Fall 2008 - Winter 2009

Besides full-time work at BBI Engineering, French class and AutoCAD, I worked a little freelance exhibit development for Jessica Brainard, writing some exhibit design narratives for the Lindsay Wildlife Museum. It feels GREAT to be thinking about and writing about visitor interaction. (Specifying and installing AV equipment, drafting contracts and project management only tickles my brain so far.) The project will undoubtedly move very slowly or not at all depending on the way the economy goes in the next year but I have enjoyed working with Jessica.

And for BBI I've been specking and pricing AV equipment for Maya Lin's installation Missing which will install at the California Academy of Sciences. Very cool stuff for Maya Lin although again, funding is slowing the process down. Working with her has been very interesting and involves LCD displays outside and tamper proof glass. I've been focused on doing the outdoor testing so we can make the best assessment of what to do to fight reflections, stay within her budget and honor the aesthetic of the design: Tough stuff but interesting.

And I'm the closer for all the work BBI did to open California Academy of Sciences. The punch list is shrinking and we've almost made the full transition into Warranty Stage...

IT'S OPEN!

Finally, here are some pictures of the work that I did this past summer: Fish IDs in the Water Planet are by far the most dramatic and the most useful, as far as improving the visitor experience. And there's plenty of folks watching videos.
My favorite?
Honestly, it not the AV work at all. (Yawn.) It's the animals and the humans looking at them that I find most interesting. It's been fascinating to observe the visitors as they interact with the space and how they make use of the the interactives vs. live exhibits around them.

WELCOME!

This is my first attempt to highlight the interactive design and museum management work that I've done since 1995. It's taken me a few late nights since my day job happens to be installing the new California Academy of Sciences which will open to the public in two weeks. I'll update the photos soon now that the first floor is nearly complete and our Fish IDs are installed in the aquarium!

Exhibit Development: Activating All Spaces I

It's a challenge to look back on seven years of work at Zeum and pick the top exhibit development projects. I'll start with:

Make-And-Takes

There's no greater compliment or sign of success than a family leaving your museum with products from their experience. Seeing a kid leaving with a built structure, a kite, a shirt, a mask, and walking up the street and onto public transit with Zeum stuff that they created inspires positive word-of-mouth. What started with paper flowers, mosaics and shrinky-dinks turned into city models, kites, spin-art frisbees, cars, pens, masks, puppets and clay figures. These low-tech creative experiences offer a great balance to the technical tools of video and sound production and clay animation. Visitor bags include the DVDs of digital creations but also the finer, traditional arts. Designing these hands-on experiences to be mass-produced (approx. 300 units/day), visitor-led and cost effective while being unique and high quality is a challenge I enjoyed very much. Lots of prototypes through weekend workshops with visitors and staff helped moral and led to some wonderful inventions.

Exhibit Development: Activating All Spaces II

Music Video Production
2001 - 2007
When I started, the second floor of Zeum featured an impressive looking, totally custom interactive studio. Unfortunately, it needed a minimum of 3 staff to run, it couldn't be engaged fully unless you had a minimum group size of 10 people and it was so much on the cusp of new technology that it crashed frequently, ruining people's experiences, after they had waited 30 minutes for a group to gather. To boot, they couldn't really engage too creatively because the scripts were canned and they had very little input or choice of media to create. The idea for Music Video Production came from a very good friend and colleague, Janell Flores. I can't take credit for the idea but I can take credit for the design of the space, the choice of technology to use, and how we developed the experience beyond a karaoke cd and VHS tape.

Solutions to highlight: All visitors, regardless of age or number can participate and activate the space. Music can be provided in all languages and can fit certain themes Music video production was an easy leap to make where visitors created their own music tracks and then performed them on stage. Class field trips could adapt the music video concept to teach writing, group leadership, collaboration, and public speaking, not to mention discussions about style, genre, and the power of images and music. The experience could be provided by one staff member although two was optimum. So it was effective and cost efficient. Take home videos were a big hit and encouraged repeat visitors.

Exhibit Development: Activating All Spaces III

Special FX
2002 - 2007

Green Screen for 5 and under:
Many families visited Zeum with younger and older children. If a child is too young for the production studios, there was very little available to engage them in video production. Early on, Zeum was limited by studio spaces run by staff where the visitor couldn't just wonder and engage creatively on their own. Special FX began as a way to introduce green screen FX to the very young and put the creative tool 100% in the hands of the visitor. It was a green bench, a monitor, and three buttons. It would count down and then record you for 30 seconds and play your short movie back, compositing your image onto various backgrounds. You could fly in clouds, surf or run through fire. Eventually, the addition of a slide structure allowed for the effect of falling, flying or hiding (if you cover yourself in green cloth.) These are simple, short, visitor run experiences that provide a successful video making experience to kids with short attention spans and adults wanting a simple activity. Eventually, responding to visitor requests, we added the ability to buy a still photo of your movie. These are available in the Zeum store which was a nice opportunity to get people to the retail store if they weren't already curious to check it out. The photo printing was so-so on the success scale. See below.