Digital reviews | Ancient maps, multilingualism and cursed objects

Oculi Mundi, The Sunderland Collection

What does online cultural heritage look like as a private affair, without the obligations or constraints of a public institution? The Sunderland Collection is a small private collection of maps. As part of a programme of initiatives to increase its impact, it has launched a new website to show off its entirely digitised collection: Oculi Mundi (The Eyes of the World).

The content is undeniably gorgeous: 600 years of cartographic history in more than 130 historical maps of the earth and heavens. Each one has been digitised in extremely high resolution, showing everything from windheads to fictitious medieval ocean islands in perfect detail. An impressive zoom-and-pan tutorial shows you how to read the maps and understand the difference between a Ptolemaic projection and a Mercator.

The downside is that the website feels less like a website than it should do, and more like a standalone interactive. The team behind it were keen to demonstrate the experiential value of online digital heritage, and briefed architects and designers to build something “innovative that looked like nothing else out there”.

The result is that the user has to figure out how the site works before they can use it – from the floating globes on the homepage to the scroll-and-slide narrative content. Curiously, it works better on a phone, where pushing things along with your thumb is more intuitive. One nice touch is the ability to switch between “explore” and “research” modes.

Other benefits of being a private concern are that you can use the open standard IIIF technology to deliver the images, but you are under no obligation to openly license the images themselves.

It’s one way to make a splash with a small but impressive private collection. But at some point in developing this project somebody should have asked if vanity was getting in the way of usability.

Website | The Multilingual Museum, Manchester

In lockdown, when visiting museums was impossible, Manchester Museum’s Multilingual Museum website began to allow people to engage with its collections.

The site has now been revamped and relaunched on a robust Wordpress platform. It allows users to translate existing interpretations of objects and images from Manchester’s collections and to tell their own stories about them.

The experience is built around two key practices: digital volunteering (allowing people to contribute from their own homes and environments); and “storied translation” (the idea that translation is rooted in personal experience and cultural heritage rather than in just vocabulary and grammar).

This makes for a very different experience from simply running a catalogue page through Google Translate. Many of the pages contain fascinating conversations about the meanings and use of simple objects. For instance, the use of cooking pots and serving trays across different cultures.

For a casual visitor, this might be a fun supplement to the learning app Duolingo if you’re learning a language. For deeper engagement, as the comments and conversations show, it can be a great place to tell other people about your own cultural heritage and the meaning of objects.

Podcast | Cursed Objects

Not everyone obsessed with material culture works in a museum. Some of them have podcasts, like Cursed Objects.

In each episode, journalist Dan Hancox and historian Kasia Tee take on consumer culture and modern life, by looking at a small and highly cursed object, from a baked beans clock to a Toby Jug with an image of John Major’s face.

Begun in lockdown, and now several seasons strong, Hancox, Tee and their guests are experts at pulling out the implications of the mundane (and some laughs, too). Something as simple as a Catford-branded bottle opener can spark a wide-ranging discussion about placemaking and gentrification. Most episodes are available free on Spotify and elsewhere, with bonus content for Patreon supporters.