – Oceania Digital Voyages and digital prototypes (coming soon). We are also in the process of developing the museum blackbox, which is a museum concept for the future. In the coming months we will be publishing the information architecture of this project. 

Oceania Collection Voyages (Facebook)