It's starting soon! On 24 September, the 3D Hackathon 2022 will kick off in Berlin. The NFDI4Biodiversity and NFDI4Culture consortia of the National Research Data Infrastructure are organizing the hackathon together with the 3D digitization network AG3D. The Museum für Naturkunde Berlin is represented in both NFDI consortia and, as one of the co-organizers, is itself providing data for the hackathon. Under this year's motto Creating New Dimensions, programmers, scientists, cultural workers, designers and enthusiasts with and without programming experience will come together.
What will happen?
Interested parties from different disciplines and diverse backgrounds form several cross-disciplinary teams to test creative approaches and novel solutions in dealing with data. The focus will be on 3D: for example, many of the datasets provided will contain a wide variety of 3D models, but the final product may also produce 3D projects from 2D data through creative transformation processes. The Mediasphere For Nature, the multimedia application lab at the Museum für Naturkunde Berlin, will present two different data sets at the kickoff. One is 3D meshes of snake skeletons and heads from the museum's CT lab, and the other one includes 3D models of historical objects, e.g., from the collections of minerals, insects, birds, mammals, and mollusks, as well as from the archive of the Historical Image and Document Collections.
This is not the first time that such a hackathon participation has taken place: For years, the museum has consistently supported creative engagement with its collection data and digitized material and has often been a data provider for various Coding Da Vinci hackathons, most recently at the CdV Ost with a data set of fantastic drawings by Christian Gottfried Ehrenberg.
When does it start?
How the data can be used, will be decided by the hackathon teams, i.e. anyone who wants to be creative and is interested in science and 3D. The hackathon will begin on the weekend of 24 and 25 September 2022 with a kick-off event at the Berlin State Library. After a four-week sprint phase, the teams will present their results, and the winners will be announced at the grand finale at the Museum für Naturkunde Berlin on 24 October.
Our mission
The Hackathon aims to break down boundaries, weave together the worlds of culture, nature and technology, enable new perspectives and pave the way for alternative ways of conveying knowledge. Data, users, science, audience, institutions and communities should all be on eye level and network with each other. The event is supported within the museum by the project Collection Discovery and Development, which is particularly dedicated to a multi-perspective view of the museum's scientific collection and the creative reuse of digitized material.
Participate now!
There are still free places for participants – enrich this event yourself and take the opportunity to experiment in teams with freely available data and design apps, websites, VR/AR implementations, installations or whatever else your imagination can come up with. At Creating New Dimensions, everyone is invited to contribute their individual talents and skills.