Made me look: this new exhibit featured in Designboom, by Thai design studio Apostrophy’s (sic), is an inflatable, LED-powered spatial game.
DJ Light (DJ Luz), Lima 2010 from Cinimod Studio on Vimeo.
Roughly translated excerpt from Fubiz:
Designed by English designer Dominic Harris from the studio Cinimod, here is the project “DJ Light”. It is an outdoor installation that allows the public to participate through movement: they conduct a light and sound space made of 85 balloons.
I’m happily addicted to e-books (and i-books, I suppose) but I’ve always wondered why a book that’s not a book is still written like … a book. (I’ve given up wondering why digital music is still released as albums.) So when I stumbled on this new iPad book, written for iPad only, and replete with iPad-only features, I was delighted. It’s not a perfect new idea, but it’s a new idea, which counts for a lot. Now it just needs to be gorgeous.
On that same note, this article on the Economist’s iPad version is a must-read.
On the opposite end of the spectrum comes this downright gorgeous iPad vintage synthesizer interface designed according to the “skeuomorphic” (i.e. real-world visual metaphor*) interface principles so beloved by Apple. In many ways, the exact opposite of the iPad-only book above. But it’s gorgeous, and that counts for a lot. Now it just needs to be new.
Some more thoughtful musings on skeuomorphic interface design here.
Would a crocheted coral reef be considered skeuomorphic?
* No, I didn’t know that word until today, either.
Via @nancyproctor and @fastcodesign.
From Archdaily, this photo (make sure you look twice at it) and more on the constantly-award-winning Morris Arboretum Tree Adventure at UPenn:
Morris Arboretum’s Tree Adventure exhibit Out on a Limb, designed by Metcalfe Architecture & Design, was the 2010 AIA Philadelphia Design Excellence Gold Medal Winner, 2010 AIA Pennsylvania Architectural Excellence Award, 2010 “Best of Philly” Award, and the 2010 American Association of Museums Excellence in Exhibition Design Award. Suspended 50 feet above the forest floor this network of walkways (450-feet in length) provides a bird’s eye view of the forest, complete with a giant Bird’s Nest, Squirrel Scramble rope, and many vista platforms.
Originally seen on Notcot.org.
Most popular tweets of the past 30 days:
- “With new website, devices, (Boston’s) MFA seeks visitors’ touch” http://ow.ly/37Aoz
- Museum Without Walls. http://ow.ly/39GaI
- Gamification: good. http://ow.ly/36xP0 < > Gamification: bad. http://ow.ly/36xMA
- The MoMA iPad app. http://ow.ly/3e2Ra
- Exhibit as participatory infographic: visitors mark their heights in dense line around gallery. http://ow.ly/37edU
- Wait. Do location games like SCVNGR … work? http://ow.ly/37xNx via @mia_out
First of all, artist Joseph L. Griffiths has made himself quite a bicycle. Secondly, looking at this has started me thinking. We’re all talking about user-generated content in visitor experiences, and about participatory design. This has both of those in spades, but it’s got one more important thing we might sometimes forget: delight. The next time I am thinking too much, I’m going to imagine myself on this lovely bicycle, pedaling paint, and be better for it. Cheers, Mr. Griffiths. *
* By the way, Mr. G., the world really needs a video of this.
Mm, pretty: the new MoMA abstract expressionism iPad app.
Exactly what I’m supposed to do with it, I’m not quite sure. Is it a really big handheld guide for my next museum visit, or do I sit on my porch and use it, but not see the real art? If it’s the former, both my hands are already full of the little hands of my co-visitors. If it’s the latter, I’ll go for a coffee table book (bigger pictures, higher resolution).
All that said, it’s beautiful anyway, so why not.
Best. Thing. Ever. When was the last time that crochet made you cry?
Via Science Gallery and the National Museum of Natural History.
Mesmerizing: CERN’s new interactive exhibition center on YouTube. (Run it full screen for full effect.) Do you know the designers? Please comment below. Design by the excellent folks at Atelier Brückner. (Thanks, Phillip Teufel!)
After years of quietly enjoying my ever-growing collection of books on exhibit design, museum planning and interactive spaces, I have finally come up with a way to share my bookshelf with everyone. I hereby announce the Exhibit Designer’s Bookshelf (beta), courtesy of Shelfari.
Click the link at the very top of this page, or here, and enjoy. More fancy features to come, this is just a start.
Many thanks to Jessica Griscti, bibliographer extraordinaire, for helping to make this happen.
Suggestions? Missing books? Useful? Not useful? Comments open below.
Okay, there are brilliant audience-participation exhibit ideas – and then there are REALLY brilliant audience-participation exhibit ideas.
The sculpture is artist Hans Hemmert’s “German Panther”, 2007.
“It’s the new way to find your way at the American Museum of Natural History,” says the AMNH (and several hundred blogs) about their new iPhone app, appropriately named “Explorer:”
More from the Museum:
Chart your own course at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City with AMNH Explorer—a new app that is part custom navigation system, part personal tour guide for the Museum’s world-famous halls. Providing turn-by-turn directions, AMNH Explorer takes visitors from the edge of the universe to the age of the dinosaurs. Choose from a variety of Museum-designed tours or create your own from a list of popular exhibits, specimens, or artifacts. AMNH Explorer also lets you share your adventures with friends and family by linking directly to your Facebook and Twitter profiles. Download AMNH Explorer now and start planning your next visit or use your iPhone® or iPod® touch to discover the Museum’s must-sees from anywhere in the world.
More from the New York Times here. Links to the entire media frenzy here.
Nearly as remarkable as the Shanghai 2010 World Expo: the Shanghai 2010 World Expo “Online Expo”. Nearly as remarkable as that (and entertainingly bizarre): the Shanghai 2010 World Expo “Online Expo” Official Preview Video:
“Ceaseless World Expo!”
If you can’t make it to Shanghai for Expo 2010, these three videos by the (accurately named) Shanghai Expo Timelapse Machine give a sense of the different kinds of pavilions on display. Germany: a deep, varied exhibition with a variety of completely different interactive zones in the interior:
Denmark, completely the opposite, with a beautifully designed building and little else to “do” (not that anything more is needed):
And finally, the hauntingly beautiful, award-winning UK pavilion, the “Seed Cathedral”:
A great, simple video of what everyone involved in interactive installation projects knows, but sometimes can’t articulate. By the Environmental Health Clinic at NYU, led by Australia-born conceptual artist Natalie Jeremijenko. Don’t let the name confuse you, it is a provocative design studio camouflaged as a university health think-tank, also apparently sometimes called the “x Design Project”. You figure out the rest.
Liberally excerpted from the Vimeo blurb (see here for more of the blurb, which is great, and more videos, which are also great):
This video illustrates that if you hold constant the institutional context (in this case a contemporary museum), and the information presented (in this case the curatorial information); and you only vary the technological interface, you can reveal the Structures of Participation around the differing interfaces—same info, same context, but very different experience. Because of the tight coupling, it can be very difficult to make sense of what is actually changing as we change our socio-technical system. In the first case (a) the traditional public display of text on museum wall, which, because of the social convention of quiet-while-some-one-is-reading, you can be standing next to someone, but not talk to them and never hear anything of what they are thinking. Secondly, the technological shift we have all witnessed in contemporary museums as the curatorial information is presented as an audio tour, as a privatized audio environment via headset (or similar). This has the effect of synchronizing people temporally, but precludes local discussion–you can’t hear what anyone nearby is saying. In the third case the curatorial information is presented via a deliberately triggered (pull) small located speaker (the Located Sound Speaker or LSSn). This creates a shared audio context for a small group, momentarily synchronizing people spatially and temporally, and providing an opportunity for local comments and discussion.
More on the exploits of Ms. Jeremijenko in this article and YouTube video from GOOD Magazine.
My Shelfari bookshelf: the latest on exhibit design, museum planning, and interactive space.
Tweets