An ongoing conversation here at the Walker concerns the issue of systemic wayfinding within our spaces — certainly an important issue for an institution actively seeking attendance and public engagement, not to mention an institution whose building is literally a hybrid of the old and new (with our 2005 expansion). While not normally in New Media’s purview, and only occasionally so for Design, a recent initiative to improve the flow and general satisfaction of visitors brought with it the idea of using digital displays, with their malleable content and powerful visual appeal, to guide and direct people throughout the Walker.
Our new static directional signage
Currently installed in one location of an eventual three, and with a simple “phase one” version of the content, the Bazinet Lobby monitor banks cycle through the title graphics for all the exhibitions currently on view, providing a mental checklist of sorts that allows the visitor to tally what he or she has or hasn’t yet seen that directly references the vinyl graphics at each gallery entrance. The corner conveniently works as an intersection for two hallways leading to a roughly equivalent number of galleries in either direction, one direction leading to our collection galleries in the Barnes tower, and the other our special exhibition galleries in the Herzog & de Meuron expansion. To this end, we’ve repurposed the “street sign” motif used on our new vinyl wall graphics to point either way (which also functions as a nice spacial divider). Each display tower cycles through it’s given exhibitions with a simple sliding transition, exposing the graphics one by one. An interesting side effect of this motion and the high-contrast LCDs has been the illusion of each tower being a ’70s-style mechanical lightbox; I’ve been tempted to supplement it with a soundtrack of quiet creaking.
The system, powered by Sedna Presenter and running on four headless, remotely-accessible Mac Minis directly behind the wall, affords us a lot of flexibility. While our normal exhibitions cycle is a looped After Effects composition, we’re also working on everything from decorative blasts of light and pattern (the screens are blindingly bright enough to bathe almost the entire lobby in color), to live-updating Twitter streams (during parties and special events), to severe weather and fire alerts (complete with a rather terrifying pulsating field of deep red). In fact, this same system is now even powering our pre-show cinema trailers. I’m particularly interested in connecting these to an Arduino’s environmental sensors that would allow us to dynamically change color, brightness, etc. based on everything from temperature to visitor count to time of day — look for more on that soon.
See it in action:
Behind the scenes / Severe weather alert:
Installation:
