Peak experiences in exhibitions
What are people looking for during an outing with friends or family? The urge to learn something new? To broaden their perspectives? To take some nice pictures? Or to get an unexpected rush? We find that more and more people are expecting spectacles during their outings: memorable, Instagrammable things, out of the ordinary.
Exhibitions often give a robust, low-rush baseline, filled with important stories to tell. However, perhaps they sometimes lack the sensory, emotional or thrilling experience, like an art installation or a theme park ride, which people will be talking about days after their visit. What would a compromise between the two look like? A solid baseline, suddenly disrupted by an iconic installation to be imprinted upon the memories of our visitors? Can we create thrilling memorable moments without blowing away everything else? In this session we focus on projects that have the potential to engage visitors with iconic and thrilling experiences. In the reverse part, we discuss how we can create such experiences by pushing the boundaries of our institutions.
Facilitator
Muséographe (exhibit developer)
Session speakers
Surprising the visitor with unexpected and memorable installations within a museum or science centre is not always easy. At NorthernLight, we believe in the power of iconic installations and surprising moments in experiences - something to stick to your mind, making the visit more engaging, memorable and maybe even disruptive. I will share how these iconic installations can become the peak engaging moment of exhibitions.
It is our goal to take people on a trip into immersive virtual worlds and to give them the feeling of leaving the real dimensions of time and space. The designs always originate in the content because with a good storyline, attention is generated and knowledge anchored. Be it kinetic sculptures that are filmically projected onto, interactive interfaces or multi-media allround projections onto walls, ceilings and floors – our stagings are multisensorial experiences. Sound installations, specifically composed music pieces and audio plays carry the image even further into the space and enable total immersion.
International Project Curator
When dealing with contemporary science issues, science exhibitions are often torn between the balance of authenticity and spectacle. The Science Museum in London addressed this balance in its new exhibition about antibiotic resistance, a health crisis that could easily lose itself in the spectacular. Sheldon, the curator of the exhibition, will guide how audience research and tracking visitor journeys through the museum fed into the reserved and considered approach to interpretation that stylised the exhibition in London - and why two parallel exhibitions organised by partners in India and China are taking a dramatically different approach in styles.
In this session, Sheldon will reconcile science communication with selfie moments, why gonorrhoea was the best thing to come to the Science Museum, and why faces should NEVER be put on things that don't have faces.
