Studioarc Blog

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Cambo’s Characters

We are really enjoying working with Cambo Heritage Trust to help transform their beautiful 18th century stable block into a lovely new heritage centre.

The Erskine family has owned the estate for almost 350 years, so you can imagine their archives are brimming with wonderful photographs documenting centuries of family life at Cambo. We thought we would share some of our favourites with you that will be featuring in the new exhibition at the Centre, which is due to open autumn 2017.  

“Look what I found!” Sir Peter Erskine’s sister, Caroline, is captured playing in front of Cambo House, 1950s.

The most stylish pram in the park! A young Erskine child out on his constitutional walk with nanny, late 1800s.

Not one to shy away from a bit of mud, Lady Magdalene Erskine enjoys being with her beloved pigs on the estate, c.1913.

Gathering gardening tips, Lady Magdalene Erskine and her children explore Cambo’s walled garden, 1919.

We are certain Lady Magdalene would have won gold in a Strong Woman competition, 1916.

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An American Special!

As a pitstop between Vancouver and Portland, I spent a day in Seattle and managed to squeeze in three main attractions; The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation Visitor Centre, The Space Needle and the EMP Museum.

Tucked away from the main attractions at the Seattle Centre, is the free to enter Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation Visitor Centre. Celebrating the charity work of the Gates family the Centre takes serious content and statistics into a beautifully crafted display with endless interactives to engage with. 

This exhibition has popped up frequently on my Pinterest searches and didn’t disappoint. The layering of printed plywood, carefully considered furniture, hand-on exhibits and touchscreens left us appreciating the input made by the foundation.

This table invites the visitor to solve a problem through design. Suggestions of problems are put forward and an assortment of model shapes and materials are laid out to create solutions. At the end of the station, there is a mini studio where you can photograph and market your product.

Interactive intepretation

Space Needle – you can’t miss it! This 1960’s gem breaks the Seattle skyline and is a delight of post-war engineering, ambition and space travel. A spiralling queue for the lift is relieved with layered interpretation including impressive construction photos and interactive components used in the build. Like something from the Jetsons you soar up the side of the narrow spine of the needle and land to epic views.

The viewing platform has been upgraded with hi-tech features for the visitor to engage with. A large multi-touch digital screen lets you scroll through a collection of photographs added by visitors and zoom around the world to see where everyone has travelled from, while adding your home address to the database. Dotted around the viewing platform are huge digital touchscreens allowing you to zoom in on the detail of Seattle’s streets. Often World Fair buildings become redundant and forgotten but Seattle has succeeded in turning a static feature into a modern attraction. 

The soaring Space Needle

A multi-touch interactive at the Space Needle

Right below the Space Needle is the EMP (EXPERIENCE MUSIC PROJECT) - which (if you squint your eyes) is built to resemble a smashed electric guitar from above.  This is the museum of nerds - rock music, horror films and sci-fi are celebrated in this impressive Frank Gehry building. On arrival at the first floor a mammoth sculpture of instruments greets you, which, once you place some headphones on you realise are all tuned to play in sync.

The main gallery tells the local story and rapid rise of Nirvana. What I enjoyed most at EMP is the clever combination of materials used to give added texture to the stories. From the specifically composed classical rework of Smells like Teen Spirit to the atmospheric lighting, the space tells the band’s story against a back drop of exposed concrete and reclaimed timber from the forests of Aberdeen (Washington) where Nirvana originated. EMP is fun and intergalactic – you can spend hours learning new instruments, recording your own music video and following the local history of Jimi Hendrix and Nirvana.

EMP’s massive music sculpture

This Nirvana exhibit follows more traditional lines

Blog by Bebhinn

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The Celts

Our new junior graphic designer, Kelly, recently found herself caught up in a night full of revelry at the Beltane Fire Festival on Calton Hill. 

Though today it is a heady mix of contemporary culture, this festival has its roots in ancient pagan celebrations closely linked to the Celts. Traditionally one of four key pagan celebrations, Beltane signified the beginning of summer when communities would light bonfires, feast and adorn themselves with lavish decorations. Opulent and detailed decoration was central to the Celts’ culture; it is through the intricately decorated objects that they left behind that we can start to unpick and understand the ancient culture of the Celts.

Having recently designed the exhibition Celts with the National Museum of Scotland, we have had the chance to witness the unraveling of some of the mysteries that surround this ancient culture. The exhibition features over 300 beautiful objects from across the UK and Europe, brought together for the first time in Scotland. Together they highlight the distinctive and extraordinary art objects that draw the varying peoples and communities together under the umbrella of ‘Celts’.

Tonight to celebrate Beltane, the National Museum of Scotland is holding a Celts edition of their

Museum Lates

event, featuring Scotland’s indie rockers, Idlewild. Other highlights include drumming and dancing from the Beltane Fire Society, storytelling of the Celtic legends and tales and a silent ceilidh. The Museum Lates event also gives you a chance to explore the Celts exhibition by night, a great opportunity to come face to face with the mystery and beauty of this ancient culture.

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Built to Break

They say opposites attract and when it comes to art and science this old maxim is becoming increasingly true. In recent years museums and galleries have been seeking to bridge the gap between the two disciplines to deliver innovative, accessible and engaging exhibitions to the public. Here, our Exhibition Designer, Bebhinn, tells her experience of one such exhibition, TRAUMA: Built to Break.

Memory of a Brain Malformation, Katherine Dowson 2006

I recently had a tourist day in Dublin and, between pints of Guinness, decided to visit the Science Gallery. It’s tricky to find, tucked into the grounds of Trinity College, but definitely worth seeking out. The Gallery is a clever combination of art, science, thinking and design and has been offering temporary thought-provoking exhibitions since 2008.

The current exhibition TRAUMA: Built to Break questions the impact of trauma, both mentally and physically, on people. Through a series of individual artist commissions, the exhibition plays with the perception of trauma: how we recall it, how it affects us, and how we describe it.

On arrival visitors are posed with the question ‘Is Trauma Easier to Forget or Easier to Remember?’ Visitors write their responses, which are then locked away by the first exhibit, Memory Laundering, leaving you to consider the question as you travel through the exhibition. I’ve selected a couple of pieces that, for me, stood out from the collection.  

Scarred for Life, Ted Meyer 2015 captures attention immediately with a series of body paint artworks created by those who have been left scarred as a result of illness, injury and life-altering operations. Meyer’s work celebrates the individuals he features and invites the viewer to do the same.

Hövding Product, Anna Haupt and Terese Alstin 2005

Travelling further into the exhibition, you pass a series of sections that showcase safety helmets, displaying the intricate layering and importance of design in saving lives. Presented alongside is a new design, Hövding; a revolutionary bicycle helmet that offers an airbag alternative for cyclists.

Grasp Installation, Colm McNally / CMCM Design 2015

Upstairs, on simple timber tables, lies Grasp; a series of three interactive sculptures by artist Colm McNally which gives visitors the chance to experience the loss of ability in their hands. As an artist, Colm works with heavy-duty machinery, so this piece explores a real fear for him. Visitors are given the seemingly simple task of opening a jar, gaining a tiny insight into what the loss of dexterity could really be like.

Project Syria, Virtual Reality Storytelling, Nonny de la Peña 2014

Project Syria is an exhibit that takes visitors completely out of their comfort zone, by placing them into the virtual 3D environment of present-day Syria. Wearing Oculus goggles visitors are given an uncomfortable, yet unforgettable, experience of the sounds, sights and trauma of Syria under attack.

'The Flow Towards Europe’, Interactive Visualisations, Ville Saarinen and Juho Ojala. Next to the Oculus clad viewer is a digital screen, its content addressing the current crisis of refugee migration. This installation aims to visually map the mass movement of people to Europe from surrounding countries; a captivating piece of visual statistics that you can view here: 

http://www.lucify.com/the-flow-towards-europe/

TRAUMA: Built to Break was one of those exhibitions which I wandered into with few expectations, but I now find myself regularly thinking back to the individual pieces. Truly engaging, I’m finding this particular exhibition hard to forget and look forward to what’s next!

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Selfie lovers and museum enthusiasts unite!

Today we see the return of #MuseumSelfie Day making its third annual appearance. As my social media page is inundated with posed posts captured in museums and galleries around the world, I am struck by the strong connection that the relatively new phenomenon of the selfie has with the age-old tradition of portraying the self, and apparently I am not alone.

Self-portraits first took hold in the 1400s, developed by artists as a tool to promote their style and entice rich patrons. From then on the self-portrait – be it a drawing, painting, or photograph – has been the artist’s way of saying ‘Look at me, this is who I am and this is what I am about.’ Sound familiar? Like the self-portrait, the selfie is a carefully constructed image, eagerly seeking approval from its digital audience. So is the selfie the self-portrait of modern society: its tool the smartphone, its audience global?

This summer we are delighted to be working with the Scottish National Portrait Gallery in Edinburgh, designing its headline exhibition Facing the World: Self-Portraits from Rembrandt to Ai Weiwei. This collaborative venture between the Scottish National Galleries, Stattliche Kunsthalle in Germany and the Musee des Beaux-Arts, France, draws together key pieces from each organisation’s collection. Facing the World: Self-Portraits from Rembrandt to Ai Weiwei explores the artist’s obsession the self-portrait from the Renaissance to the present day.

Visitors to the exhibition will have the opportunity to capture their own ‘self-portrait’ and add it digitally to the display. Taking the self-portrait out of the hands of the artist and placing it into the public’s, the evolution of self-portrait to selfie becomes tangibly apparent.

See it at The Scottish National Portrait Gallery, Edinburgh 16th July - 16th October 2016

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Deutsches Museum, München

While on my travels over the summer, having a busman’s holiday in the vast and wonderful Deutsches Museum, München, I was enjoying one of the many strategically placed coin-operated massage chairs when I came across a brilliant and exciting new exhibition.

Welcome to the Anthropocene is the first major exhibition in the world to look at the significant impact of human activity on the ecosphere over the past 200 years. Historical artefacts trace the technology that put us on the path to the Anthropocene, while current research presents the challenges we are facing today, as well as possible solutions. Artistic interpretations provide visions for the future and ask us to look at the world in new ways.

The exhibition uses sustainable materials and raw screenprinted cardboard as a striking threshold.

Interactive reveals are engaging and fun.

This oversized table has AV screens set inside the plates, and goblets with an audio speaker, inviting visitors to lift and listen.

Welcome to the Anthropocene – The Earth in Our Hands, Deutsches Museum Until 31 January 2016

Stuart

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Dazzled by Design

Much of our work involves presenting the past in an exciting and engaging way, and so we felt an affinity with the way these Dazzle patterns have been reinvented, drawing on WWI camouflage.

Patternity, a progressive design studio that celebrates pattern across all mediums, has joined with the Imperial War Museum to create a pattern called The Fleet of Dazzle. The original artwork produced during WWI is inspiring in its own right. Ships were painted with distorted perspectives to give the enemy a false illusion of where the ship was located. The clever lines and bold colours of these graphics stemmed from a necessity to distract the enemy. 

Patternity has taken this historical reference one step further with a range of products which draw on the graphic strength of the original dazzle designs. The new designs capture the confidence of the originals while making reference to the shard shape reflected in the Imperial War Museum brand. I think it makes for a pretty impressive collaboration. 

We are excited to be working with the Imperial War Museum North on a new exhibition and this collection has inspired us in the use of bold and creative pattern.

Bebhinn

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Unwrapping a Mummy

New technology is allowing visitors to Sweden’s Medelhavsmuseet, the Museum of Mediterranean and Near Eastern Antiquities, to virtually unwrap the mummy of an Egyptian priest. Interactive Institute Swedish ICT working with museum staff have scanned eight human mummies and created a digital autopsy table. The table, located in the ‘embalmment room’ next to Egyptian’s priest Neswaiu’s mummified remains and coffins, allows visitors to virtually open the two coffins and unpeel each layer of the mummy down to the skeleton. This provides visitors with a new level of interaction with the object, seeing hidden information first-hand.

Find out find out more on BBC News here

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Outsmarting the Camera

In our digital, snap-happy, snap-chatty age, new research suggests people who take pictures of art with their camera phones remember less about the works than those who don’t.

A study released last week found that people remember 10 percent fewer objects and roughly 12 percent fewer details about the objects they’ve seen if they have photographed them rather than simply looked at them.

Linda Henkel, a psychology professor at Fairfield University in Connecticut, who led the study explained, ‘When you press click on that button for the camera, you’re sending a signal to your brain saying, “I’ve just outsourced this, the camera is going to remember this for me”. The photos are trophies. You want to show people where you were rather than saying, “Hey, this is important, I want to remember this.”’

The research comes at an interesting time as many galleries are encouraging the use of camera phones. The Museum of Modern Art in New York recently introduced MoMA Audio+, an audio-tour program delivered on an iPod Touch that allows visitors to take pictures. Back at home, visitors can access a dashboard that documents the artworks they photographed. MoMA plans to offer a publicly downloadable version of the app next year that will allow people to share pictures via social media while still inside the galleries.

Lyndsey

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Letters of Note

In today’s technological landspace of instant-email and 140 character status updates, it's nice to see an archive of historical letters and significant correspondence.

A personal favourite online at the moment is Letters of Note, which the editors' describe as 'an attempt to gather and sort fascinating letters, postcards, telegrams, faxes, and memos’.

My favourite on the site has to be a released memo sent to Richard Nixon to be read out in the event of disaster for the Apollo 11 Moon landing on 20 July, 1969, which you can see below (and transcribed here).

It questions how many of these articles were written in the event of other major historical events failing.

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Fairfield Shipyard

The latest announcement by BAE Systems could see hundreds of jobs lost in yards at Govan and Scotstoun. The offices of Fairfield Shipyard at Govan, are one of the finest of their kind. We have had the privilege of working on this project over the last few years. Due to open in 2014, Fairfield Heritage Project will tell the story of the yard and hopefully and ongoing future for shipbuilding at Govan. Watch the BBC news item to find out more about our project.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-24842169

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Artist Brent Comber creates beautiful, simple pieces of furniture from wood that would otherwise have been discarded. This treatment would work well within a visitor centre and would be a lovely idea for a forestry organisation or estate to adapt from waste wood.

You can see more of Brent’s stunning work on this (rather lovely) website here 

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Listen with Your Fingers

The team at Disney Research in Pittsburgh have come up with an innovative way of projecting sound. Instead of the traditional speaker system, sound is transferred via a low-current high voltage signal that travels through the body allowing the body itself to conduct the sound. All you have to do is simply place your finger to a willing participant’s ear and with true Disney magic you can hear the recording.

What is really fascinating is what this development could lead to in the future. It might not be to long until we are throwing out the headphones and simply placing a finger to our ear.

Colin

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The National Museum of Scotland has made a great little video showing visitors’ reaction to Mary, Queen of Scots, her life and the choices she made. It also features a glimpse into the work we did at the Museum.

The exhibition runs until 17th November and has been getting some great reviews in the national press which has put a smile on our faces. The Telegraph’s art critic, Richard Dorment, notes,

"It is all too easy to dumb down or sensationalise material associated with Mary, but as usual at the National Museum of Scotland the quality of the loans and the beautifully designed installation insure that doesn’t happen. I noticed, too, that visitors walk through the show at an unusually slow pace, reading the labels and looking at each object or picture on display with concentration. . . . Whatever pleasures this year’s Edinburgh Festival may have in store, I guarantee that nothing you will see in any theatre or gallery will engage your mind and heart like this show."

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The Write Stuff: Creating Effective Text

The 1 day seminar was held inside the historic Royal College of Surgeons building

Travelling to London for the Museums Association conference, ‘The write stuff: Creating effective text’, George Orwell’s rules for effective writing sprang to my mind. His second rule, ‘never use a long word where a short one will do’, always lingered in my thoughts when struggling through academic books and articles while at university. After a brief attempt at trying to read Marx I realised a major hiccup in his writing and came to understand the importance of knowing your audience. What use was it calling for a worker’s uprising while writing in the most pretentious, convoluted style they would struggle to understand? Marx could have done with a conference on how to create effective text.

Understanding and defining the audience that you write for was an underlying theme throughout the day’s talks and discussions. Identifying who you are writing for helps to set the tone of an exhibition; such as deciding between the words ‘urine’ and ‘wee’ for a body exhibition at a children’s museum. One talk centred on the use of theatrical techniques in writing text and took identifying an audience a step further, to actually visualising and naming potential visitors and their motives for being there. 

‘The write stuff: Creating effective text’, was an interesting and engaging day, which certainly afforded me with some new ways of thinking about text. However, it is worth remembering Orwell’s sixth rule ‘break any of these rules sooner than saying anything outright barbarous’ – effectively, there are no hard and fast rules for writing text – just new ways of approaching it. (MS)

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Aireal: An Interactive Tactile Experience

An incredible piece of research and development from University of Illinois PhD Student Rajinder Sodhi in conjunction with Disney's Research department has hit the internet.

The groundbreaking project, called AIREAL (spot The Little Mermaid reference anyone), lets you physically interact with virtual objects, creating 'effective and expressive tactile sensations in free air'. When connected to an output device (Television, iPad etc) the AIREAL machine puffs 'air rings that allow you to actually feel objects and textures in midair' with no special controllers or gloves required.

The possibilities for visitor experience within an exhibition and gallery environment are incredible and it will be interesting to see how this technology develops. You can read more about this on Rajinder's website here. (KS)