12in12: Kick the Dust
November’s side project of all things museum + tech-y sprawled into December (*gasp of horror*). But for good reason! the exhibition for this particular museum-tastic project took place 8th of December. What did I get up to with all that extra time? Between designing for an exhibition, a business trip, and Belfast Design Week: a lot.
The Project: Kick the Dust
Digital Maker’s workshop series exploring reinterpreting artefacts and exhibitions around Ulster Museum, culminating in a display in the museum’s ground floor.
The Checklist:
- Experimented in all sorts of making: from laser cutting and tweezing out vinyl printed designs to VR Unity displays, 3D printing, and photogrammetry.
- Created a laser cut light show featuring colourful, translucent canopic jars and smart phone flash lights
- Helped set up an exhibition in an honest to goodness museum
- Exhibited in said honest to goodness museum
The Undone:
- Not part of my original goals but I would have liked to do some serious way finding overhauls and mapping for the exhibition and museum at large but unfortunately I did not have time to dedicate to that as well as contributing an actual display. Next time!
The exhibition brought together various pieces from across the program. Unable to put in a lot of extra hours outside the workshops but wanting to contribute at least one display idea beyond the myriad of experiments and vinyl prints + assets from my time throughout the program, I ultimately settled on laser cutting artworks and artefacts onto brightly coloured, translucent plastics to create a ‘Shadow Theatre’. This was also designed to serve as a catch net for the various experimental prints we had made so everyone could contribute something and the work wouldn’t go to waste.
Though not as focused as I would have liked (I usually design my work to have a strong narrative driver underlying the whole setup. In this case, it was ‘just’ a shadow theatre. Something cool to get people hands on with artefacts they wouldn’t normally be allowed to touch), the exhibition was a group effort and my aim was to make sure a strong interactive element was represented.
Unfortunately on the day not everything went to planned and the idea needed to be scaled back but that in itself was another excellent lesson in making the most of a situation and problem solving on the spot. Besides, nothing beats getting to see the look on a parent and child’s face when you assure them that yes, you can actually touch and interact with that item on display. Plus pizza and friends. Pizza and friends are good too.
Highlights of the Month
Side Project:
- Trying VR painting (trippiest thing ever).
- Dabbling in Unity and realising how much of what I learnt in the 3D for Designers side project applied.
- Getting to hear curator’s talk through their own exhibitions and their process (and realising how much overlap there is with UX design. Well let’s be honest, it is user experience just for a different ‘medium’).
- Did I mention the museum exhibition bit?
At Work:
- Belfast Design Week happened. Pure madness culminating in 3 events in one day (including participating in my first design panel).
- Travelling to the US for team offsite (but mostly getting to meet the rest of the ridiculously nice UX team in person for the first time and chatting about all things design).
- Working through the overhaul of a crucial workflow and going from initial musings to beginning implementation, learning at every step.
Lessons Learnt
Take Note of EVERYTHING
Learning at Work:
At work I have a dev environment set up for the product on my computer and when testing I always have to refer back to my notes from getting it all sorted out in the first place so I can retrace the steps when I inevitably forget.
(Not) Applying on the Side Project:
I went to update the CV section of my portfolio site and realised I couldn’t remember the grunt and jekyll commands from the blog redo of my first side project only a few months ago. Tiny details but just goes to show you can’t be careless with side projects. Less critical perhaps but that only means you’re more likely to forget. Write that stuff down!
Disaster Happens. Prepare to Improvise
Learning at Work:
Something will always go wrong. Always. Sometimes it’s a small thing, other times the universe implodes leaving you wishing you’d exploded with it. Exhibit A: Asked to help out a design careers fair. Wish one of those had been around when I was going for placement so of course I want to show support and say yes. But what do you do when you show up on the day to discover you’re not helping out because there is no one there to help out, it’s just you and an empty table? Take a deep breath, whack up a logo card, and re-print those posters designed for the open night a while back. Disaster averted!
Applying on the Side Project:
Showing up on the morning of the exhibit we realised a few things: 1) the lights were way brighter than when we had tested the shadow effects, 2) they couldn’t be turned off (meaning the display only worked in a small area), 3) the flashlights did not work nearly as well as phone lights in these conditions, and 4) most of the laser cut props had to be used elsewhere so only the display pieces were left. So yeah, basically need to do an on the spot pivot of the whole display. Don’t panic! Grab whatever cuts are leftover, swap the stands out for pieces that don’t block the light, and set up a mini, permanent shadow booth display with my carefully balanced (and carefully guarded) phone acting as the torch to demonstrate the effect and encourage passersby. Success!
Explain Your Work for Every Audience
Learning at Work
Don’t be vague or sound like you’re doing more than you are. Explain so everyone knows what you are working on. If you can’t, you don’t know what you’re working on either. Stand ups are helping me with this as I force myself to consider when I’m using jargon or talking about a project out of context that makes no sense to the rest of the team (and is thus a pretty pointless announcement).
Applying on the Side Project
My fellow makers on the exhibit ranged from fellow placement students to budding game designers and art students working alongside curators and technologists extraordinaire. Not only did I need to watch my jargon (a bad habit I try but often fail to avoid), but it was critical to clearly articulate ideas and what was being worked on not only so people could work together but also to make sure we would eventually be able to convey the concept to museum-goers.
Observations from the Program:
- Interaction is in everything
- Objects tell a story, but what that story is changes depending on how much you know about them and your own personal feelings/bias.
- Test everything yourself and under the same conditions
- Instinctive interaction and curiosity can be unlearned: the amount of parents urgently stopping there children from picking up a flashlight because they couldn’t believe you were actually allowed to touch parts of the display surprised me.
- A demonstration is more powerful than instructions.
- Clear interactions still win: the exhibit was packed with a VR station, light up canopic jar prints, and a 3D printer amongst other things but still popular was the artefacts around the world map display with its big row of buttons waiting to be pushed.
- There’s always more involved than you think. The actual piece is only one tiny part amongst the signage, display, setup, and more which is so easy to not take into account when dreaming up all these ideas you ‘totally have time to make’.
- Each new ‘medium’ brings new details to consider. The pedestal for the shadow theatre was the perfect height for small children, a detail I had not considered but worked out perfectly
A huge thanks to Ulster Museum and everyone involved with Reimagine, Remake, Replay for making this experiments possible and encouraging the madness!
Next Time
It’s Christmas! Which means holiday time but not necessarily free time. So what better time to mess around (and possibly fail spectacularly) with something totally new? Let’s just say it involves animation, just not the traditional kind…
To find out more about The Side Project Project, see how it all began here.
