Tinker imagineers, a leading experience design and production agency, has recently completed a project with the world’s most interactive museum, the New Media Museum of the Netherlands Institute for Sound & Vision, which has now reopened to the public after a 2-and-a-half-year renovation.
Visitors can explore a new immersive experience which places media culture in context. The museum is the first museum in the world to continuously modify its exhibits in response to the behaviour of its visitors, using visitors’ own smartphones as well as facial recognition. Every participant will have a different experience thanks to the personalised museum journey. More than 50 interactives and hundreds of hours of audiovisual content are available to visitors.
Tinker imagineers was responsible for the combined spatial, graphic, and media design.
A truly interactive experience
Visitors create their own media profiles on the Media Museum app when they enter the venue, complete with a picture and personal preferences. At each display, a visitor’s identity is verified using facial recognition technology. As a result, a custom museum experience is created, making the museum extremely interactive.
Each zone in the area focuses on a distinct theme related to making news, connecting, buying, selling and playing. Guests can engage in interactive activities, uncover iconic media artefacts, and relive happy memories of their youth. For visitors, the exhibition is a journey of discovery through the media landscape of the past, present, and future.
The multiple zones are connected by a distinctive installation that consists of at least 300 metres of LED screens spread throughout the museum. Frameworks disappear, while inside and outside, front and back, blend seamlessly. The endless flow of media that enters our lives on a daily basis is symbolised by this so-called “Media Reactor.”
Stepping into cyberspace
Speaking about the experience, Stan Boshouwers, owner of Tinker imagineers, says:
“In the experience, you literally step into cyberspace, you enter the online world. We designed it that way because we live in a mediated world these days. If you look at the screen time on your smartphone, your daily screen time starts to approach the time you spend with people in real life.
“Add to that television and computer screen time, and you can see that we perceive our world largely through intermediate means, in other words, media. In contrast to the past, media content is largely created by ourselves. Therefore: the media define us, and we define the media. The museum’s goal is to make the visitors aware of this.”
Tinker imagineers has been working on the experience for almost five years in collaboration with the museum and many other parties from different disciplines.
The concept is by XPEX with spatial design, AV design and the design of the media reactor from Tinker imagineers. Bruns worked on set construction, Kiss the Frog provided interactives and Redrum provided AV content. Beamsystems was responsible for AV hardware as well as show control for the media reactor and Ata Tech was responsible for AV hardware and hardware for the media reactor. Sound for the media reactor was from Danny Weijermans, light design for the project was by ACTLD and Elastique provided the museum app.
Tinker imagineers, founded in 1991, is an award-winning experience design agency in Utrecht, the Netherlands. They design and build narrative spaces, bringing ideas to life in exhibitions, visitor centres, and multi-media theatres all around the world.
All images © Jorrit Lousberg
