The Culture Ministry is embracing the Thailand 4.0 initiative with its new hi-tech “smart museum” and “virtual museum” projects that aim to attract 10-11 million visitors next year.

After two years of planning and an Bt8-million budget to put the nation’s many databases online, the ministry this morning launched six projects at the National Museum in Bangkok.

“With help of the new advance technology and experts from the private sector and local universities, the Culture Ministry is now upgrading our 41 national museums into ‘smart museums’ where visitors can view historical masterpieces on their smart phone or tablet,” Culutre Minister Veera Rojpojanarat said at the press conference.

“Visitors can enjoy learning about the 3D collection with captions in both Thai and English.”

Veera said a virtual exploration of the National Museum would give Internet users a 360-degree view of more than 200 collections.

“We plan to display this ‘virtual museum’ at the airport and tourists attractions to attract more visitors,” Veera added.

The Living Museum Foundation and the College of Arts, Media and Technology at Chiang Mai University helped develop the project with the ministry’s IT department.

“Via our smart museum projects, visitors can enjoy highlights of about 1,000 collections out of over 40,000 collections on display at all 41 museums. Over 200 masterpieces can be seen in 360 degrees,” explained Wanya Prakamthong, the Culture Ministry’s information technology director.

Besides these two projects, the ministry also launched two online games based on the epic “Ramakien”.

A team from Dhurakij Pundit University has come up with a puzzle game called “Money Run” for children aged 6-12, and a 3D action game, “The Road to Lanka”, for people aged 12-24.

The ministry’s mission and its services are available on a smart app called Silpakorn Online, and nearly 2,500 e-books and 500 videos can be found online via the Fine Art Digital Centre app.

Searching the National Archive is also easier now, with 40,000 digital archives, images, maps and videos online.

Source: The Nation