Dig It!
- Museum of Sydney
- 2025
An interactive installation that places visitors in a recreation of the 1980s urban excavation at first Government House, now the Museum of Sydney. Visitors are transported back to the site of the dig, where they use a joystick to control the archeologist’s hands, engaging with real archaeological techniques. The work blends contemporary technology with a 1980s look and feel, capturing the lively atmosphere of Sydney at the time, complete with city noises, shifting weather conditions, and the everyday realities of an active dig site.
Technology
Each table has 2 interaction instances driven by a single computer and projection. The arcade-style joysticks and buttons are wired to a single high speed keyboard emulator to communicate with the application. A custom Unity application receives the keyboard input for both players, and renders both instances of the game to the single projected output.
The game has been designed using bespoke pixel art graphics. We used a limited palette of colours to achieve the retro aesthetic, which is supported by ‘dithering’ to create more subtle shades. The artefacts are hidden in the scene using a shader that progressively reveals more of the artefact based on player interaction.
All machines run the same application with one master. This machine hosts a MQTT message broker so that it can broadcast messages to all machines to trigger synced game events.
Credits
- Adam Younis, Game Artist
- Arantxa Uria, 2D Artist
- Aristo Risi, Photography
- Claire Evans, Strategy Director
- Elena Matienko, Sound Artist
- Ella Douglas, Producer
- Evan Davies, Technical Lead (Hardware)
- Jarrod Lambert, Technical Coordinator
- Rene Christen, Technical Lead (Software)
- Shunji Davies, Project Director
- Sophie Penkethman-Young, Strategist
- Tom Siddall, Creative Director