Untouchable Silhouette
01
Project Timeline
Feb. - Mar. 2023
Advisors
Project Type
New Media
Experience Design
Interaction Design
Gamification
My Role
Experience Designer
New Media Designer
Researcher
Rendering
Scene Building
Dr. Dajin Wang - AI, Education, and Interactive Media, Ph.D
Alexia Mandeville - ACCD Professor
An Innovative,
Futuristic,
Interactive Museum Experience
Tool Used
In this space, where the past meets the present, audiences quietly connect with the echoes of creatures that once roamed the Earth. This experience invites contemplation and awe, reflecting on human impact and mourning extinct species. It highlights their permanent absence, urging us to rethink our relationship with nature and aim for a more harmonious future.
Project Brief
Keyshot
Figma
Sketch
02 Thinking Process
A reflective journey that makes the audience think…
Article Summary
The Bestiary of Loss talks about a new human-included mass extinction event. It mentions that humans have become an unparalleled predator of animals, due to their activities like Over-hunting, Habitat Destruction, and causes of invasive species.
The author documented extinct animals, including their images, habits, and properties, and reasons for extinction.
The Author hopes to provide resources for collective mourning and inspire actions to mitigate the loss of biodiversity.
https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/extinct-animals/
Inspiration
Inspiration is the fuel of creativity…
The digital exhibitions of Teamlab
The Hologram with Mist Installation by Joanie Lemercier
Fish Night - Love Death + Robots: Season 1, Episode 12
TeamLab is an interdisciplinary art collective known for its immersive and interactive digital art installations that merge technology, design, and nature to create extraordinary visual experiences.
Joanie Lemercier is a French visual artist known for his pioneering work in light projections and geometric, immersive installations that explore the relationship between space, light, and perception.
A visually captivating animated short that tells the surreal story of two traveling salesmen who find themselves in a ghostly, prehistoric world of marine life after their car breaks down in the desert.
03 Design Process
Design Keywords
Brainstorm
Let
The Ideas
Explode.
Based on the four design keywords above, I created a mind map to facilitate divergent thinking and ultimately extracted key information for further advancement.
Color categorization and abstract imagery can aid in my thought process, allowing me to make connections in various directions and generate better ideas.
Early Sketches
Key Experiences I want to provide to my audiences
Some ideas from these sketches work well, and I implemented them into the final design.
I also deleted some ideas that I think don’t work, due to reality concerns.
The Archive part is what I decided to delete because the entire exhibition requires a relatively dark atmosphere. If I put memorial stones inside, first, it’s dangerous for audiences, and secondly, audiences won’t be able to read texts on it.
04 Overview
05 Design Breakdown
“If we had tread more slowly from the beginning, could there have been a different future?”
Fading Trails is a floor touchscreen-based interactive installation. The entire floor of the room consists of several screens with sensors. On these screens, footprints of different extinct creatures are randomly generated and move around, filling almost the entire screen. When a person enters the room and steps on the screen, the screen generates an electronic footprint where their footsteps are.
When there is no human
Animal Footprints are randomly generated and roam around
Animals coexist & No Disruptions
Human Involvement
Leave human footprints with red particles around them
When animal footprints touch a red area, they will be destroyed
Reflection
Fading as time passes
Human footprints and red areas will slowly fade out
It makes the audiences think...
Maybe humans and animals could still coexist, even if we needed to “invade” their habitat.
Maybe all we need to do is move slower.
Expansion & Invasion
Human steps and red area will leave on the screen and eventually create a large fields that invade animal habitat
Steps will connect
Extincted Animal Silhouettes
Animal Silhouettes will be projected on the water fume (smoke), creating a dreamlike, misty environment.
A Space that blurred the present and the past
This environment immerses audiences, allowing them to traverse through time and coexist in the same space with extinct creatures.
Fading Trails
Phantom of the Void
Phantom of the Void is an interactive installation in a room space. There will be smoke-creating devices in the room so that this room is always smoke-filled. The silhouettes of extinct creatures would be projected on it. The silhouettes of these animals move inside the room as the projection program is set.
“This is the first time I truly realized how real and sad the extinction of creatures is. they had gone, and never will be touched again.”
Untouchable
They already extinct
Disruption & Destruction
by human behavior
Sadness & Hallucinatory
Reality Hacking
When audiences try to touch the silhouettes, the air disturbed by their waving hands disrupts the high concentration of water vapor, causing the images to become incomplete.
06 Summary
Untouchable Silhouette is an interactive museum installation designed for a communal experience. The overall atmosphere of the exhibit is one of silence, sorrow, and psychedelia. Fading Trails and Phantom of the Void together create a harmonious and artistic experience, prompting audiences to reflect on the relationship between humans and animals within this comprehensive experience, and to ponder:
What have we done wrong?
And how can we do better?
07 Designer Reflection
I chose a topic I'm deeply concerned with — the relationship between humans and nature, and the coexistence of humans and animals.
When designing the interactive elements, I was very cautious because I was concerned about presenting the concepts from the selected article too overtly. I didn't want the whole exhibition to appear like a high-tech version of a traditional museum.
At the same time, in contemplating how to present interactive/creative narratives, I wanted the audience to have open choices, and for their decisions to enable the story to have different outcomes.
I was very careful not to impose my own ideology as a designer onto the audience. I hope to give my audience the freedom to choose.