Creativity Exhibits / 2018-19 / with Matheson Marcault
We worked with Centre for Life Newcastle on their new “Creativity” area, prototyping different ideas for installations that would get people interacting and inventing in different ways.
We then developed three concepts further, working with George Buckenham and Science Projects to turn the prototypes into engaging (and resilient!) interactive exhibits.
The Poetry Robot is a cheerful screen-based experience that asks for your help in writing a poem. It asks you to choose a subject and a title and then creates different drafts for your poem, asking for your advice in how to rewrite them, swapping in words, changing the start or the end, changing the mood. At the end, it asks you what you think of the poem you’ve created together, and offers to print it out on receipt printer for you to take away. It lets people explore their feelings about what they like and don’t like in a poem, and feel instrumental to the creation of the final piece, as well as touching on how revision and iteration can be an important part of creating.
The Selfie Machine is a selfie booth that contextualises selfie-taking within the wider history of self-portraiture, drawing attention to the role that selfies can play as an everyday creative act. Alongside the wider contextualisation of history it offers lighting, backdrop and prop changes that aim to place it halfway between a traditional photo booth and a physical version of Instagram filters.
And the Magnet Drawing Station, which draws on the work we did with Art Deck, provides people with a prompt, a time limit, and a restriction for an illustration: make a rabbit, but do it while standing on one leg! Make a picture of breakfast, but behind your back! The pictures are created with magnetic shapes which have been carefully designed to allow for expressiveness and ingenuity, while still having a cohesive aesthetic that it’s easy for participants to make a picture that they feel proud of.
