Inspired by Richard Fletcher’s amazing 3D captures of the Thames foreshore, we designed a digital diorama experience for the Secrets of the Thames exhibition at London Museum. The experience invites visitors to explore tiny details of three 3D captures of the real foreshore from the perspective of a mudlark.

Visitors can rotate, zoom and explore each section of foreshore, discovering finds in their original context. The interface connects physical objects in the exhibition cases to their locations on the riverbank, bridging the gap between the cleaned museum artefact and its muddy origins.

The installations were designed to be accessible and intuitive, running on Raspberry Pi hardware embedded into custom steel stands within the exhibition setworks. We prototyped multiple interaction models before settling on a simple touch-to-explore approach.