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Reflections on Future Worlds Exhibit Field-trip

The Future Worlds exhibit is an ongoing affair at the ArtScience Museum, located within Singapore’s world famous Marina Bay Sands.

The exhibit is thematically separated into 3 main parts, namely City in A Garden, Park and Space. These are all loosely linked to the tiny nation’s goal of building a first-world ‘garden’ city, integrating nature and concrete in a seamless, harmonious manner. Space can be interpreted as the nation’s aspirations to be on the forefront of technology and progress, on a continuous and relentless march towards the space-age of tomorrow.

Here is a selection of notable installations within the exhibit.

 

City in A Garden

 A Table Where Little People Live

This is a cute little piece where participants get to interact with the projected elements shown on the round table. The little people interact by walking on the contour of the provided props or your hands. The rain gets occluded as well in the same manner. There are little design details that I have observed within this simple yet fun installation. The objects are only ‘considered’ for interaction if they are sufficiently close to the table. My guess is that it is to avoid the problem of participants reaching over the table while playing, thereby affecting the interactions. A Kinect is most probably utilised to provide a depth map to enable such a consideration.

Suspected Kinect in operation!

 

Inverted Globe, Giant Connecting Block Town

This section was great fun for the kids, as they move blocks around and see the projections change accordingly; roadways shifting positions and traffic getting redirected. I feel the success of this installation lies with its use of physical space and big objects! We, adults might not feel it. But picture yourself as a four-year old kid, carrying a ‘house’ around and deciding whether to place it. It’s pure fun with maximum physical exertion. Its equivalent to an avid sportsman having a great workout! And not to mention the crazy placement of some of those blocks on the walls… (see above image, top left)

 

Sketch Aquarium

Shark i have never seen before

This was a good one! Basically participants draw their renditions of a predefined sea creature, shark in this case, and place it into a custom scanner. And their artwork gets added to the digital aquarium.

Scanning station

Aquatic life galore!

There were additional little details that pushed the interactivity further. There were food bags periodically placed in the bottom middle of the screen, and anyone who touched it will ‘open’ the bag, resulting in all the fishes swarming towards the food bag. And tapping on any creature makes it wiggle.. 🙂

 

Park

Create! Hopscotch for Geniuses

Create your hopscotch!

I enjoyed this the most, as hopscotch IS equally fun for adults as it is for kids… You are given an interface to create a sequence with different shapes. Being me, I created one where I placed each shape on opposite ends for every consecutive row. I didn’t take a picture, but you can see me playing below! Awesome childlike fun!

(thanks to Man Wei for videographing!)

Sketch Town

Conceptually identical to Sketch Aquarium above, just in 3d I guess.. Perhaps an excuse to include a Merlion somewhere… 🙂

 

Space

Crystal Universe

Definitely one of the visual highlights of the whole exhibit. Thousands of LED strips, combined with clever placement of mirrors, create infinite planes of countless LEDs. The software that controls the LEDs are definitely non-trivial, as these lights display images and patterns that require a great deal of synchrony. They are more than your typical blend of chasing lights or flashing patterns commonly seen on christmas trees. As an added bonus, at the end of the exhibit, you get to access a webpage that allows you to control the image or animation that is projected onto the LEDs. A very satisfying end to a pretty impressive exhibition!

 

Final thoughts

In essence, as interactive students, we can tell that a lot of the installations were basically a bunch of projectors, motion sensors, meticulously-written software and a generous serving of lights. Thereby, the main takeaway for me was that with simple ingredients, an infinite amount of results can be achieved. And not to mention that the element of play is critical/integral for exhibitions designed to engage younger audiences!