The Rubin Museum hired our company, Electronic Bohemia, as consultants to develop a dynamic sign for the lobby of the museum. The main goal for the sign was to provide visitors with a quick overview of the events and exhibitions at the museum on a given day and to offer them further information as to when and where these events could be attended.
The new signage was to replace their current installation, a slide based sign which required significant daily maintenance and only focussed on one exhibition or event at the museum at a time. Guests were often unaware of the many events, exhibits, and tours that were happening at the museum during the day of their visit, nor did they understand where to go to view a specific exhibit.
The new lobby sign after installation.
To create a greater guest experience, we placed particular emphasis on giving visitors a quick overview of all the exhibitions and their locations, as well as promoting the day’s events and tours. When a tour or event was about to start, we would highlight this occurrence both textually (by adding a red line of text with the remaining time until the event) and visually, (by adding silhouettes at the location of the event; more and more forms would be added as the time remaining dwindled).
Video of the lobby sign.
To aid in locating exhibitions, we chose to use the museum’s grand staircase (which connects all floors and is situated in the central entrance lobby in direct view of the sign) as a structural reference point. An abstract representation of this staircase and its connecting floors appears on the right side of the sign’s composition. In order to convey more indepth information, we used the center of the screen as a focal point to separately highlight each exhibition, tour, and event.
It was important to allow for the sign to be both serene and subtle while being noticeable and captivating. Serene and subtle in order to blend well with the experience and feel of the museum. Noticeable and captivating in order for guests to be aware of and excited to receive information from it.
It was important to allow for the sign to be both serene and subtle while being noticeable and captivating. Serene and subtle in order to blend well with the experience and feel of the museum. Noticeable and captivating in order for guests to be aware of and excited to receive information from it.
Stills from the lobby sign.
The Buddhist art practice of creating mandalas from sand is close to home for a museum that focuses on the collection and exploration of art from the Himalayas. We drew inspiration from sand mandalas when we created the transition between happenings at the museum. We wished to create the illusion of the images dissolving the same way that an image made from sand could be blown away by a gust of wind. The animation of the images is different every time, created anew and precomputed before it unfolds.
The sign loads and formats all information directly from the museum’s database requiring minimal maintenance effort, which saved the staff several hours of work every week. After installation of this lobby sign tour and event attendance rose significantly.
The software for the project was written in C++ with openFrameworks on a Mac using Xcode.
The sign loads and formats all information directly from the museum’s database requiring minimal maintenance effort, which saved the staff several hours of work every week. After installation of this lobby sign tour and event attendance rose significantly.
The software for the project was written in C++ with openFrameworks on a Mac using Xcode.
