NASM Embraces Digital Media for New Galleries
Haley Sharpe
Global experience design and planning agency with studios in the UK, North America and the Middle East.
For the last seven years, the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum (NASM) team has been undertaking a complete reimagining of the iconic National Mall building in Washington, D.C.
Through the dramatic transformation of exhibit galleries using the latest immersive learning and presentation techniques, the redevelopment marks an unprecedented moment in the Museum’s public-engagement mission. From October 14, eight galleries will be launched, inspiring a new generation of pioneers and explorers.
Haley Sharpe Design Limited (hsd) was commissioned as interpretive designers for the development of the ‘West Wing’ galleries, exhibiting momentous themes covering everything from early flight and moon landings to the exploration of our solar system and human quest for speed.
As the galleries have developed, NASM has embraced a step-change in the way digital media is integrated into the exhibition galleries – providing more dramatic, responsive, and layered AV interventions to engage visitors with the Museum’s storylines and collections.
Jan Faulkner, hsd Creative Lead (Media) observes:
“In today’s world, technology and visual triggers are at the heart of cultural engagement. Through integrated scenography, hsd has supported NASM to create gallery environments which embed ambitious yet robust media interventions. Combined with dramatic lighting effects and evocative audio soundscapes, these environments become critical spaces for visitors to engage with complex yet inspiring scientific content, helping them make sense of the world, and universe, around them”
hsd Facilitate Digital Integration
A core part of our service offer has been the development, management, and delivery of all digital components across the eight new galleries. Our teams, working with NASM content specialists, created media briefs for digital elements, which have then been developed in partnership with three software companies, Immersive International, Cortina Productions and NGX Interactive.
Integral to our approach has been building on the depth of historical and scientific knowledge held by the content specialist team and transforming these layered stories into appealing and accessible experiences for visitors within the gallery context.
Testing throughout all stages of the production process was pivotal to ensure that emerging programs meet social and learning goals for NASM’s diverse audiences. Covid inevitably impacted on the way that testing could be conducted and hsd worked with NASM and software providers to swiftly adapt evaluation methods to ensure that digital pieces could still be delivered on time.
Evaluation techniques included online facilitation of digital experiences with Middle School pupils to gain feedback on how pre-teens could best engage and navigate programmes, explore content and seamlessly pick up core messages. hsd facilitated these sessions and joined as non-participatory observers to hear feedback first-hand and to ensure that agreed changes were adopted in the next design stage.
Accessibility for all was a vital consideration across all media platforms. Sessions with Universal Access groups were conducted online, with a ‘say what you see/do’ approach taken to track how users interacted with programs. Storm interface audio-nav controls, which are used to assist navigation on touchscreen interfaces, were simulated on participants’ own computers, with feedback on orientation, visibility and experience woven into the delivery phases. Interestingly, we have observed that an increasing number of visitors are choosing to use the audio-nav controls in a post-pandemic world.
Cinematic Storytelling
hsd collaborated with Immersive International to deliver many of the large-scale immersive AV elements across the many of the newly developed galleries. Immersive provided highly creative and impactful soundscapes, projections and focus-AVs contextualizing key artifacts such as the historic Wright Flyer. Situated on a high-level convex curve suspended above this iconic object, this seamless display of object and contextual media is the centre piece of The Wright Brothers & The Invention of the Aerial Age Gallery, providing a fitting human-connection to the exhibit.
Walking on other Worlds is a dramatic focal point for the Kenneth C. Griffin Exploring the Planets Gallery. This 360-degree panoramic experience enables visitors to explore the surfaces of seven “other worlds” visited by spacecraft. Through audio, CGI and visual effects visitors are transported to the environments of these far-off planets, as well as understanding the varied spacecraft which collected the surface data upon which their experience is based. Uniquely, the Walking on Other Worlds audio uses real sound recordings from the surface of Mars – a truly impactful experience for space enthusiasts.
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Interactive Engagement
In addition to large-scale immersive media, visitors can also engage with multiple human-scale interactive opportunities. hsd worked with Cortina Productions on the development and delivery of these layered and playful programmes.
Exhibits include multi-user touch tables in the Kenneth C. Griffin Exploring the Planets Gallery enabling visitors to work together to construct the Saturn V Rocket, to game-based experiences where visitors can take to the skies to fly the Wright Military Flyer as well as racing against machines in the Nation of Speed Gallery.
Collaborative work amongst several media specialists produced the stunning Globe installation in the One World Connected Gallery. Here, hsd, Immersive and Cortina worked with a complex brief to develop a ten-foot projection-mapped recreation of the Earth. This dramatic gallery centre piece, demonstrates our connectivity as a planet through navigation tracking and communication devices.
Through partnership working, the exhibit delivers both an individualized and shared gallery experience.
Engaging with the experience, visitors gather around interactive kiosks positioned around the Globe, and can trigger data-driven visualizations produced by Immersive, showing global phenomena such as international flight paths, human population centres and even animal migration routes. Touchscreen kiosks, developed by Cortina Productions enable visitors to further integrate the data and engage with personal narratives linked to each theme.
Unique Screen-Based Content
In each of the eight redeveloped NASM galleries, new screen-based experiences are available, often carrying personal narratives of those associated with momentous aviation and space-exploration events.
hsd partnered with NGX Interactive to ideate, develop and deliver these diverse and creative pieces which include the stunning ISS-Module Cupola simulation in the One World Connected Gallery. Here visitors can experience views of Earth from Space gaining the emotional response that astronauts have when they view our planet from this perspective.
In America by Air, visitors can experience take-off and landing at the nearby Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport in an Airbus A320, whilst in Destination Moon embedded media tells the stories of the technicians who developed the life-supporting mission spacesuits.
Audio-Described
Further accessibility features have been developed with Deluxe Media Inc, who have brought their industry-wide expertise of audio descriptions and captioning. These accessibility techniques have been seamlessly embedded into filmic installation and media interactives, drawing on best practice in terms of ergonomics and usability. Gallery-wide audio descriptions will be installed to provide visit-wide experience facilitation.?
Image credit: Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum/Jim Preston and Haley Sharpe Design.