“Nachgefragt!” is a temporary exhibition about one of the most important tool for scientists: questions. How to build them, where do they lead, who to ask them to? Questions are the building bricks for new ideas, and not only for scientists, as questions from the public are essential too, in order to build a healthy and functional relation with science. Here, beside having contributed to the exhibition’s general design, I was given the task to develop the internal game, an interactive highlight for the exhibition that could spread the intended message in a funny and interactive way. The result was the “Ideenlauf” (ideas’ path).
The “Ideenlauf” was comprised of three installation inserted along the exhibition main path, a welcoming one at the beginning, an interactive one in the middle and an immersive one at the end. The main idea was to ask the public to type in their own questions: these questions would then appear immediately on a series of LED displays in the exhibition. They also will land on an animated “voting machine”, where the visitors could interactively explore the question given by the others and vote them if the felt the question was important. The most voted question finally appeared in a big “top ten” billboard, which shows in an animated way the best rated questions. Next step for the contents will be then online: the internal databank will be periodically uploaded on the online “Ideenlauf” page, where they could finally receive a proper and reviewed answer.
To get the people start typing with fun, I thought the whole first station as a sort of giant pinball machine. Once the question was inserted in the system, it began to appear on the various LED billboards in the exhibition.
The questions then appeared in a second station, where the evaluating and voting was done. This also was translated as a sort of game: placed in a enclosed, almost mysterious environment, a big touchscreen shows hundreds of small figures keep running around the screen, representing the users and their questions. Clicking on a figure, the computer voice the questions and asks to vote for it.
And then finally the server makes some sorting and send to the “Top Ten” station the most voted questions. This data is archived on the internal server, and can be recalled for the online use but also for internal control (for the questions that are a bit too cheeky, so to say).
The whole design idea relies heavily on a contrasting principle: science is exact and regulated, but questions can blossom from a creative chaos, and everyone should be allowed to ask them. That’s why we turned to a “Spiellhalle” (amusement arcade) esthetic, with strong use of LED, Neon and blinking signs. It’s not only about the fun factor, the idea is that visitors, but also citizen in general, should not think of science only in terms of inaccessible labs. The seeds of tomorrow’s science lie in the causal conversation in the street, in the needs that emerge from everyday life. That’s the path of ideas.
CREDITS:
Project Carrier: Wissenschaf In Dialog
Exhibition Design: beier+wellach
Exhibition Production: id3d-berlin
Installations “Ideenlauf”: Michele Pedrazzi, with Steffen Sennert