Forms in context: hybrid exhibit environments
Project Brief:
Create a temporary (3–4 week) exhibition featuring an artist on the first floor of the Miller Gallery. The client wants at least one piece of the artist’s work to be on display, but they also want to use digital technology to enhance the visitor’s experience in ways they are not currently doing. The target audience will be people in Oakland who have an interest in art.
“The Symphony of Color”— Stanton Macdonald-Wright
In Mcdonald-Wright’s artworks, he drew an analogy between art and music. The artist envisioned his paintings as tonal harmonies and constructed them with color chords composed from a twelve-tone color scale in which each color was a fixed note.
Mood Board
I made two versions of the mood board with totally different color palettes.
I nailed down the second version. As I plan to focus on the integration of art and music, I want my exhibition to create a feeling of a concert hall where people can quietly ‘listen’ to the artworks. That’s why a dark tone will be more suitable to cater to this feeling. In addition, as the artist’s works are very colorful, I don’t plan to add any spot color in my color palette.
Initial Storyboard
Central Problem:
Trying to clarify the installation pieces that I plan to install in the exhibition are not from the artist.
Parti Diagram
This diagram is used to demonstrate the functions of each section in the exhibition.
LittleBits Demo
LittlesBits is a simple and quick prototype tool that can allow us to model some simple interaction. In my demo, I created a simple sensing mechanism. It works as such: the distance between the hand and the light sensor is indicated by the LED; once the hand is very near, the count will add one.
Physical Model
Overall
The poster of the exhibition can be seen even when people stand outside of the Miller Gallery, giving them a bit sense of what the exhibition about. The triangles on the wall are light which will be on when people approach it. I use geometric shapes because it is a distinctive style of the artist. However, I need to add a desk for the attendant near the entrance. In addition, the entrance will be a bit compact for people.
The darkroom is where people most commented on. Why using these three instruments? What if people play noise instead of music? These are the questions that people raised that I haven’t thought before. I guess I need to do more research on the artist and his opinions on music.
This is the section where the art pieces are placed. Audio spotlight is installed here so that when people are standing in front of the artwork, they can hear the music that is selected according to the artwork. However, here comes the problem: the music is not selected by the artist himself.
There is also an interaction area (the picture on the right) to teach people about the artist’s own color theory. When people touch one color on the color wheel, a unique music note will be made. The higher the pitch is, the lighter the color is.
Second-round research
While designing the installation of the color theory, I feel that I haven’t done enough research about that before. I’m not quite sure what is the exact relationship between color and music that the artist refers to. As there is little information online, I bought a book called Color, Myth, and Music: Stanton Mcdonald-Wright and Synchromism to study the artist’s interpretation of colors.
“Synchronism is an attempt to make painting an emotional art, such as music; and all of its canvases are worked out in color harmonies, to which its progenitor applies the musical term of ‘orchestration.’”
The artist also mentions:
Pitch = Luminosity
Tone = Hue
Intensity (strength or weakness of the sound) = Saturation or purity
Such linear relationship between color and music can be used to do prototype in the future.
Further Exploration & Iterations
Iterations of the introduction space
Being pointed out by the professor, there is a problem with the dark interaction room. Apart from the piano, the artist hasn’t mentioned any other instrument in any documents yet. Therefore, it is not appropriate to place other instruments in this room. In addition, I personally think the piano keyboard is too literal, thus may not be the best representation of music. Thus, I need to find a new way for people to trigger sound without directly referring to the piano.
The picture on the right shows how I redesign the darkroom as well as the whole space. Instead of using the projection of musical instruments on the ground, I use stripes as the musical instrument. This is more universal because it will remind people of the sheet music instead of a specific instrument. In addition, the stripes can also serve as guidance to direct people to the other rooms.
Iterations of the Floor Guidance for the Audio Spotlight
These are the floor guidance I tried to design for the audio spotlight. The objective of this design is to tell people there is something there to explore. I want to let people know they can hear a sound when they stand in the spotlight, but at the same time, I don’t want to make it too explicit. So I explored different ways to visualize sound.
However, when I tried to put one of the design into the museum, I realized that it could create an unnecessary guide for people. People may follow the path instead of moving around, which is something I need to avoid.
Iterations of space division
I found the introduction area occupied a very large area and the artworks, which is the main space, don’t have enough space. In addition, the color wheel interaction table is in the same place, which may block people’s way out.
It would be better to set a separate space for the color theory interaction area and reduce the space of the introduction area. I also change the floor for the area of the artwork to make a clear distinction between different areas.
Iterations of interaction
In my previous edition, there is a color wheel table where people can touch one color and hear the corresponding sound. After the exact relationship between music and art has been clarified by the book, I feel that why not do the other way as well (i.e. use music to create art)?
This picture illustrates the UI of the interaction. On the left, the colors will be transformed into music notes and written in the format of sheet music. The QR code on the bottom allows the user to record the song they composed. One the right is the keyboard. Pressing each key will produce a unique sound and shape. Same as the song being composed, the artworks created by playing keyboard can also be saved through scanning the QR code.
This is how the interaction table looks like:
Prototype
This is the prototype I made for this interaction. Due to time limitation, I only made half of the interaction (color to music).
Exploration of style
During making the physical models, I feel it is very essential for the furniture in the exhibition to have a coherent style and echo with the style of the artworks. As the artworks have a lot of geometric shapes, I decided to use this element as the main feature of the furniture.
As the pattern is too thin to cut, I used the laser cutter to make these.
Final Floor Plan + Elevation + Parti Diagram
Final Physical Model
Visualizations
