Panoply Vase Animations in the Long Night of the Museums.

All over Europe, museum-lovers have been gathering for night-time celebrations of the collections and activities in Europe’s wonderful museums.

At Panoply, Steve and I have been delighted that some of our vase animations have been included in these splendid events. In Germany, 40 museums took part in Leipzig’s annual event, The Long Night of the Museums. Panoply’s involvement came via a special vase animation screening at Leipzig University’s Institute of Classical Archaeology and Antiquities Museum. The screening, including Hoplites! Greeks at War, Heracles, and The Cheat, gave visitors a chance to see vase scenes come to life and invited them to look afresh at the ancient vases in the museum’s collection. An elegant, neoclassical hall provided a charming backdrop to this celebration of classical culture.

This screening of Panoply animations was the brainchild of Dr. Hans-Peter Müller, who is a researcher at the Leipzig Museum of Antiquities, with specialism in modern conservation and restoration practices, particularly work with casts of ancient statues. The event was hosted by Marco Blechschmidt, an archaeology postgraduate student at the University of Leipzig. Marco provided an insightful commentary throughout the evening, giving an introduction to the Panoply Project, explaining the mythological and historical background to the animations, and presenting information on the vases the animations were made from. The event was attended by young and old proving once again that no one is too young for the beauty of ancient vases or too old for the joy of animation.

If you’d like to get involved in the Long Night of the Museums, visit the project website to find out about Long Night 2016 and to see images of other events from this year.

If you’d like to license vase animations for your museum or gallery, feel free to get in touch via our contacts page.

In other news, the winner of the Irish Schools Storyboarding Competition has been chosen. Photos and a full account will follow soon. Watch this space or follow us on Twitter (via the link above) or Facebook for updates.

Panoply News. New Animation Next Week

It's been a busy and cheerful couple of months for the Panoply Vase Animation Project.

We've celebrated the release of a chapter about the Panoply vase animations in Advancing Engagement: A Handbook for Academic Museums, Volume 3. Written by me (i.e. Sonya!) and Amy Smith, curator of the Ure Museum of Greek Archaeology, ‘Using Animation for Successful Engagement, Promotion, and Learning’ offers details on the vase animation projects undertaken at the Ure Museum and guidance on including animation and storyboarding activities in teaching and museum practice. It’s also been a real pleasure to read the other chapters in the book, which offer insights into all sorts of projects and good practice in leading museums.

Another enjoyable development has been Panoply’s contribution to the 9th Nyon International Festival of Archaeological Films. Hoplites! Greeks at War was flying the flag for vase animation and we’re really pleased that it was shown at such a fantastic event.

This evening we’re exploring another artist’s experiments with ancient Greek pottery by attending the opening of The Labours of Herakles exhibition at the Museum of Classical Archaeology, Cambridge. Marian Maguire has created original artwork drawing on black-figure vases, imagining Herakles as a New Zealand pioneer, taming the land. Wonderful work. You can see examples online and the exhibition is running until 15th August 2015.

In exciting further developments, we will have a new animation for you next week, and Steve is busy at work on a truly wonderful piece that will be out in the summer...

The World of Ancient Music: An Interview with Prof. Conrad Steinmann

Today we’re hearing from Professor Conrad Steinmann, a musician and musical archaeologist specialising in the instruments and music of Classical Greece. Prof. Steinmann lectures at the renowned music institute, Schola Cantorum Basiliensis in Basel, Switzerland, and leads the Melpomen Ensemble, a group who create and perform music in the classical Greek style. We love Melpomen’s music so much that Prof. Steinmann kindly allowed use it on a number of our animations, including Heracles, Sirens, and Medusa.
Prof. Steinmann talks to us here about the sounds and signs of ancient music…
(Please be aware that this interview contains an image of a human burial).

1. What sparked your interest in ancient music?
It’s my curiosity to know what we can find beyond the surface, to scratch this surface and to find a look into a space where things begin. Of course I loved always, since my childhood, the ancient Greek world.

2. You’re a musical archaeologist as well as a musician. Can you tell us a little about what musical archaeology involves?
It depends whether you focus more the musical side or rather the academic side of archaeology. I’m personally a musician with empirical experiences with deep and far going interests in history and archaeology, but my starting point will ever be music making with exactly reconstructed instruments, the sensual approach also to the music of Greece in the 6th and 5th c. BC.

3. How do you use vase iconography in your work?
Many musical scenes and musical instruments are depicted on vases. I found out that vase paintings between 510 and 480 BC show in an extremely realistic way all the details and proportions of the instruments, realistic enough to be of essential help for an instrument maker, in my case the Swiss Paul J. Reichlin.

A charming example of an ancient depiction of aulos playing.

4. Is there much difference in the representation of musical instruments between black and red figure vases?
As I said before, it’s less the difference between black and red figure vases, but much more the time period which shows useable paintings. Nevertheless it has to be said, that we have finally more red figured pottery surviving from antiquity, which serves us to give a lively impression of how instruments could have been.

A burial from Pydna which, unusually, includes a set of aulos pipes (left)

5. Playing the aulos looks really difficult; is it very different to playing other wind instruments?
Well, the aulos is definitely difficult to play and difficult to get prepared with its single reeds. Then, of course circular breathing has to be learnt as well as a special technique to articulate with the fingers instead of the tongue.

6. Who’s your favourite ancient Greek?
I always liked the Athenian comedy writer Aristophanes with his specific and at the same time timeless wit and humour. As a child I admired Herakles and now, as a musician of so called Greek music, I love songwriters such as Sappho or Anakreon with their eternal beauty and wisdom.

Many thanks to Professor Steinmann for sharing his thoughts with us. For more on Melpomen and their work, visit www.melpomen.ch and check out their albums, Sappho and her Time (2010) and Melpomen(2005).

The Procession and a procession of workshops

First things first, we hope you like The Procession, our shiny new animation made for the University College Classical Museum. For more information on the project in which it was developed, scroll down to the previous post.

It’s been a busy time for Panoply. Sonya was at the lovely Loughborough High School in Leicestershire talking vases and ancient warfare with their super switched on classics loving girls.

Shortly afterwards, Sonya gave a presentation for classicists, historians and theologians at the Digby Stuart research centre for religion, society, and human flourishing at the University of Roehampton. This paper was encouraging people to use vase animations or animation related activities for teaching about ancient religion – particularly about ancient depictions of gods and religious activities.

Then it was off to the East Oxford Community Classics Centre. Year 9 sessions on vases and ancient religion led to lots of great questions and great ideas. At a follow-up public kids’ session we watched The Procession, talked about gods, festivals and sacrifices, and followed up with some arty decorating of bulls heads – the perfect offering for the gods who has everything. Always plenty of ancient action at the EOCCC.

Next stop Nottingham, for a BA students’ special workshop on communicating classics. This was part of the classics department’s independent research module. Sonya outlined what Panoply have been doing over the last few years and we watched Clash of the Dicers, The Cheat, and The Procession. Sarah Cole of Time/Image talked digital projects, not least the rise of 3D printing. And John Swogger presented the very cool work he does presenting proper archaeology in comic book format: https://johngswogger.wordpress.com. The Uni of Nottingham students will plan their own classics projects – can’t wait to see what they come up with. Great module. Thanks to Dr Lynn Fotheringham for the invite to talk.

Meanwhile work has begun on our new project; more on that soon. Our next bog will feature an interview with ancient music specialist, Prof. Conrad Steinmann.

Adventures at The University College Dublin Classical Museum

This week we're celebrating the success of a recent project at the University College Dublin Classical Museum. The museum is located in the heart of the university’s School of Classics. It houses Ireland’s leading teaching collection, including a very fine coin collection, a range of inscriptions, and vases from right across the span of classical antiquity. The UCD Classical Museum was also the place where we first presented our ideas for using vase animations in museums at 'The Museum Artefact and Cultural Space’ back in 2009, so it’s extra nice to be back there working with the collection.

The recent project has focused on a late classical krater vase. The vase depicts a festival scene, in which the goddess Nike, holding a bull on a halter, appears before two torch-bearing youths. In a seminar on the Ancient Materialities module, part of the UCD MA in Classics, postgraduate students explored the role of vase animation in exhibiting classical collections, and then worked together to interpret the vase and to plan an enjoyable vase animation that would help visitors to understand the scene. Here you can see a couple of shots of the planning session:

Curator Dr Jo Day picks out a detail on the vase

MA students planning the animation

Sonya talking vase animation with the MAs

The storyboards created by the MA students’ have now been transformed by Steve into a beautiful animation. The animation will be available on a tablet in the museum for visitors to watch as they look at the vase. It will also be available on the Panoply and UCD websites, so that it can be seen by people who can’t make it to the museum and those who just want to see it again! The animation is only one part of the students’ new presentation of the vase. They have developed and set-up an exhibition exploring the themes in the vase scene, such as ancient festivals and the goddess Nike. Their exhibition also explains how vases were made, decorated, and used in classical Greece. Here they are setting it up:

UCD MA students preparing the museum exhibition

Preparing the case

Finishing touches

The animation on display with its vase

Pop along and see the exhibition for yourself! The museum is open during term time on Tuesdays (11.00 - 16.00), Wednesdays (14.00 -15.00), and Fridays (11.30 - 14.30). School groups are always welcome, although they should book in advance.

The animation will be online with its own page soon. Visit again soon to see it, and keep track of updates through Twitter (@SonyaNevin) or through our new Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/panoplyvaseanimation.

If you’d like to know more about vase animations in museums (including the UCD project), you can now read ‘Using Animation for Successful Engagement, Promotion, and Learning’, by Prof. Amy Smith and Panoply’s Dr Sonya Nevin in Advancing Engagement: Handbook for Academic Museums, Volume 3, S. Jandl and M. Gold (eds.), MuseumsEtc Ltd: Edinburgh and Boston, 2014: 330-359.

Season’s Greetings

Season’s Greetings Panoply followers! We’re looking forward to getting properly stuck into our 2015 projects. Expect new animations in January, February, and in the summer. To keep track of what's happening, you can sign-up to the email list on this page and/or check out our brand new Facebook page: www.facebook.com/panoplyvaseanimation

Looking back at 2014, we’re pleased with the outcomes of the Every Soldier has a Story project. Over 12,000 people in 112 countries have seen Hoplites! Greeks at War already; making the Every Soldier photo-film was a lot of fun and we love all the other artwork that people made to go with it – check it out at the bottom of the project page if you haven’t seen it. A session-plan with activity sheet and PowerPoint slides is still on that page too if you fancy leading your own ancient warfare activities.

We’d like to give a big shout-out to CNET for including Panoply in their recent tech review; their positivity and enthusiasm for the animations was much appreciated. You can see the feature below (Panoply’s at 9.30 mins).



Wishing you a wonderful 2015!
Steve and Sonya x

Museum Internships: An Interview with Gabrielle Turner

In this latest blog we're delighted to be talking with Gabrielle Turner, a 3rd year Classical Civilisation student at the University of Roehampton in West London. Gabrielle recently contributed to the Panoply project Every Soldier has a Story as part of her internship at the University of Reading’s Ure Museum. In this interview she discusses her internship, curating a temporary museum case, and studying Classical Civilisation.

1) Tell us about your internship – what did you do?
At my internship at the Ure Museum I helped out with their database by logging in artefacts, and helping out with the exhibit. The latter was a job that I carried on working on after my internship was finished.

2) You curated the Every Soldier has a Story case – what pieces did you choose and why?
I put in a lamp that depicts a ship because there is not much art in the ancient Greek world that portrays the navy. I found this interesting especially as they played such a significant role. The reason for this was because the navy was made out of the poorest citizens and the rich would not want the lower class shown on their vases.

Another vase that I put in depicts a scene of young men performing athletics. I thought this one would be interesting to go in because it will show the visitors how important citizen soldiers were to the state. They had to be trained from such a young age; this vase will give visitors an idea of the intensity of their training.

An athlete holds up a strigil, Attic skyphos-cup, c.425-400BCE, Ure Museum 39.8.1

I also chose a vase depicting hoplites in full armour, looking as if they are heading to war. I chose this one because it highlights how glorified war can be.

Hoplites on the march, Boeotian aryballos, c.600-575BCE, Ure Museum 11.10.6

3) What are you studying at Roehampton for your Classical Civilisation degree?
My current modules this term are Latin and Demosthenes and the Rhetoric of Power. I am also writing my dissertation on the character Tydeus in the ‘Thebaid.’ I have found this great to work on as I have been able to be more independent in my study and chose a subject that I have a lot of interest in.

4) How did you arrange the internship, and would you recommend the experience?
I first sent an email to the Ure Museum telling them about my interests and future career prospects and asking if I could do an internship there. I got my lecturer to double-check my email. I also attached my CV to the email. The process was amazing, it felt great to have the responsibility that I was given. I enjoyed every moment of it and I would definitely recommend this experience to fellow students.

5) Who’s your favourite ancient Greek?
This is tough! I would have to choose Diomedes, son of Tydeus. This is because I find that he is extremely underrated in the Iliad, even though he plays such a prominent role in it. I also like how wily Diomedes and Odysseus are; they work well together as a team.


Many thanks to Gabrielle for taking part in the project and for talking to us today.

The completed 'Every Soldier has a Story' case.