Climate Change and the Digital Experience: Developing Arctic Adventure at the Museum of Science, Boston

Unknown Speaker 07:54
Well, welcome. Thank you all so much for joining our session today about developing Arctic adventure exploring with technology. It's a digital immersive climate change exhibit at the Museum of Science. We are so excited to share with you our process today we'll be talking about approaches to creating an accessible and climate content rich exhibit that showcases large scale production technology that we really hope to transport visitors to the Arctic, and we'll also be talking about how we did this during COVID times.

Unknown Speaker 08:35
Hi I'm Alana Parkes. I am the manager of exhibit content development at the Museum of Science and I was on and off lead content developer on this exhibition.

Unknown Speaker 08:46
And I'm Leigh Ann Mesiti Caulfield. I'm the manager of strategy communication and the Museum of Science and I was the lead evaluator on this project.

Unknown Speaker 08:55
Hello, I am curious instead of I am a multimedia director at women factory, which is a firm based in Montreal, that was hired by the museums to kind of design with them all the multimedia aspect of this project, so rapidly for those who don't know us Gnomon factory were quite a unique multimedia and entertainment studio based in Montreal, we specialize in the creation design and production of multimedia environments. And so, for this project we were complimentary with the museum to create the immersiveness and the multimedia content in the project.

Unknown Speaker 09:38
Dan, are you doing this slide, am I doing this slide. Sorry, I forgot the Museum of Science, our mission. We're a large Science Museum in Boston, Massachusetts. And our mission is to inspire lifelong love of science and everyone, and our vision is a world where science belongs to each of us, for the good of all of us. And, you know, we're big we're a big, big science museum. And so were we close while you bring up the video, we have a one minute video to give you a flavor of the Arctic adventure exhibition. The first thing to notice it goes by so fast. Um, the first thing to notice is the overall feel of the exhibition and you'll also see several examples of integrated physical and digital aspects. There is no sound Sorry,

Unknown Speaker 10:44
just gives the sense of kind of what this gallery looks like in person.

Unknown Speaker 10:50
Yeah, my real ice Well, that was a real ice fall Yes, as well as multiple projection surfaces and we play really with the physical, digital aspect where you can intervene by touching, physical instruments and elements inside the content, the protected content. And our last song. navigating a glacier was the moon.

Unknown Speaker 11:27
So we're going to go through a little bit of the process of creating this exhibition for Arctic adventure our starting point was our main message which is that you can use technology to explore our environment and to identify problems that we need to solve. We also had some educational goals. Relating to the use of technologies to make observations about the environment, and about, because I've been able to identify the affordances and constraints of different technologies. And we had some experience, you'll notice that those educational goals don't actually tie you down to any particular technology. And we also similarly had some experience goals that we wanted visitors to feel transported. We wanted them to feel curious, and we wanted them to be able to actually use technology to explore the environment, and we wanted there to be something new each time they came. So that wasn't exactly the same experience each time. But again, you'll notice that that doesn't really tie us down to anything in particular. And so, for this exhibition, we really decided to lead with the experience. This was something we took really seriously we took we spent about a year, I'm not quite sure because I wasn't on the project, but we spent about a year before we even knew what the context was going to be for the exhibition. We brainstormed a whole bunch of different types of experiences and from our initial 60s Oh, that we had seen at other museums or experienced in other venues like trade, a theme parks, for example, and from our initial 67 ideas. We narrowed down to seven. And then the next slide please, Chloe. So did we want an all digital environment, did we want one that used virtual reality or augmented reality, did we want an immersive physical structure like the example here from the City Museum in St. Louis, did we want to focus on a particular challenge, like a, Like escape rooms do. So from these seven, we finally narrowed down to a digital environment with physical manipulatives, this fit in really well with our commitment to universal design, which means making exhibits accessible to all audiences, and that worked better than say an all digital or an all virtual exposit exhibition. And our main inspiration for this was connected worlds at the New York Hall of Science. Yes, now we're ready for the next slide. So after some discussion about what kind of context we wanted for that experience, we considered things like a hackerspace or superheroes among other ideas. We finally settled on wanting to focus on a natural environment that visitors could explore with technology, but which one. So we made a list of seven habitats, and with a little more testing with visitors and also with teachers who might bring their classes and on field trips, we finally selected surprise, the Arctic. And while this process, felt really backwards for me especially as a content developer. It was really interesting to hold the visitor experience at the center, while the content shifted during the development process, and I'm sure that we're going to try the this model again in choosing the Arctic, that also meant that we got the opportunity to talk about climate change, the observations that visitors make with technologies that they're using. Reveal evidence of changing climate, both in the history recorded in the ice cores that you get to remove with Ice Drills, and the present and future facing the animals as the climate changes that they get to find with drones and satellite trackers. It's really, really interesting to me to think about what this exhibit might, how it might have been different if we had started with the message of climate change, instead of starting with the experience of exploring an immersive environment with technology. And I, I just, I think it came across it came across as a much richer kind of exhibition for that

Unknown Speaker 16:13
backwards process. So, that's about the moment that the woman factory came into the project when all the subject matter had been decided by the team and all of that in the museum was looking for a partner to develop a more immersive MDMs and to kind of develop this immersiveness and multimedia content which is our expertise and. And so we had a fantastic process of collaboration, and a lot of Charettes in the beginning with this experiential theme in mind, and today I'll just present you a bit some of the key kind of features that make for us. This experience, immersive but also that are standard things that we try to implement in in live project if I may say in the institute projects, which is, first of all, multimedia for all the senses so a lot of, you know, museums or experiences, integrate new technology as part of screens but we always try to go in non standard format and get away from the screen and from experiences that people can have on their mobile devices or at home, at their place and really create something that can only happen on site that site specific. And to do that we want to encounter all of the different senses in the experience. And one of the first way to do that is to start considering the actual space of the interface so instead of adding some screen interfaces into a space really use the user environment. So, the space and the center graphy the floors the wall, everything. As our interface to the content, and to the experience. So, for us really user experience design is not limited to the screen. It's everywhere. It's from the door handle to, you know what you sit on to what you're looking at, if it reacts when you touch it, all of that and that's how we can also connect people to the message and to each other in a space right. And so, in Arctic adventure. One of the ways we achieved that was we mentioned the ice wall was was very multisensorial but also some floor protection so we had like a little waterhole where we had some eautiful underwater mammals, that's we're passing that through technology, the visitors can can hear and recognize the sound of the animals, the chest that is found if I may say, was really are open to the stuff, which is a double sided projection, which really created the environment the arctic environment and that's one of the first thing in our Monday, that was very clear from the get go was, okay, we want to step into a place that is coherent throughout the gallery but also that seems like it's part of an artist and obviously the Arctic is a tremendously unique place that we knew we could not reproduce so we created our own abstract Arctic inspiring ourselves quite scientifically, accurately, with the help of Alana and the whole team, and to create an abstractly reinterpreted, all the different environments of the Arctic. We also have this zone which was more than one where we touched on climate change, which was about a score to drilling of ice core but also how to do the first thing that we realized it was very evolved with the in the process with it is very hard for people to understand that the information that existed in these in these ice core was the one that we could link to certain, I should actually let the alumni speak to that. But, hence why this song we created a little theater object theater but it really became an immersive theater called the ice core theater where we explain in a three minute immersive video, why is it between, there's some all of these information that is stuck in little bubbles and ice core lead us to a certain hermetic conclusion about climate change and about our impact on the planet. Anything to add the lemon,

Unknown Speaker 20:32
just that one of the things that you might not have noticed from the video is that the, there's two drills there there's one on the tripod, and you can, there's a cable that you can feel as you put your fingers on it that it moves up and down as you push the button on the little stack of crates there. And as you do that it's linked with the projection on the wall so that the, the ice score actually goes up and down and similarly, sort of in the middle. There's a hand, hand turned is drill and that one also corresponds with the video so that they've, they've functioned independently so as you turn that drill you can watch it go down. That really gives you the idea that this is we're drilling down under our feet. And that's where all of this amazing rich data is about our climate going back hundreds of 1000s of years.

Unknown Speaker 21:21
Again in this space it's non standard format but also kind of working with what we like to call the digital with physical and the digital space I know neologism. I know. So, one of the second thing was this idea of interaction and exploration. So having the as a main educational goal, and people to understand through their use of technology but also understanding the affordances of technology, we needed to create a space where there could use things and that things would go wrong and that they could, you know, understand, as they're doing instead of just given them the facts that these technologies would have given them so in this zone, people get to fight fly a virtual drone and explore all the different ecosystem through a tablet based control interface where they can find animals and understand GPS and infrared technologies, and they're guided with by like a fellow researcher, that's kind of helping them see what what are the, the winds and the problems ahead and all of that. And in order to achieve that we created. We use the game engine so basically this content is real time content is generated in real time just like a video game would be. So we really created a generative Arctic world where the time of the day would influence the position of the sun, also the season would evolve throughout the year and throughout the different visits that were possible and even the content the animals that were found would change seasonally. And so this is a bit the interface of the drone. And so we created a really a world with a different season, so that every time a visitor would come to the museum they would experience something different. And as I mentioned this immersive projection was really kind of the centerpiece of of our scenography. But the whole lighting design, all of the zones, all of these gradients and colors and affected by the summertime. Yeah, exactly. All of that would kind of influence the lighting design inside the space, the summertime, or the, the winter, for example. And then the third kind of strategy we use is gamification so you know what happens when interaction is not limited screens really, people start interacting together and that becomes really interesting because they can be challenged to games to learn things differently. And this game called navigating leisure is like a two player game where a navigator needs to lead a trucker across the glacier in order to recuperate scientific equipment and return safely to the base. And in order to do that we have to navigate a field of deadly crevices and the use our object, or how MANY feet are connected object we call which is a GPS that represents the technology of a ground penetrating radar, and they have to understand the different readings of this technology and see if the ground is safe and if they can actually go pick up or if not, if they're going to lose all their equipment and lose the game. So that's, that's a bit, what, what we tried to achieve multimedia wise and I'll let young finish.

Unknown Speaker 24:47
So I'm going to talk a little bit about how we got creative with our prototyping process in order to rigorously learn as much as we really could from visitors during the development process that informed our final designs and experiences. Next slide. So, prototyping during the exhibit development process is pretty standard for the museum, but there were a few new challenges, I would say, with, with developing this exhibit. So, one challenge is that we couldn't develop all of the exhibit pieces ahead of the final production, with it being such a highly digital exhibit. We had to kind of improvise with different types of strategies so that we could learn more about visitor experience and learning along the way. We were also trying to get across content message, a content message that you're using technology to identify problems in an article environment. When that we wanted to make sure that the tech side of this actually did stand out to visitors. And it wasn't just learning the content knowledge about the climate or about art in a space. So this photo here is actually one of our very early prototyping rounds for the navigating a glacier activity where we were just trying to understand whether visitors could get that they were using a ground penetrating radar to navigate a nice flow, and trying to just get a sense of what this activity flow might look like. So we set up paper crevasses on the floor of the museum, we gave visitors metal detectors, and we had educators on the sideline telling them whether they were safe or not safe as they were navigating the space.

Unknown Speaker 26:19
I'm just going to jump in and say the metal detectors consisted of dowels with cardstock discs on them, and we had taped walkie talkies, to the stick so that they could communicate with their navigator and tell them whether they were safe or not and there was some beeping, the walkie talkies was not my idea, but it was super genius.

Unknown Speaker 26:41
So way to sort of just again let us get a sense. And it was, I would say probably pure chaos at this point, but the visitors were really excited about the activity, and we learned a lot about just some of the kinds of support that we would need to also provide visitors to be successful in this type of activity. Next slide. And so down the road we developed different versions of the ground penetrating radar starting with those discs and walkie talkies, but here you can kind of see a couple of interim version on the left, that helped us start to understand the design of this advice like, you know how the handle should be, how the components might fit into this casing all together, and then the photo on the right shows the insides of our final design for the GPR in the space. So, there are several phases of evaluation that help us along the way when we develop an exhibit. So one of the earlier parts is doing story testing, and it's a way for us to kind of hone in on the kind of content we want to share. Understanding visitor questions and maybe their baseline knowledge about a certain topic or direction we want to go in, and also just a sense to see where some of the visitor interests lie. This top picture here is an example of we. So in that entryway, there are a number of different artifacts that visitors can that represent things that they're going to be seeing later in the exhibit, and they can touch them and they can start to see some of the screens that the outputs from those at the start, but we were trying to just figure out what kind of technology we would want to showcase at the entryway so we had a group of middle school girls at different sticky dots to indicate their interest or disinterest in some of the different artifacts that we were considering, and then we followed up with them about some of their initial impressions and potential questions about this artifacts, knowing that this would be some of the first things that visitors would see upon entering the gallery. And this helped our team determine what type of information might be helpful to share about the artifacts, and also what kinds of things would excite visitors upon entry. We do formative evaluation from there from story testing where we test different iterations of activity prototypes. To learn more about the activity flow the learning and usability, and those activities can be more or less hardened. In this stage, this bottom picture is an example of a more developed prototype that helped us get closer to the final design in the space. So visitors could try out this large drill with the, with a draft label. And at this point we were able to learn a little bit more about the usability and learning. It's a little hard to see in this picture, but this cutout at the bottom was actually purposeful, So that if we, you know, had somebody who was in a wheelchair that they would be able to pull up alongside and so we wanted to try to get that positionality kind of right in the early things before we started to fabricate the final thing. And then, you know, from there, we do a remedial once the exhibit is open to help us learn more about how the exhibition is working at a poll and if there's any kind of final changes we want to make to the gallery before kind of completing everything, and then this next year we'll be doing a summative evaluation to learn more about the impacts. Some other strategies that we do during this time is important part of the process is sharing some of these findings along the way with the team so for this project, it meant sharing findings, not only with the MLS team but also with Moment Factory. So we help to organize. We organize your feedback and you report summarizes main findings and what those action items might be for the next iteration of an activity, and also detail some of the visitor quotes that really try to illustrate the visitors experiences in their own words, hearing things and visitors on voices No words can be really helpful and helping us really understand kind of where they are with this activity, And where we want to go with it. As a bit of a pivotal part I would say in our development process, we held a prototyping weekend Blitz, at the museum. And so this was a time where both the MLS team, and Moment Factory could come and see visitors interact with activities, discussed together in real time, make changes, and make changes that we kind of needed to make at that time. And this was important for us to help to gain a shared understanding of our visitors and how they interact in a museum environment. So we invited some groups with disabilities into the space. So we can answer some specific questions that we had some of these activities, as well as on the floor visitor recruitment, which is pretty standard for most of these different phases. So the different photos here just kind of showed some different prototypes in different, different places. Accessibility is a very important factor for us from developing a new exhibit we really want to make sure that all visitors can learn and have a good time in an exhibition.

Unknown Speaker 31:40
And these are some of the strategies be used to help push forward the inaccessible design of the exhibit. As Elena noted earlier, universal design and universal design for learning those are two frameworks that we really go to when we're developing exhibits, and this is where the changes in activities where everyone better for everyone is the goal. So we consider accessibility from a physical, social cognitive and emotional perspective. And we want to make sure that there are multiple ways for visitors to be able to engage and express themselves through learning at at different exhibits. One of the things we also did when developing this exhibit was make a UD plan for each of the exhibit components to make sure that we were kind of thinking through all the details for the experience. We developed that plan also with the museum's Ada and 504 coordinator to, and I feel like these resources were helpful for us to kind of stay accountable to some of our design decisions and also be able to flag questions that came up, so we could discuss as a team, you know how we're addressing this and what have we not thought about so far, multisensory, can you go back a moment, Chloe thinks multi sensory experiences are also really key when we're thinking about accessibility. So, this comes up in several different ways throughout the exhibit so the tactile elements like the bronze birds. The ice while the visitors could feel different models of the technology throughout the GPR was another. Another thing we really tried to make sure that there were different types of feedback so as you track on the ice and locate crevasses. You get feedback by text, there's colors for safe and unsafe, and it also vibrates to, so that when you go over crevasse it's like very clear that there's something there that needs your attention. The intro video for that activity also includes captions and has audio for the instructions. The hydrophones activity in this the visitors listen to underwater sounds to try to identify an animal that they're hearing to support this identification, visitors, listen to the sound through broadcast audio, and then they also can refer to these different visuals of the sound clip as well. We also have here in this picture you can see that the buttons are shaped on different. They have different shapes, and that's to also help a visitor who is blind to be able to navigate the activity as well. And there's a, there's a picture here just with someone kind of trying out our GPR in real time. The Vista, or sorry, that was dead the ice cores theater in this bottom picture that was actually challenged with this floor to ceiling videos and so we wanted to make sure that there were captions but they had to be in a place where anybody kind of in that theater could see so we worked with the factory to kind of get a certain shape that made it feel like it was seamless with the video but also that you were able to get that written information as the as the video happens to slide. And of course, you know, we started developing this exhibit in normal times, But we got to the finish line in COVID times, and we learned a lot from working with each other and working together. And these are just some of the key points that we kind of pulled away from our collaboration.

Unknown Speaker 34:58
Yeah, we've, we found that a variety of ways of interacting was really the best for us, that hour, we of course by necessity, traveling from Boston to Montreal was a, you know, a bit of a, an expense. So we tried to work remotely. When we could but every couple months, we would get together in person either in Montreal or in Boston and that those opportunities to work in person, really helped us, especially in the creative parts of the process, where we needed to do some brainstorming and bouncing ideas and just getting to know each other personally. Were really helped the then virtual remote meetings, which were best served by sort of dealing with practical let's keep this thing moving along. But so that combination really worked well for us.

Unknown Speaker 36:00
And I feel like there was some times to where we would be trying to do these virtual sessions and something wasn't quite gelling and, you know, but we decided maybe it would be better if we met in person. A lot of times that's where we had kind of our breakthroughs and kind of ideas and stuff too, so really I feel like that pairing really important project. We also learned that really having a clear point of contact on both sides, was really important, so all of the feedback that teams on both sides had went through the same to individuals on these teams so the project manager on MLS and the Moment Factory side really sent and received all communication, but they made sure that you know anything they received was shared them with the right individuals on their respective teams and that helps to streamline kind of our thoughts and ideas across both.

Unknown Speaker 36:48
Definitely, on, on the third point honesty and co creative teamwork mindset. We knew when we met the museum team that this was. No, not a special time for us and we work in a vast array of different industries, but we felt like this time there was really an atmosphere of trust and honesty and harmony is a collaboration, for real, that really made us open up our kind of drawing books and our whole process, which normally we tend not to do as a consultant firm we are you know have learned through the years to kind of show the results of our process to the clients and have clear touch points whereas on this side, we just did it as if Mrs team was part of the woman factory team and vice versa and really just open it up and I think that made a humongous difference because often the solutions to certain problems don't come from where you expect them and or from necessarily the person that has, you know, that hat on the project, it comes from somewhere else or, and that's really how we learn to work together so I think having a complimentary team yes but also being honest and open might seem tacky but really really mind. The success in my humble opinion of this project.

Unknown Speaker 38:17
Yeah, I think that, but we respected each other's strengths, and we were willing to hear, hear whatever the other the other partner had to say it was, I think co creation is the key word there that we really we really work together very well and synergistically. Um, and then, you know, and then COVID We had to open a do the last bunch of work and then open the exhibition with COVID restrictions, and I have to say that, that everybody had to was forced to work remotely really changed our, our remote meetings and having each individual on screen, versus, you know, we used to have a Moment Factory had a camera that looked at everybody in the room and so you could see all the people but you couldn't see them very close up and at our at the Museum of Science, we didn't really have, we maybe had a camera on somebody's laptop but, you know like, it was boy doubling down and just saying yes we're gonna figure out how to do remote stuff well made a huge difference and I think we have all benefited from just learning how to do that better before I switch the site. And then there was this huge amount of flexibility that was required, you know, in terms of the number of people that Moment Factory wanted to send down for the integration and opening, and how much we could do that remotely how much our staff could help with that there was just a huge amount of flexibility that was required to make that work.

Unknown Speaker 40:01
I don't know how we are on time unfortunately I don't see my textbooks but I think we have one last slide that we can conclude on the piano pass it on. Yeah, I

Unknown Speaker 40:11
think we're I think we're doing just fine on time. Great. So it's exciting because we are now just starting to learn a little bit more about there's perceptions of the exhibit. We just conducted a remedial evaluation that involved exit interviews and surveys with visitors that went to the gallery. And so these are just some of the starting things that were learning experience wise visitors indicated that they felt transported to the Arctic in this space, they really appreciated the interactive opportunities. Some of the immersive qualities, and also the way that the exhibit is sort of its own piece of space was kind of something that a theme that we're seeing. Most memorably visitors have been calling out the navigate the glacier activity that's near the exit and, you know, involves the digital and the physical interaction, and also the icefall entryway to something that people don't expect to see. And so when they notice it's there, it's pretty cool. But it was also exciting to see them most of the groups that almost all the exhibits have been noted by at least one group too, which I think speaks to kind of the overall gallery. Visitors are connecting with the learning goals, they're talking about the affordances and constraints of using technology in the Arctic and also about the Arctic environment, and they are making different climate change connections as well, and accessibility is something that we're going to be exploring a lot more in our summative but from the few groups that were part of the remedial the pairing of different accessible features like having audio and text or visual cues and the vibrating, choose those kinds of things are working well in tandem, for visitors. And there are some areas of improvement that I think we'll dig into a little bit more like some of the controls for the drone activity, you know, we knew going into this activity was going to be a little bit more complex than maybe some of the other ones too, so there's a lot for us to learn and we'll be exploring these things even more in the summative so that's really exciting. Yeah, and that's a, that's a wrap for us but we're happy to use any remaining time for questions or discussion and we're really excited to all of you joined us today.

Unknown Speaker 42:26
We can't hear you, Sam here

Unknown Speaker 42:28
personally research.

Unknown Speaker 42:43
Now if there have been any questions in the chat or

Unknown Speaker 42:46
I have the chat open I don't see any questions, but feel free to put them there or to just unmute yourself. Do you hear me. Yes, Yes. Not a second ago. Hello. Yes,

Unknown Speaker 43:15
I can hear you.

Unknown Speaker 43:17
I'm sorry for this miss working but I one of my computer broke and the line went down so I really like your presentation was wonderful. I really appreciate that. I think that everybody has appreciated the huge work you have done the quality really amazing. I have questions, I don't know if other people, other attendees have questions I if they have put in, I will go in the queue. If they don't, I will go first. Is there anyone wants to put questions. No one jumps in. Okay i start. One thing that impressed me is the huge work, huge spaces you have been able to set up. Also, you know, Arctic yes, we could say must be huge. A detective is, I think it has not been an easy task to set up, all, all those things together. So the question is, do you think that is the scalability or the transfer of your knowledge into a new experience because effectively you're in the center of, of the word attention in for the problem that is, is now on, and being able to, to, to open up your experience to others so that they can replicate, they can take it up and do it again in other places I think that would be really great. In, in, for teaching to other countries to other places about the Arctic, the effects and the experiences that you set up, and the learning that you provide, people that are attending to your event. So do you think that you are going to replicate it is I going to make a different scale. Is it possible to for you, or what is your plan for the future about it.

Unknown Speaker 45:15
Um, do you mean like climate change in general or immersive environment and immersive exhibitions

Unknown Speaker 45:25
adventure in particular or just in general,

Unknown Speaker 45:29
the most. But I think that also other areas. Earth is you might address, and that would be really great to, to know what is the future that you see from it, even if it's, I might.

Unknown Speaker 45:44
Um, we're definitely looking at immersive spaces, I'm working on an exhibit exhibition right now that actually is also about climate change but at an international level. And we're looking at trying to, we're in December we're opening a test gallery that will feature Venice and so we're looking at using video, you know 10 foot by six foot 30 fit wide immersive screens and life size graphics on the wall so we're definitely working on immersive it, I think the combination, what did you call it phygital I love that word, we definitely work a lot in that realm, and we'll continue working in that space.

Unknown Speaker 46:33
I think you said Venice,

Unknown Speaker 46:35
did I hear from Venice Yes.

Unknown Speaker 46:38
Oh, that's great. That's really good. And so probably you're also addressing topics that are related to water that. Okay, in which period.

Unknown Speaker 46:53
Can you give venture. Sorry, Elena.

Unknown Speaker 46:55
Yeah, go ahead, Leah,

Unknown Speaker 46:56
after Arctic adventure was designed as a permitted exhibit for the Museum of Science. But the hope is that, you know, as we, we've learned a lot from creating that exhibit already, and will continue to learn more and the summative evaluation true and so a lot of that learning is then being funneled into how we're thinking about the project that Elena was talking about and so the hope is that we just continue to learn kind of by doing these

Unknown Speaker 47:21
pieces, and yes the exhibition I'm working on will be a traveling. So again, we're trying to figure out as Chloe was saying, really, they were really work on place based stuff and there's a lot that you can do when you are dealing with a physical space but it's so we're trying to figure out how do we translate that now into something that you can pack up into a truck and travel. I see that Alison has her hand raised, I've

Unknown Speaker 47:44
seen that there's someone who has raised their hand.

Unknown Speaker 47:47
Yes, go ahead, Alison, Bruce,

Unknown Speaker 47:51
and he's okay.

Unknown Speaker 47:54
Unmute would be best. You think I learned after nearly two years but no thanks, sort of building off what Sam was saying and a lot of you kind of more in that direction. I work as the exhibition and educational coordinator at the archives of Ontario here in Toronto, and quite often, we have traveling exhibits and we have an exhibit space and very interested in, You know, as we can build a universe of exhibitions, with the environment that we have, but the. Quite often it actually just got an inquiry about this this morning we have. We're a provincial archives for the province of Ontario and we there are a lot of archives around this province and smaller museums that ask us, can you send us a version of the onsite exhibit that you have, and we have, you know, we have a traveling exhibits that are one version of that but they want us to send the immersive version that we designed for our space, and we don't do that, you know, we're not a design shop and they want us to send to do that for us, for the for them, of course. And I'm, I'm curious and I know you're talking about, you just started talking about that but in thinking about traveling exhibits. How can that be something that's immersive and even more even like pointing towards. How can you make a traveling exhibit immersive, How can you make something that has to travel and be packed up, with the understanding that the host institution does some of that work. How can that be, have some of that immersion and and that you know that the environment design with knowing that it's temporary and its needs to be flexible because that's something that I really concerned with and think about a lot because we're, we're doing a number of different projects, sort of winding down or traveling exhibit program in some ways but building up a different version of it and have our own struggle with our on site space which is about to reopen to the public after 18 months 19 months but it's very low traffic and like, there's a lot of, you know, challenges with it but the traveling versions of our exhibits we have different versions of them going to be do pop up exhibits in different spaces and people ask us to send them our old onsite exhibits and want it to look the same and I just can never be the same. I'm wondering a lot I'm gonna stop here.

Unknown Speaker 50:12
I want to say one thing that's, you know, in order to, we have an ice wall is enormous, right, we have one of the largest ice walls around, we had to install a chiller, or something or other, on the, on the roof of our building today, is

Unknown Speaker 50:27
there anything Yeah,

Unknown Speaker 50:29
a condenser yes thank you, the chillers inside. Anyway, like that's not, that doesn't go anywhere. So there's some stuff that is just in in place forever, um, you know, so for the, like, We're opening a temporary gallery that will turn into a traveling exhibition in 2023. And, you know, we're using right now we're using enormous graphics that we print on fabric. So you know Florida sea floor to ceiling and height and, you know 10 or 20 feet wide, and it's on fabric and so all you need is a little frame around it and it's very lightweight and it's very easy to take down and to travel. And we're also looking at sounds right. How can we have sound effects in there and really help. and, and we're looking at using gobos and lights to create a caustic pattern of light reflecting off of moving water. And so all of these ways to try and help ground you in the idea that you are in Venice, in, in a low cost, easy to pack up way. That's, that's the start of that answer.

Unknown Speaker 51:46
If I'm meant to factory our roots are rigid in the touring rock show industry. And I think the idea is really to, like, you know, Arctic adventure we designed for a permanent setting so we would have probably come up with a totally different. You know experience on or design, if we had in mind a touring exhibit. Not that this cannot be reproduced in a similar space somewhere else at some point, but the idea is that when you design something that will travel, there's always especially with technology, this idea of kind of tapping on local resources as well. Can you rent stuff, wherever you know you are instead of having to to pack up and travel everything like you would do on tour and things and, and, in our experience COVID has changed a lot that because, um, oh it's finished, yes we should touch on and I'm getting

Unknown Speaker 52:42
so much for coming, and

Unknown Speaker 52:44
I wanted to ask about schools if enrollment and materials, your presentation was really, really extraordinary. I'm sorry I missed the first part, but I really loved your presentation. So, great work,

Unknown Speaker 52:58
really thank you thank you all for coming. I hope so much.