physical and digital

One of the Five Coolest Things at the New Cooper Hewitt

ALCHEMY studio’s vision for the Process Lab at the re-vamped Cooper Hewitt has drawn attention and sparked praise from publications such as Fast Company and others. Our team is proud to have been part of the creative team behind the renovated and revitalized Smithsonian Design Museum.

 

 

To see the full Fast Company review click here

ALCHEMY studio was hired to work with the staff of the Cooper Hewitt to develop and prototype the experiences in the Process Lab and test how these would work within both the operating parameters of the museum and the overall design architecture. Activities found in the Process Lab were developed from a series of workshops with staff followed by prototyping with potential visitors. Activities were developed for both physical interactives as well as media platforms.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Process Lab places visitors in the role of designer by inviting them into the design process itself: observing and identifying design challenges; brainstorming creative solutions; making models and prototypes; and testing new ideas.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Activities include a central collaborative “lightscape” that lets visitors create shape, shadow, and color effects. Visitors also have the chance to create a design mash-up: making up a new product by combining two items from their bags – or by including a random oject. Visitors also improve existing designs, comment on others’ design choices, and add to a design talkback board.

 

 

 

 

The Process Lab has been drawing attention and praise for the creative, open-ended ways it invites visitors to take on the role of designer, engage with collections objects, and spiral through the design process itself.

 

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Interesting Technologies

This week in the studio, it has been a bit slow with the dog days of summer (honored here with a picture of our office dogs) and the eventual buildup of meetings and conferences immediately after Labor Day.

That said, we have run across two interesting projects: one that reminded us of one of our past projects and another that might suggest some new ways to integrate visitors into interactive exhibits.

The first is the RiF010 Water Sport/Wave Pool planned for Rotterdam. See both the computer rendering and working model below.

 

 

 

 

This reminds us of a project a few years back in Sydney, Australia where we suggested that Darling Harbour should include a place to surf. This was part of some brainstorming for the National Maritime Museum to activate their Darling Harbour front.  Just looking at the apparatus here, we see possibilities to create some intriguing wave tanks, perhaps smaller, for both natural history and science installations. Creating a realistic model of ocean waves… we can think of many uses for that.

 

The second idea we want to share is the evolving reality of real-time monitoring of people’s physical activity. Examples such as the Fitbit abound, but take a look at the new clothing sensor line being created by Athos.

 

 

 

Technology such as this offers the opportunity to create experiences (interactive and individualized) that move exhibits of sport and competition into new realms. Visitors can record their performance over multiple visits, can become actual “artifacts” that are part of the experience, can be, in effect, their own demonstrations. We’re definitely seeing how this type of technology can be integrated into the “stuff’ and experience of museums and other public places.

 

What would you do with these technologies?

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tools of engagement

In the latest issue of  ed  the magazine for the Society of Experiential Graphic Design (SEGD), Wayne LaBar founder of ALCHEMY studio discusses the new technologies that are merging to engage people in experiences at museums. Below is a reprint of the article.

In addition if you are interested in exploring the subject further register for the SEGD Exhibition & Experience Design Workshop being held August 21 – 22 in Washington DC. Wayne and others will be speaking at it.

Enjoy!

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3D Modeling

The past 10 working days have been very busy here in the studio. We have some new projects ramping up and several moving creatively forward, but we have had the chance to encounter a couple of very interesting projects that all demonstrate the idea of 3D modeling in new ways.

The first is Lix, the world’s smallest 3D printing pen in the world.

 

 

 

Well, this pen doesn’t exist yet, but it’s currently a Kickstarter project. Certainly, this direction of 3D printing will become increasingly prevalent in the creative fields, and we think it’s easy to see this technology on the museum floor. From art museums to children’s museums, the artistic and creative implications are easy to see. In science museums, while it might be easy to imagine something like this being used in a maker or tinkering space, this idea got us thinking about some new ways it might be used.

How might a 3D pen like this be used to document or record phenomena?

Could it be used instead of a pen for exhibits like pendulum drawing?

This trend of replacing a physical medium with something new is part of the allure of the other project we ran across recently – a piece called  ”36 Ventilators, 4.7m3 Packing Chips” by the Swiss artist Zimoun for the Museo d’Arte di Lugano

 

 

 

The amazing similarity of this piece to ocean waves and flowing water is breathtaking. No doubt, some aspects of size weight and the idea of many particles cause this movement to “flow” almost as a fluid. It reminded us of some of the natural phenomena exhibits seen at many science museums. We’re very intrigued by the idea of experimenting with this behavior in different spaces and different contexts.

What do you think? What other exhibits, installations, or devices do these projects remind you of?

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Visitor-Created Work

As part of some research for a recent project here at ALCHEMY studio, we have become especially interested in exhibits that encourage visitors’ artistic expression and then invite visitors to share and document these expressions or creations in a meaningful way.

A very interesting example of this is the piece “Your Line or Mine,” created by the firm Moniker for the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam.

 

 

 

 

 

What we see as strong elements of this piece include the simplicity and the low threshold for visitors to actually engage in the creative work. In addition, it’s not just a blank piece of paper. The creative opportunity has some definition, thus providing a “skeleton” to spark and structure one’s creativity. Sometimes a blank piece of paper can be intimidating and confusing, while a “seed” or “scaffold” can get the process flowing.

Technologically, it’s very easy, simple, and straightforward to insert one’s part of the animation into the collective public-sourced piece.

Finally, what is incredibly powerful is that the collective piece is as much the focus of the experience as is the act of adding one’s creative addition to the animation.

We believe this experience has some important lessons as we all explore experiences where the raison d’être is crowd-sourced, visitor-created content rather than experiences created by museum staff or curators.

We are excited to adapt some aspects of this experience to subjects other than animation.

How does the experience inspire you? We look forward to hearing your thoughts about other experiences that reflect important points about visitor-generated pieces.

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Electronic Fun: Small to Large

This week we’ve run across both large-scale and small-scale electronic experiences that inspired us to think about how we might apply these in future projects. You might have seen one or both before, but we thought considering them together would spark some interesting ideas and connections. These two certainly showcase the small to large ends of the spectrum for electronic interactives.

The Small

On the small scale is the new project by electroninks called Circuit Scribe.

 

 

Using a special conductive ink, it will allow users to physically draw circuits.

For those with “Maker” or “Tinkering” spaces, this product will be something to experiment with and may even lower the barriers for visitors to engage with circuitry. It might even be possible to put this out in a public space in a less supervised environment – possibly even in schools

 

As new developments make it even easier to engage in “Maker” experiences at home and school, when will a “Maker” space at a museum not be unique or distinct from what visitors are doing elsewhere?

 

The Large

 

On the large scale, here is a dynamic idea done for British Airways.

 

 

 

 

Created by Ogilvy 12th Floor, these billboards use surveillance technology along with flight info to create this engaging experience. It is a large-scale example of using real-time data, a subject that our blog has explored before. See others posts here.

Imagine an experience that does this with clouds, traffic, animals or other elements for which real-time data would be interesting and dynamic. Certainly a museum could riff on this idea to create something really cool and memorable.

What are your thoughts about these experiences? What else do they remind you of? How would you adapt them in a way that connects to something you’re working on or thinking about?


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drawing sound

One of the more interesting effects of the merger between the digital and physical worlds is our ability to “read’ or “interpret” various mediums into completely different forms and to do so with simplicity and elegance.

A perfect example of this is the Colour Chaser, by Yuri Suzuki. While originally conceived in 2010, it recently was expanded to become an interactive sensor, sound and robotic installation called Looks Like Music for the Mudam, or Musée d’Art Moderne Grand-Duc Jean.

 

 

 

Here, as you can see, visitors can draw their own paths of color to engage the robot and, in essence, create a musical march for the robot. The simplicity of the approach, the straightforwardness of the interactive outcomes, and the possible creativity all make this incredibly attractive. It incorporates and engages science and art simultaneously.

Here is an example of something we might seek to embed in more technological exhibits in our field -

the idea of not trying to burden every exhibit with the full story but rather to create more exhibits that break the digital/physical interplay into bite-sized chunks…. discrete experiential chunks that can “sing” through a simpler design.

Where have you seen examples like this? How do you imagine using techniques like this to expand the possibilities?

 

 

 

 

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the coming interactive surface revolution

With its capacity to detect a user’s movements, the Microsoft Kinect system stands ready to change how the museum and themed entertainment field might consider where an interactive experience occurs and what the interactive medium might be. As shown recently here in our blog over two months ago, water can serve as an interface location. In fact, recently this same story again surfaced across the web – for example here and here.

Certainly, the next step is developing more sophisticated augmented reality experiences based on this ability. While the water example shows some rudimentary possibilities, an application (came out last year) that certainly could have potential impacts – educationally and otherwise – is shown here. In this one sand is sand to as our medium and simulate water and water flow.

 

A further refined version is being worked on or is finished through the work Oliver Kreylos of UC, Davis, the Tahoe Environmental Research Center (at UC, Davis), and the Lawrence Hall of Science (at UC, Berkeley) for ECHO Lake Aquarium and Science Center in Burlington, Vermont. Here is video of that piece.

 

 

Thinking back on past projects where we wanted to create a physical interactive six or seven years ago about watersheds and drainage, had this been around, we might have jumped on it.

But this technology, along with things such as our posting two weeks ago on motion tracking systems and cameras/projection, means that as we think about exhibitions, there is a vast opportunity to add an additional digital dimension if necessary. This applies even to some our most tried-and-true interactive examples.

Take a gravity well. When we will see the first one where, as the ball travels down the well, the acceleration figures, the projected path, or force vectors are projected on the surface of the gravity well itself?  How about projection on an erosion table? The list of possibilities is endless. Additionally, all of this digital information can be saved, taken home, shared on personal devices, and distributed through the cloud. We are just beginning to explore how this could change the ways physical interactives can link together with our lives outside of the walls of a museum.

But there are dangers, and at times we don’t want this extra layer.  It might detract from the innate beauty, simplicity, or emotional and learning impacts of the physical interactive.

The key will be figuring out when to add this ability and when to leave the physical reality of a phenomenon alone.

We here at the studio can already imagine the debates and conversations that will erupt as we move forward with these evolving abilities. Those are going to be some good conversations around the conference bar! Meanwhile until then we remain on the lookout for new examples. Do you know of any? What do you think of the coming revolution?

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Follow the Ball

In previous posts we mentioned how changing one’s viewpoint can offer new opportunities for experiences in an exhibition. A new technology just crossed our desks here at the studio, and we think it’s pretty amazing.

Here is the Dynamic Target Tracking Camera System.

 

 

This is work being done by the  University of Tokyo at the Ishikawa Oku Lab

The way the tracking systems follows a moving object has sparked our thoughts about how such a system might be applied to a wide variety of science center experiences. It would be interesting, for example, to combine this system with a gravity well and observe the arrival of the hole rather that the ball. Also, one could launch several balls into a well and track each independently by projecting a unique number on each. We could advance that even further by projecting the speed of the ball directly on the ball itself as it accelerates toward the hole.

A similar concept could be used in a Rhodes Ball Machine – but one in which you get to project your face on a ball as it moves through the machine. That’s just one way to personalize this type of experience. Of course, this technology could be used for many sports exhibits, too – like following a pitcher’s curve ball or tracking a golf ball trajectory.

Let your imagination run wild. How else might this be applied in the museum field?

What about outside the museum field? How could you imagine using this technology in other ways?

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The Tapioca Interface – Physical and digital – part deux

Recently we blogged about the merging of the physical and digital worlds and how this phenomenon offers some very engaging and potentially stronger ways for exhibitions to use digital media to create more impactful experiences. Under the tag physical and digital, you can check out several blog entries that present some unique approaches to this physical/digital convergence.

 

This week, we came across a new example of this design approach. Take a look at DIRTI for the iPad, created by Userstudio.

 

 

The testing pictured happend at La Maison des Petits. Using translucent material (including ice cream if you watch the second video!) and a simple web cam along with Raspberry Pi, you can create an effect that’s determined by your movements and changes in the material’s density and transparency.

This is a simple but elegant example of how a physical medium can be used to create and direct a physical link to a digital world.

Certainly, the key aspect of this experience is what the physical manipulation of the material actually corresponds to in the digital realm.

That said, this points to yet another example of elevating the impact of information and experience on a digital screen by closely correlating the interface and the medium.

While ice cream or tapioca may make for a creative music and color experience, here water (or maybe slime!) or some other substance might allow for an entirely different experience.

What ingredients would you want to use?

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