“Reawaken the treasure ship: Asian Maritime Silk Road”, an experiential exhibition of the Asian cultural heritage, is an interactive content based on the 14th Century shipwreck and the artifacts discovered off the coast of Sinan Islands in Jeollanam-do.

The Shinan Shipwreck was discovered in 1975 and was revealed to the public over the next 20 years of recovery and restoration. It was a 30-m long, 260-t merchant vessel that was heading to Japan from China when it sank in the West Sea. Shinan Shipwreck is a maritime cultural resource that allows us to examine the traditions of cultural exchange and trade in East Asia. It has a considerable significance as a material that testifies to the trajectory of the Silk Road, an important passageway in the exchange between the East and the West. Nearly 27,000 pieces of artifacts that testify to the culture and lifestyle of East Asia at that time, including wooden products, currency, and porcelain, were recovered from the Shinan Shipwreck.

The exhibition is a 3D visual recreation of the sinking, loss, and recovery of the Shinan Shipwreck through a media wall space. We hope that our projection mapping and LED media walls can present a multifaceted experience of an Asian maritime cultural heritage, Shinan Shipwreck.

The remains of the ship, recovered from seabed, is currently displayed in the Mokpo National Maritime Museum under the care of National Research Institute of Maritime Cultural Heritage. The porcelain artifacts recovered from the shipwreck are on display in Gwangju National Museum. The researchers used the 3D scans and modeling materials used to restore the artifacts from these organizations to establish a virtual model of the ship, and acquired 3D scans for ceramic artifacts. A 3D scan data is made up of thousands of points that recreate the original, reprocessed into a digital form to be included in this participatory interactive content.