The nomadic horse rider
Animating archaeology
Client: Staatliches Museum für Archäologie Chemnitz
Medium: animation film · installation
Subject: archaeology · storytelling for museums
Skills: illustration · animation · storytelling
I get frequently asked by friends what I am working on right now. But when I answered "an animation film about a tattooed ice mummy", I got a lot of confused looks.
This tattooed ice mummy actually was an exhibit in the special exhibition "chic!" at the Staatliches Museum für Archäology Chemnitz in 2022. The general exhibition dealt with different archaelogical and historical facets of human jewelry and body modifications throughout millenia. The ice mummy was supposed to be one of the highlights of the show. These are the human remains of a nomad horse rider who lived in today's Siberia sometime between 500 and 300 bc. Because of the special Siberian climate he was "conserved" in his grave chamber.
I developed this animation - or rather an installation? - together with archaelogist and curator Dr. Karina Iwe. We aimed to use images and storytelling to make the backstory to the ice mummy much more compelling and approachable than a classical text label could have done. The challenge was to find the right balance between scientific evidence and visual vividness: What does science actually know about this nomadic rider's life? Where are blank spots - and how can we develop images for the animation without "inventing" too much noise to fill those blanks?
Even though we decided to go with a highly abstract style, every image required surprisingly much detail information. For example: If I draw the rider bare-chested, does he have chest hair? If so, how much hair? And where exactly? And how bouncy should I animate his felt hat? Because even if the visitors don't consciously pay attention to its bounciness, this is a detail that will determine how soft or stiff they imagine the felt to be.
I had to think and decide about all these details, and I had intense and fruitful exchanges about those questions with Karina, who contributed scientific insight and expert knowledge.
STORYTELLING
Karina approached me with the idea to create an animation to accompany the exhibit of the ice mummy - in order to breathe life into the subject of the tattoos and to translate rather 'abstract information' into concrete scenes. I was instantly thrilled, because often times I find myself a bit disappointed by German museums, because - in my humble opinion - a lot of potential to tell interesting and engaging stories is wasted, because they focus too much on the mere exhibits.
But I must admit that I struggled with the 'storytelling' at first. Classical storytelling is built on personal conflict and development, but both of these elements are naturally lacking in the research about a prehistoric topic.
But by pure chance I happened to visit Vadehavcentret in Ribe (Denmark) at the time. Inside their permanent exhibition, they work heavily with animation. To see their work helped me free myself from the idea of a classical short film - and instead understand it as a kind of installation that creates an associative space.
SUBTITLES
As mentioned, every visualisation requires lots of decisions about little details. In a best case scenario these decisions are backed up by scientific findings; but in some cases, they are just not. To put emphasis on this constructive character of our narrative, we decided to work with subtitles. They also tell the story - sometimes in line with the images, sometimes they relativize what we see.
We produced three language versions for the exhibition: German, English and Russian.
VISUAL STYLE
For obvious reasons the visual style is loosely inspired by the tattoos (which means 'Scythian animal style').
At the same time we consciously decided for a style with a high level of abstraction. This allowed me to go into details within scenes that we knew a lot about, like the elaborate design of the mountain landscape (left). However, it was also possible to only vaguely situate a scene, if there were no scientific findings to confirm where and how they took place - like the scene in which the nomadic rider gets his tattoo (below).
THE EXHIBITION
But things turned out differently than planned. Shortly before the exhibition opening, Putin startet the war on Ukraine. Within a few days it became clear that the two years Karina worked on getting the ice mummy as a loan from Siberia were wasted. The mummy would not be allowed to cross the Russian border - and the exhibition's dramaturgy which relied on the mummy as the opening piece would fall apart.
But thanks to the close and personal cooperation the Russian scientists (who publicly condemned the war) and the museum found a solution: The ice mummy was represented by a digital copy, which was projected on the pedestal.
However, the circumstances completely changed the narrative of the room: The museum now used the blank spot that the ice mummy left to discuss the issue of war and its implications for science and culture.
A note in passing: The first scenes are designed with black bleeds, so that the projection does not appear rectangular, but merges with the surrounding space.
More museums:
More history:
More exhibition:
The nomadic horse rider
Animating archaeology
Client: Staatliches Museum für Archäologie Chemnitz
Medium: animation film · installation
Subject: archaeology · storytelling for museums
Skills: illustration · animation · storytelling
I get frequently asked by friends what I am working on right now. But when I answered "an animation film about a tattooed ice mummy", I got a lot of confused looks.
This tattooed ice mummy actually was an exhibit in the special exhibition "chic!" at the Staatliches Museum für Archäology Chemnitz in 2022. The general exhibition dealt with different archaelogical and historical facets of human jewelry and body modifications throughout millenia. The ice mummy was supposed to be one of the highlights of the show. These are the human remains of a nomad horse rider who lived in today's Siberia sometime between 500 and 300 bc. Because of the special Siberian climate he was "conserved" in his grave chamber.
I developed this animation - or rather an installation? - together with archaelogist and curator Dr. Karina Iwe. We aimed to use images and storytelling to make the backstory to the ice mummy much more compelling and approachable than a classical text label could have done.
The challenge was to find the right balance between scientific evidence and visual vividness: What does science actually know about this nomadic rider's life? Where are blank spots - and how can we develop images for the animation without "inventing" too much noise to fill those blanks?
Even though we decided to go with a highly abstract style, every image required surprisingly much detail information. For example: If I draw the rider bare-chested, does he have chest hair? If so, how much hair? And where exactly? And how bouncy should I animate his felt hat? Because even if the visitors don't consciously pay attention to its bounciness, this is a detail that will determine how soft or stiff they imagine the felt to be.
I had to think and decide about all these details, and I had intense and fruitful exchanges about those questions with Karina, who contributed scientific insight and expert knowledge.
STORYTELLING
Karina approached me with the idea to create an animation to accompany the exhibit of the ice mummy - in order to breathe life into the subject of the tattoos and to translate rather 'abstract information' into concrete scenes. I was instantly thrilled, because often times I find myself a bit disappointed by German museums, because - in my humble opinion - a lot of potential to tell interesting and engaging stories is wasted, because they focus too much on the mere exhibits.
But I must admit that I struggled with the 'storytelling' at first. Classical storytelling is built on personal conflict and development, but both of these elements are naturally lacking in the research about a prehistoric topic.
But by pure chance I happened to visit Vadehavcentret in Ribe (Denmark) at the time. Inside their permanent exhibition, they work heavily with animation. To see their work helped me free myself from the idea of a classical short film - and instead understand it as a kind of installation that creates an associative space.
SUBTITLES
As mentioned, every visualisation requires lots of decisions about little details. In a best case scenario these decisions are backed up by scientific findings; but in some cases, they are just not. To put emphasis on this constructive character of our narrative, we decided to work with subtitles. They also tell the story - sometimes in line with the images, sometimes they relativize what we see.
We produced three language versions for the exhibition: German, English and Russian.
VISUAL STYLE
For obvious reasons the visual style is loosely inspired by the tattoos (which means 'Scythian animal style').
At the same time we consciously decided for a style with a high level of abstraction. This allowed me to go into details within scenes that we knew a lot about, like the elaborate design of the mountain landscape (above). However, it was also possible to only vaguely situate a scene, if there were no scientific findings to confirm where and how they took place - like the scene in which the nomadic rider gets his tattoo (below).
THE EXHIBITION
But things turned out differently than planned. Shortly before the exhibition opening, Putin startet the war on Ukraine. Within a few days it became clear that the two years Karina worked on getting the ice mummy as a loan from Siberia were wasted. The mummy would not be allowed to cross the Russian border - and the exhibition's dramaturgy which relied on the mummy as the opening piece would fall apart.
But thanks to the close and personal cooperation the Russian scientists (who publicly condemned the war) and the museum found a solution: The ice mummy was represented by a digital copy, which was projected on the pedestal.
However, the circumstances completely changed the narrative of the room: The museum now used the blank spot that the ice mummy left to discuss the issue of war and its implications for science and culture.
A note in passing: The first scenes are designed with black bleeds, so that the projection does not appear rectangular, but merges with the surrounding space.
More history:
More exhibition:
More museums:
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STUDIO RANOKEL
Komplexe Inhalte, charmant kommuniziert
Illustration, Konzept & Storytelling
Sarah Gorf-Roloff
sarah@studioranokel.de
0174-9957992
Rotenhäuser Straße 75f · 21107 Hamburg
StNr 47/074/03204
Meine aktuelle Datenschutzerklärung findet sich hier.
Alle hier veröffentlichten Arbeiten und Inhalte unterliegen dem deutschen Urheberrecht. Die Vervielfältigung, Bearbeitung, Verbreitung und jegliche Art der Verwertung bedürfen der schriftlichen Zustimmung der Urheberin.