Interactive Visualization of the Lion Man in a Digital Exhibition

The Lion Man is one of the oldest man-made works of art. The sculpture was carved about 40,000 years ago from mammoth ivory and was found just before the outbreak of the second world war in the Lonetal, at the foot of the Swabian Alb. Within this project we visualize digital scans of the lion man in close cooperation with the Ulmer Museum and in connection to the successful “Ice Age Art” application for Unesco World Cultural Heritage site. The aim of the project is the development of an interactive media station which primarily supports an interactive exploration of the lion man, but also the Lonetal as well as the Lonetal caves. Through the media station, the lion man and its place of discovery are interactively explorable through a touch screen. In this context, “comprehensible” 3D visualization is a central aspect, which allows the museum users for the first time to interact with the lion man in order to view it from all sides and at any magnification level. In addition, virtual cuts can be made through the sculpture to explore the inner structures. The direct touch interaction creates an unprecedented proximity to the sculpture, which today can only be viewed in a glass display case. The 3D visualizations are additionally enriched by textual and visual information to illuminate the origin and discovery history of the lion man.