The Australian Museum is offering a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to sit with Sir David Attenborough and experience the sheer beauty and majesty of the Great Barrier Reef.
And thanks to the magic of virtual reality, you can do it all without leaving your chair in Sydney. The director of the Australian Museum Research Institute, Dr. Rebecca Johnson, talks us through this spectacular combination of technology and nature.
“It’s the next best thing to diving,” she says. “Even the anticipation waiting for it to start is like going on a ride. Anything that has David Attenborough is very exciting – it’s scientifically correct, it has his incredible voice, his authority and you know it’s been done really thoroughly.”
Virtual reality, or VR, is a game-changer not only for the tech industry but for museums as well, providing an entirely new way of experiencing documentaries and exhibits.
“This is the first place where the experience has been seen outside the Natural History Museum in London,” says Johnson. “You put the headset on and then you go under the water in this bubble with Sir David Attenborough – you can actually see the bubble if you watch the Life On The Reef doco series that screened on the ABC. It’s cool because it’s being filmed really close to Lizard Island, which is where we have our Australian Museum field station.”
But what about the experience itself? What can excited museum-goers expect, besides the constant paranoia of excitedly flailing into the person next to them?
“It’s just over 20 minutes – you cruise around the reef in the bubble and you can literally look everywhere,” Johnson explains. “If you’re flexible enough, you can even look behind you. If you turn around you’ll see that you’re actually kind of sitting on David Attenborough’s knee whilst he’s looking around and talking, as well as Professor Justin Marshall commentating on what you’re looking at. Whenever I’m on the reef I always like to have a field guide with me so I know what I’m looking at from a scientific, nerdy perspective. So it’s pretty fun having Justin there talking about what you can see.”
And what audiences do get to see is absolutely spectacular. “There’s amazing corals, which include some sections where you can see super close up,” says Johnson. “These aren’t in 3D but instead they’re time-lapsed so you can see the coral polyps doing their thing like eating and filter feeding. You can even see them grow, which is really cool.
“You can also see awesome big potato cods, sharks – you really get everything, including a ‘Nemo’ section, which is very sweet. So you basically get to experience this amazing thing with David Attenborough. A huge amount of content has gone into this particular little film. I’ve seen it a few times and every time you look at it you see something different, because you can look everywhere.”
Because the subject matter revolves around the Great Barrier Reef, there is a deeper message that lies beneath the surface of the experience. The reef isn’t simply there to be marvelled at – it’s in danger of extinction, and raising awareness is an integral part of this VR documentary exhibit.
“So many people don’t know the importance of conservation,” says Johnson. “But if you can see it, you have a much better concept of what it is we need to protect and what is going to be affected by climate change. The narrow range of tolerance that coral have for temperature changes and carbon dioxide levels – if you are exposed to it, then suddenly you view it in a different way.”
David Attenborough’s Virtual Reality Experiences takes place at theAustralian Museum until Monday July 18.
