Why U2 is like a group of Lemurs...

After my advisor and her husband saw U2 3D in Boston, she asked “What is it about that experience that translates to exhibit design?”

As I have stated before, U2 3D is an IMAX film that transports audience members to a concert in South America. During the show, you feel that Bono is within arms reach, the “crowd” is standing in your way, and the music is pumping through your blood. The band seems so incredibly accessible. The design of the real-life stage set already puts them into the crowd, but even in a theater thousands of miles away, the 3D effects and glorious surround sound give you an experience that is as close to being there as possible. In a sense, I could say that the film brought the band to me – placing them in my city, in my time – allowing me to experience something that I might not otherwise be able to experience.

...almost like taking a wild animal from Africa and placing it in a realistic environment, just a Plexiglas window away from me.

That’s right. I just compared U2 on a stage to animals in a cage. Seeing a concert (even a 3D film version), is kinda like seeing an animal at a zoo… or a jellyfish in a tank at an aquarium… or a taxidermy mammal at the Smithsonian. Not to objectify these handsome band mates, but Bono, Edge, Adam Clayton and Larry Mullen really are like the foreign, real-but-out-of-reach flora and fauna at living museums we hold so dear.

U2 on screen at Indy IMAX vs. Lemurs at Indianapolis Zoo

So, why does U2 3D work, if you think of it as an exhibit? Well, the use of a screen that stretches into your peripheral vision… of sound effects… and the cunning use of darkness in the room and on the screen allow you to feel encompassed by the concert environs. (It's really hard to tell where the screen ends and the room begins - an excellent illusion created by design.)

It’s the same effect that an animal scene at Animal Kingdom provides – like you are in a rainforest WITH the animals, not just “around” the animals. To get this feeling, zoos and aquariums have implemented spectacular exhibit designs – like underwater dolphin domes, massive jellyfish tanks, and pools where you can swim up to Polar Bears who are just beyond the heavy glass partition.

There is a reason for having such designs – the realness of it has a lasting effect on people. There is no denying how a change of perspective – even artificially – can change YOUR perspective.



Photo Credits:
http://www.indyzoo.com/pdf/RingtailedLemurs.jpg
www.timeout.com/img/38685/w513/image.jpg

TOMB - You Can't Judge a Book by its Cover

At first glance, TOMB doesn’t look like much. It’s an open studio space a few steps up from the sidewalk on Brookline Ave in Boston. Two-thirds of the room appears to be gift shop and seating. In the other third, you find a rickety tent, a wood and stone tomb entrance and an Egyptian themed stone edifice.

But, not unlike a dusty book, it’s what is inside that counts! The 5WITS studio extends much farther than the façade of TOMB. There are three large rooms beyond the walls I saw when I entered.

A guide enters the room carrying a box of flashlights – she shouts “All archeologists who are here for the 10:45 tour, follow me into the tent over here” [pointing at the muslin tent I saw earlier]. I found myself in a group of three – two 10-year-old boys and me. This small group appeared to be a good thing, as the guide only had three flashlights. From what I know about tombs, it was probably going to be dark in there…

Together, we contacted Director C, an older academic type with a terrible British accent, who also happened to be somewhere else in the world and only reachable by radio transmitter. He was supposed to give us instructions for finding the burial chamber inside the tomb, but instead he warned us about how dark it is in there, that there are traps, and that a professor that used to work for him disappeared inside long ago [gulp].

(By the way, in the presence of two 10-yr-olds, it’s easier to buy into this story, whether or not I believed it was true.)

The guide armed us with flashlights, and off we went into the tomb. “Armed” is a term I use loosely, because as soon as we went in, the flashlights died. It was pitch-black! Admittedly, I am still a little afraid of the dark – especially in this space that was unknown to me. I caught myself taking a step closer toward the guide and the kids just to feel the comfort of numbers (like swimming in the ocean, where you think that sharks won’t attack you if you are in a group… okay, maybe I’m the only person who ever thinks this works…)

Lights began to flash and suddenly the ghost of the Pharaoh appeared! After “greeting” us, the Pharaoh threatened us with death by flooding!!! Well, that is, if we didn’t pass the challenges we were about to face. What??!!?? Challenges?? Bwaah ah ah ah ah!

I don’t want to give too much away, but I will tell you this – every puzzle we had to solve and physical test we endured WAS a challenge – sound sequencing, puzzle solving, I-spy activities, and more. The boys and I were stressed when we couldn’t get the sound sequence right… jumped when we were attacked by snakes… thought we were going to be crushed under a falling ceiling… and that time was going to run out when we tried to solve a hieroglyph column cryptogram.

We survived - and we were proud of it. After working together through several challenges, we were a team, high-fiving each other and clapping. We essentially played together. It was great.

At children’s museums, play is learning. They use immersive environments to introduce content, display objects, and reach out to an audience with a complex mix of backgrounds and educations. In exhibits like Bob the Builder – Project: Build It from The Children’s Museum of Indianapolis, preschool aged children learn through shape-sorting, building, collaborative activities, and physical activity. In Curious George: Let’s Get Curious by the Minnesota Children’s Museum, kids and families work together to power a windmill, move blocks through a conveyor belt, and sort vegetables at a fruit stand.

At Arizona Science Center’s Forces of Nature exhibit, you are thrown into a storm to experience something you may have only seen on TV. If you make it to an installation of Goose Bumps: The Science of Fear by California Science Center and Science Museum of Minnesota, you will find yourself challenged by activities that draw humiliating attention to your fears (and the effects of fear on your body). And finally, in the touring King Tut exhibitions by AEI, you can walk through tomb-like spaces to see objects on display.

These exhibits are created by the world’s leaders in exhibit design, are revered by others in the field. They don’t have a hard time explaining their rationale or “where the science is” or “where the learning” is. They just do what they do, and people flock to them. (And they should. They are awesome.)

TOMB is the closest experience to a museum exhibit - without actually being in a museum - that I have studied that uses spectacular design. But I fear that it has to [unjustifiably] defend itself as a transforming or learning experience. In my opinion, if you can say that working together to feed balls into a water pump or strapping into a fall simulator to see if you squeal are learning experiences, then you can surely find TOMB to be a learning environment too.