Mirror Mirror

I started reflecting on the power of mirrors in exhibition design the other day when I saw some images of the hauntingly beautiful Lucid Stead Mirror House (pictured above.)

The installation from the artist Phillip K. Smith III in Joshua Tree, California follows in the fine tradition of other looking-glass landscapes by rewarding you for looking more carefully at your immediate surroundings, and by playing with your perceptions of space as well.

While I haven't seen Smith's Mirror House installation (yet!) there are two other "mirror masters" whose work I admire very much.



The first is Anish Kapoor, whose best known work may be Cloud Gate (aka "The Bean") located at the edge of Millennium Park in downtown Chicago.  

 

While the urban setting for Kapoor's piece could hardly be more remote from the desert location of Smith's Mirror House, they both have qualities that seem to draw people toward them while at the same time twisting perceptions of the surrounding space(s).



Yayoi Kusama’s Infinity Mirrored Room takes the concept of a funhouse "Hall of Mirrors" to the level of High Art by combining her deeply-patterned art within cleverly arranged geometric mirrored boxes.

Even the floors of Kusama's installations are covered with mirrors, so you have to put little booties on over your shoes before you are allowed to step inside!  I found myself playing around with the mirrors in many different ways because of the intriguing environment that Kusama created.



What other types of "familiar" materials could we use in "unfamiliar" ways in our work? 




Don't miss out on any ExhibiTricks posts! It's easy to get updates via email or your favorite news reader. Just click the "Sign up for Free ExhibiTricks Blog Updates" link on the upper right side of the blog.

P.S. If you receive ExhibiTricks via email (or Facebook or LinkedIn) you will need to click HERE to go to the main ExhibiTricks page to make comments or view multimedia features (like videos!)

Exhibit/Design Tech Inspiration: Disney Research

Many museum folks have an inherent dislike of Disney and their theme parks.  But even if you're not a Disney fan, it's worth checking out what the Disney Research folks (and their research partners) are up to.

On the Disney Research website, they show off videos of some of their cool concepts like "Printing Teddy Bears" (a method of using 3D printing to produce soft interactive objects) or Pixelbots (pictured below) which are sort of a combination of interactive graphics and robots!

There are literally dozens of cool ideas (including in many cases info about materials used) on the site that really push you to think of new technological possibilities for your projects. (Paper Electric Generators, anyone?)


Click on over to the Disney Research website yourself --- I especially recommend the Project Videos  and Publications sections as good places to start.



Don't miss out on any ExhibiTricks posts! It's easy to get updates via email or your favorite news reader. Just click the "Sign up for Free ExhibiTricks Blog Updates" link on the upper right side of the blog.

P.S. If you receive ExhibiTricks via email (or Facebook or LinkedIn) you will need to click HERE to go to the main ExhibiTricks page to make comments or view multimedia features (like videos!)

Sometimes It Really Is About The Box ...

 

I'm inherently resistant to museum experiences that seem to put much more emphasis on "the box" than the stuff inside the box.  I cringe when I encounter a bad exhibit experience that seems like a five dollar idea stuffed inside a five thousand dollar container.

Similarly, it often seems that the resources poured into "starchitect" fees for many new museums would be much better spent on staffing, more creative exhibits --- or better yet, buildings with traffic flows that actually work and don't seem like crazy experiments in social engineering or dystopian sci-fi movie sets.

Despite my bias against pretty, empty experiences in cultural institutions, I went to an opening last week and found an instance where the emphasis on the high-level design aesthetics of the environments actually makes sense.

Those environments are part of Design Lab at the New York Hall of Science (NYSci) a collaboration between an amazing content team at NYSci and the talented designers at Situ Studio that totally transformed a core section of the original 1964 World's Fair building that formed the original part of the New York Hall of Science.

The design-based activities happening inside the five distinct areas or zones within Design Lab (and the adjoining Maker's Space) are, on one level, deceptively simple: building structures with long dowel rods and rubber bands, or creating parts of a "Happy City" using cardboard, tape, batteries, and LEDs.  But if Situ and NYSci had only deployed these activities by themselves (with simple fences or functional barriers around them) I don't think the experiences would have "worked" as well.

The combination of Situ's carefully-crafted "boxes" and the (on the surface at least) "less flashy" design activities combines to create an incredibly strong presence and makes the design-based activities inside much more attractive to visitors. (And from a practical matter, more attractive to funders as well.  I can't imagine the funders behind Design Lab ponying up the cash for simpler, utilitarian spaces.)

All of this makes me want to re-think my impressions of different "Maker's Spaces" I've encountered (like The Tinkering Studio or MAKESHOP® ).   How much of an impact are the "non-functional" environmental design considerations actually having on visitor experiences in these most ultilitarian and user-focused of museum activity spaces?

Could rough-and-ready Hacker/Maker Spaces and even Maker Faires benefit from additional, and intentional, interior/environmental design? Would it make the experiences and activities more satisfying for visitors in a way? 

It's a bit paradoxical (to me, at least) that activities that easily lend themselves to happening on workbenches in crowded shops, or portable tables under tents in parks (or parking lots) might actually become more effective or memorable when placed inside bespoke environmental surrounds.

But I think that's part of what makes Design Lab work.  If you find yourself around NYC, make sure to take the 7 train to Queens and check it out!

Don't miss out on any ExhibiTricks posts! It's easy to get updates via email or your favorite news reader. Just click the "Sign up for Free ExhibiTricks Blog Updates" link on the upper right side of the blog.

P.S. If you receive ExhibiTricks via email (or Facebook or LinkedIn) you will need to click HERE to go to the main ExhibiTricks page to make comments or view multimedia features (like videos!)

Stop-Motion Animation Tools and Cheapbook CONTEST Winners!

At the recent Association of Children's Museums conference in Phoenix, Joe Vena, from the Children's Museum of the Arts in NYC, gave a great workshop about "Art and Technology in Creative Learning" with a focus on stop-motion animation.

Two of the tools (one hardware, one software) Joe used in the workshop were great low cost ways to play with tech --- and they were new to me, so I'd thought I'd share them with ExhibiTricks readers.

The hardware tool is a relatively inexpensive USB camera to plug into computers to capture imagery called the IPEVO Point 2 View (P2V) Camera.  It's really easy to use and robust enough to hold up to being the primary tool for kids' workshops.

The software tool is iStopMotion by Boinx Software.  The software seems fairly intuitive to use, and a nice feature of iStopMotion is the "live preview" with a semi-transparent onion skinning effect that lets you see what your next step would look like before capturing the frame.

So check out the IPEVO and Boinx websites to grab some tools to get started with your own stop-motion animation projects!


Cheapbooks Greatest Hits CONTEST RESULTS

I recently highlighted the newly released Cheapbooks Greatest Hits in an ExhibiTricks post and held a contest in which two lucky folks would win a free digital copy of this fourth volume of the Exhibit Cheapbooks.

Honestly, after reading the heart-felt stories of existing and emerging museums trying their best to stretch their exhibit dollars, I've decided to award prizes to TEN lucky winners instead of two!   I'll be sending out emails to everyone who entered to let them know whether they won or not.  Thanks again to everyone for entering, and for your interest in the Cheapbooks.

Even if you didn't enter (or win!) the contest, you should order your own copy of Cheapbooks Greatest Hits by heading over to the ASTC website.

Don't miss out on any ExhibiTricks posts! It's easy to get updates via email or your favorite news reader. Just click the "Sign up for Free ExhibiTricks Blog Updates" link on the upper right side of the blog.

P.S. If you receive ExhibiTricks via email (or Facebook or LinkedIn) you will need to click HERE to go to the main ExhibiTricks page to make comments or view multimedia features (like videos!)

Cheapbooks Greatest Hits AND a CONTEST!

The fourth volume of the Exhibit Cheapbooks entitled "Cheapbooks Greatest Hits" published by ASTC is now available!

If you're not already familiar with the Cheapbooks, they are collections of floor-tested, easily reproducible (and inexpensive!) exhibit ideas contributed by museum colleagues from around the world.  Starting with the original Cheapbook published in (gasp!) 1995, each ridiculously low-priced volume has contained approximately 30 exhibit ideas.

I've been so proud to have edited each of the four volumes of the Exhibit Cheapbooks for ASTC, and to share such great ideas with the rest of the museum field.

This latest volume contains 10 of the most popular exhibit ideas from each of the first three volumes and 12 brand new exhibit ideas for a total of 42 great exhibits that you can replicate (or modify) for your own museum!

ASTC has decided to release Cheapbooks Greatest Hits in electronic format (as a PDF) to keep the price low, stay eco-friendly, and to eliminate shipping costs.  Cheapbook ideas cover many topics and formats --- we've completely got STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Art, and Mathematics) covered!

You really can't find a bigger and better bargain for your exhibit development dollars than Cheapbooks Greatest Hits! So head over to ASTC's Publications Page to order your own copy right now!


BUT WAIT!  There's also a chance to win a FREE copy of Cheapbooks Greatest Hits in our CONTEST!

If you email me or leave a Comment below explaining why you'd like to win a copy of the latest Cheapbook before May 30th 2014,  I'll choose two lucky winners and send them each their own digital copy of Cheapbooks Greatest Hits!



Don't miss out on any ExhibiTricks posts! It's easy to get updates via email or your favorite news reader. Just click the "Sign up for Free ExhibiTricks Blog Updates" link on the upper right side of the blog.

P.S. If you receive ExhibiTricks via email (or Facebook or LinkedIn) you will need to click HERE to go to the main ExhibiTricks page to make comments or view multimedia features (like videos!)

Resources for Citizen Scientists

Something is in the air.  The most recent versions of both Discover magazine and ASTC's Dimensions magazine feature stories and resources related to Citizen Science.

Simply put, Citizen Science provides an opportunity for people (usually non-scientists, but not always) to contribute data or data analysis or other forms of assistance to ongoing research projects.

I think it's enormously cool for kids, families, seniors (anyone, really) to get a better sense of science projects that hold a particular interest for them.

So here are three resources related to Citizen Science to grab onto:

1) Citizen Science Central  A central portal for information about projects to join, and news about, Citizen Science hosted by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology.

2) The latest issue of Dimensions has the theme "Science Within Reach" and is chock full of great stories and resources about Citizen Science.

3) Lastly, Discover magazine has launched a new "Citizen Science Salon" blog with links to Citizen Science projects featured in their magazine articles.

So, why not check out the above resources and see if you can find a Citizen Science project that you can help out with?



Don't miss out on any ExhibiTricks posts! It's easy to get updates via email or your favorite news reader. Just click the "Sign up for Free ExhibiTricks Blog Updates" link on the upper right side of the blog.

P.S. If you receive ExhibiTricks via email (or Facebook or LinkedIn) you will need to click HERE to go to the main ExhibiTricks page to make comments or view multimedia features (like videos!)