THE FUTURE OF WEB EXHIBITIONS

My examwork is coming up next semester and a part of my project will be to create an interactive webexhibition toghether with an artist, as a part of his project "The Polynationell War Memorial" (http://www.war-memorial.net/).

About the project

Polynational War Memorial

This is a part of a bigger project for the swedish artist Jon Brunberg, called The Polynational War Memorial. It is a process-based, multidisciplinary and long-term art project with the objective to create a proposal for an updateable memorial complex commemorating all killed military personnel and civilians in all wars fought from 1945. The Polynational War Memorial would ideally be the main memorial site for commemoration of victims of war in the world. It should function as a bridge between veterans, relatives, and politicians from a broad range of nations involved in conflict and contribute to a profound level of understanding about the consequences and mechanisms of war.

The ideal site for an exhibition of a resulting proposals would in the artists opinion be the United Nations Headquarters in New York. The ultimate vision is however be that the memorial is actually built sometime in the future. This requires of course a significantly larger budget and a very large portion of goodwill from all people and nations that the memorial involves. These processes are certainly highly complex but if sufficient funds are raised and negotiations are successful the memorial might perhaps be in place already by 2015.

The web exhibition

Jon Brunberg is working with architects, drawing and planning the building. He is modelling the whole thing in 3D, and wants to showcase it online. This is where I come in. I am suppose to help plan and build the website so that it will have interesting, captivating and immersing interactivity and good usability, as it is my exam work as an interaction designer. (I am thinking that i should write my thesis about the possibilities of web exhibitions and interactivity or possible ways of storytelling in web exhibitions or something like that and then implement some of my findings in the web exhibition. But I’m not really sure.) I will be producing the web exhibition together with Jon Brunberg and Riksutställningar (the Swedish government agency responsible for producing exhibitions).

Content

Except for the 3d models, which the user should be able to interact with in some way, it has been proposed that the site will contain various war-related video interviews, still images with voice over, and text interviews (all on the topic of war). It has also been proposed that there should be some 3d and 2d animations, satellite images, maps, drawings, links to models at google earth to help exhibit the monument itself. Also some common interactivity has been discussed like a discussion forum, polls, and that the users should be able to upload their own proposals, images, memorials etc…
The website, like the project itself, is based on two things; discussing and informing about war, and showing the idea of the monument.

Strategy

Site objectives

The site’s objective is to showcase the polynational war memorial to the public, creating a buzz about it and about the real world exhibition which hopefully is going to be touring the country. But to promote the live exhibition is not its main objective. If it was we could build a simple promotional site instead. This will be an exhibition that stands on its own two legs. It will contain all the information that the live exhibition will contain. The difference will lie in the two medias different interactive and technical possibilities.

Therefore, the websites objective also is to inspire people to think about various aspects of the subject of war, creating a buzz about the topic of war, and awake public discussions on the subject.

Then of course, the end objective is to get to exhibit the whole memorial proposal in the United Nations Headquarters in New York. In order to do that, there is a selling aspect to consider. It seems like the site should both be selling and informing. It should try to get people enthusiastic about the idea, but the idea includes a lot of information that it has to convey in an intriguing way.

Personal objectives

I’ve been interested in exhibition design for a few years now and especially in how to create and design experiences, with the help of interaction design, in exhibitions. I’ve done a few projects on the subject and now for my graduation project, I want to continue working on exhibition design, but at the same time find a new angle by bringing my attention to web exhibitions.

My thought so far has been to use the website as some kind of playground for my research, because the research paper is the most important part of my exam work. And I’ve been thinking that I could use the website to exemplify my research findings by implementing them. I think that the Polynational War Memorial is a good project to exemplify interactive possibilities in online exhibitions, because it is an exhibition that has a lot to gain by being in the virtual reality. I just have to extract and emphasize those parts.

User needs

Since the site is going to be directed to the public, I will need to figure out what people will be likely to visit the site. To get to know the user I will do some research. Who is likely to visit an online art exhibition? What age are they? What are their interests? What kind of computer skills do they have? And so on… I will also create some personas and scenarios. My guess is that I will generally deal with intellectual adults who have an interest in culture but not always in computers. My stereotype visual is someone who reads five pages a minute, but never has been able to put ikea furniture together. In that case I can fill the place with information as long as I make the navigation easy enough.

Return of Investment (ROI)

This is something I will have to decide together with Jon Brunberg and Riksutställningar. I can start by putting toghether a list of different possibilities.

Links

Riksutställningar

Jon Brunberg

The Polynational War Memorial