Notable new media and technology from the AAM exhibit floor.
The American Alliance of Museums 2018 Annual Meeting and MuseumExpo was a great place to see new developments in exhibit media and technology. This was my first MuseumExpo in over a decade where I wasn’t constrained to an exhibit booth, and I was excited to explore what the meeting had to offer. Here’s some of what I discovered:
Virtual Science Center previewed a new project in collaboration with exhibit design firm Quatrefoil. Reinventing Reality is a forthcoming travelling exhibition about the science and technology behind virtual and augmented reality. Going beyond computer science, the exhibition will incorporate STEM content ranging from engineering and optics to psychology. Currently in prototyping, look for Reinventing Reality to begin touring North America in 2019.
Copenhagen-based Realfiction presented a new mixed-reality solution called DeepFrame. A high-tech update to the traditional “Pepper’s Ghost” illusion, DeepFrame combines curved OLED screens with a large, high-precision optical lens to create headset-free floating images that can be viewed by multiple visitors simultaneously. The scale and transparency of DeepFrame makes it an intriguing choice for augmenting larger collection objects with digital annotations.
You’ve definitely seen the work of yU + co; their motion graphics have graced the title sequences of Justice League, Silicon Valley, and The Walking Dead, among many others. The Los Angeles firm has recently expanded into experiential media, and came to MuseumExpo to present their Muse-award-winning work on The Getty’s Cave Temples of Dunghuan, which included an immersive, spherical 3D projection, the first installation of its kind.
Noitom (that’s motion spelled backwards) is a Miami-based technology firm with an emphasis on motion capture systems. At MuseumExpo, they presented an immersive, multi-user VR system called Project Alice. The media experience, developed with Australian firm Opaque Space, allows users to don VR gear and collaboratively participate in a virtual moon landing. Project Alice is more flexible and affordable than multi-user systems like The Void, so it will be interesting to see whether this technology makes its way into museums.
Gagarin is an Icelandic media firm that creates stunningly beautiful digital installations for museums and branded environments; I’ve been a fan of their work for years and was excited to meet them at MuseumExpo. While the bulk of their installations are in Scandinavia, they recently crossed the Atlantic for the Canadian Museum for Human Rights, where their media designs earned them an SEGD Sylvia Harris award. I look forward to seeing their work stateside in the near future!
