 Ia maia, Ia Caroline, I'm actually the Communications Manager for the Arts Centre in Christchurch. Michael and Sara were unable to make it so I wasn't expecting to be standing up here today, but they have entrusted me to give their presentation. So here goes. Quite a few of you are probably familiar with the Arts Centre in Christchurch. It's reopening in stages. One of the elements that has opened really recently, just in August, is Rutherford's Den. Rutherford's Den has been around for a long time at the Arts Centre. The earthquakes closed it five years ago. It gave the Arts Centre an opportunity to reimagine how Rutherford's story could be told. They brought in Michael and Sarah from SM projects in Australia to use a variety of digital storytelling techniques to tell Rutherford's story. As the communications manager, I can vouch that they've done a fantastic job. We've had fabulous feedback. It's a completely different experience to what it was before the earthquakes and it's given us an opportunity to tell Rutherford's story in a whole lot of different ways. Last week's earthquakes were actually quite a good reminder of the good things that can come out of earthquakes. This is definitely one of them. This is a real success story as is the Arts Centre as it reopens. I hope you come and check it out next time you're in Christchurch. So in 2015 the Arts Centre commenced this ambitious project to redevelop Rutherford's Den. Rutherford's Den is a museum space dedicated to the legacy of Lord Ernest Rutherford, who's one of New Zealand's most prominent scientists. You're probably aware of this. He's the guy with the moustache on the $100 note, if you didn't realise that. We do give away quite a lot of moustaches actually, quite popular in the shop. The Arts Centre is based within the grounds of the former University of Canterbury which is where Ernest Rutherford undertock his first significant scientific research as a master's student in the 1890s. So this is the real beauty of this space as it's a heritage space, but within that we've fitted all these amazing new digital storytelling devices which fit beautifully within this space, but it's really bringing to life this old story and it's actually the thing that blows away particularly the students who come into this space because they do run an education programme, is that he actually studied there and we take them down to the den, which you'll see, the actual den where he studied and I think it really helps to bring home to them that from really humble beginnings you can take an idea and turn it into something pretty amazing, which is what Rutherford did. So it was at the Arts Centre when he worked at the Arts Centre at University of Canterbury he was awarded an international exhibition scholarship to Cambridge University where he joined the likes of JJ Thompson working at the very forefront of modern physics in the 20th century. So here's the Arts Centre, this is a couple of months old now, this is the North Quad it's all reopened, it's been landscaped, if you go to the Arts Centre website you can see how it looks today. Rutherford's den is adjacent to this, it's kind of down in this bottom right-hand corner so this is where Rutherford, this is the campus where Rutherford studied. So in spite of the Canterbury earthquakes, the Arts Centre has remained one of the most significant clusters of heritage buildings in New Zealand and rebuilding the Arts Centre or restoring it following the earthquakes has not been about just restoring the heritage features but also fitting it out with the latest modern infrastructure and technology so this is throughout the whole site. Rutherford's den is a really great example of how this has become a reality but the work behind the seams, this is the library building for example and the North Quad underneath that, there's been huge trenches dug for a lot of services and for a lot of data and the whole site now has got not just the latest data it's also centrally heated and that's drawn from on-site aquifers so the site will be sustainable so there's a lot of that kind of stuff going on as we reimagine the Arts Centre. So the vision for the Arts Centre is to create a hub for creative entrepreneurs in the heart of Christchurch and I think the Rutherford's Den is a really good step in this direction. This is actually a still from a time lapse which you can see on our website if you go to the Rutherford's Den pages so you can see the transformation from a heritage space into the Rutherford's Den of today. So on the outside there and you can sort of kind of make out the ceiling that's all been retained, everything's had to be fitted in there in amongst strict heritage restrictions. Before the earthquakes this was just an empty room essentially so what they've done here is in the middle you can see a circular type of experience there so you can actually step inside that and we'll see some visuals from that shortly. So as you learn about atomic structure you step inside that experience and you're actually surrounded by visuals that explain atoms and it actually responds to your movements so it's a really really great way of getting across the idea of how atomic structure was discovered. In the foreground you can see quite modern looking equipment there's a lot of iPads, there's a lot of interactive experiments with magnets and so forth so people are really encouraged to come in and interact with the exhibition it's not about just coming in and reading stuff there's a lot of reading but kids in particular love the fact that they can come in and play with all the stuff that's in there. So this is the Rutherford's Den webpage if you go to the arts centre site you can dig in a lot more to find out about all the different elements that we've got going on in the space and you'll find a mix of interactive, immersive and hands-on exhibits and interpretations and they're not only devoted to Rutherford as a person but also to his qualities of scientific imagination, curiosity and collaboration so it doesn't just focus on Rutherford himself it delves into a lot of the work of his peers so this is just a really short excerpt from one of the videos that plays up in the main lecture theatre so this is a lecture theatre that has the old wooden benches as they were back in the 1880s where Rutherford himself sat and now instead of the blackboards we've put up these digital screens that play a video so we call it a digital blackboard it looks like a blackboard before it plays you may not even realise that you're in a room that's been fitted out with modern technology and that's part of the mystique of the space really you need to get in there and you get fooled into thinking you've just stepped back in time into an old lecture theatre and it looks beautiful and it's been restored perfectly but the next thing on these massive screens you get this beautiful video playing explaining the story of Rutherford and his contemporaries so for Sarah and her team when they were selected in 2015 they treated the opportunity to reimagine Rutherford's den as a chance to revisit this iconic legend using the tools and methods of site-specific digital storytelling and interpretation SM projects based in Australia they were formed out of a passion for digital storytelling and the creative possibilities afforded by mixed media interventions into a space integrating physical and digital experiences into museum and placemaking contexts so much of the studio's previous work helped create new experiences of the Arts Centre and the Rutherford's Den's history using the tools of augmented and immersive media sound and projection to connect with historical collections and novel ways bringing the tools and the ethos of place-based digital storytelling allowed them to reimagine Rutherford's own story and its place in our digital era they connected it with the origins of the Electric Universe and to the future of energy and our collective scientific imagination so they do this in various ways one of the great ways they connect to the future of energy is in what we call the future energy room funnily enough and kids love this one as well you go in there and it's got a screen on the wall and you stand on a square in front of it and essentially if you for example wave your arms and there is a Kia on the screen wave your arms, it actually picks up your movements and as you're waving your arms you might be generating wind energy for example, or in another one there's a Kiwi and he's stomping his feet and he's digging down onto the earth so he's generating energy so it's a really great interactive way of explaining to children just how renewable energy comes about and again to something completely new and original for Rutherford's Den it's gone down really really well so traditionally Rutherford's story is told as that of an iconic genius a man who discovered the nuclear structure of the atom Einstein called him a second Newton and he was also called the greatest experimental physicist ever to have lived this is the heroic view of the scientist but it underplays the extent to which Rutherford was a collaborator and benefited from the insights and abilities of others through digital storytelling and digital curation visitors can explore the many connections between Rutherford and other realms of scientific discovery to connect the discoveries of light, magnetism, electricity, colour and atomic structure to connect art and science but also to connect the world of atoms with the contemporary world of bits as you arrive in Rutherford's Den this is what we call the Rutherford's Wall so what you can't see from this is that it is actually an interactive screen so you can touch the screen move the elements around to explore the particular areas that you are really interested in and one thing we've found is that people when they arrive they don't realise it's interactive and it's quite a new idea, a concept for them that they can actually come in and touch the screen to find out what they need to know so it's been quite good that this is located very close to the entry so that we can actually explain that to them the whole style of the experience has been kept quite minimal so we don't want to put up too many signs we want people to just explore and discover as they go through the immersive experiment or experience I was talking about earlier that explains the atomic structure this is an excerpt from that so you're standing inside this huge curved experience and it interacts as you move and it explains to you the atomic structure so it's a really beautiful way of using the digital storytelling to get that message across to people this is the den this is the actual cloakroom that Rutherford had converted into a space for his early experiments so down here we've used sound recordings and a film projected onto the wall to give people the experience that they're actually in the space with him and again this has been really great for children so I'm needing to wrap up now so trying to, all I can say is look you want to come down and see this next time you're in Christchurch there is a lot to see in this I'm not a science person I'm an arts person and I've learnt a lot and every time I go in there I learn a lot and at the end of the day as a communications person to me that's what it's all about for people to come into the space and learn about Rutherford in their own way and I think that they have the choice by using such a variety of techniques Thank you