Immersive Museum Experience: Process Week 2

During Week 2, I primarily focused on design concepts and initial storyboards for my museum experience. I also focused on thinking about how the elements would come together in the Miller ICA space.

Initial brainstorming and ideas

Storyboarding initial design concept

Additional storyboard sketches and ideas

Based on my research, I developed two initial storyboards and museum experiences that considered the thematic qualities Da Corte wanted to incorporate into Rubber Pencil Devil. The exhibitions were split into 4 sections:

1. Front desk

Viewers would collect an interactive museum guide that has different interactions when it detects that the viewer has entered a different room.

2. About the Artist

An interactive timeline that incorporates touch points/ hotspots so that when the viewers are at a certain point in the timeline, they can access different types of interaction from the museum guide, such as exclusive interviews, process videos, links to Da Corte’s other works etc.

3. Rubber Pencil Devil

Viewer interacts with the piece on show. There will be a small side door where viewers can enter a viewing booth and watch the videos on display in the house, and use the interactive museum guide to scan a specific emblem that will open up a link to the corresponding cultural reference.

4. Visit CMOA

Museum guide will prompt viewers to answer a short series of questions to get a sense of their tastes and preferences, and recommends them another piece from the Carnegie International to visit. Printers will print a postcard with a picture of the piece on the front, and a map of how to get there on the back.

I also worked on developing initial parti diagrams and physical models to facilitate the aforementioned experience.

Paper sketch Parti Diagrams to experiment with spatial layout of museum elements

Initial physical model, experimenting with adding internal walls

Throughout the process of concept development and physical prototyping, I encountered a few problems:

1. Grappling with how to separate the experience of viewing Rubber Pencil Devil at the museum and at the pop up exhibition. I was able to combat this by reframing the perimeters of the narrative slightly. I envision that the piece would be installed in the Miller ICA after it is shown at the CMOA.
2. Figuring out how to create an appropriate ‘demystifying’ experience (unveiling the significance of the videos in Da Corte’s house, and playing original references). Initially, I played with ideas such as having videos queued and projected on the wall and individual viewing booths.
3. Deciding whether or not the viewing experience should be individual or communal.
4. Deciding whether or not viewers should be able to watch references for all 57 videos in the house, or just the ones that they personally watched. Showing the ones that viewers personally watched would make the experience more personal and relevant, but showing all 57 would provide opportunities for further exploration.

This week, we were also introduced to LittleBits and MESH technology, and how they might be able to possibly facilitate our interactions. I experimented with a very simple interaction using LittleBits in the ‘About the Artist’ section of my exhibition , whereby if the viewer gets closer to the wall, interviews with the artist, and other media would pop up when in relation to the positioning of elements on the wall timeline.

Using LittleBits to create a ‘position sensitive’ circuit. If the person gets closer to the wall (simulated using the slider), the panel lights up (simulated using the dimmer)

Simulated interaction in the context of exhibit space

While this interaction worked fine, I think that it lacked depth in purpose and intent, and wanted to keep exploring possibilities for meaningful technological intervention within my space.