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The Mineral Dance

Mineralienroboter in Anwendung | Bildquelle: ART+COM

The Mineral Hall at the Museum für Naturkunde Berlin is a historically protected room. This limits the flexibility of design and the variety of staging with which minerals can be exhibited. Accordingly, it is difficult to attract new groups of visitors for a certain exhibition topic, e.g. mineralogy.

This Show Case focuses on the Mineral Hall as an example of an exhibition hall with historic and listed character.
How new interests can be stimulated, new content can be opened up, or new possibilities for interaction can be created, is something that needs to be considered here apart from a redesign of the exhibition. This must succeed without structural changes to the space.

Insights - state of the prototype

With this Show Case, a hybrid prototype was designed that can be accessed both digitally and on site in the mineral hall. It provides multimedia access to the exhibition theme and at the same time reveals content that playfully complements the existing exhibition.

Using an explicit display in the Mineral Hall as an example, visitors can navigate through a number of minerals and thereby call up additional information about the exhibits. The prototype transmits the view as a livestream to a remote system so that the original objects and the supplementary information can also be accessed virtually from outside.

The hybridity of the prototype is defined by the direct connection and technological synchronization of both sides. Control from one side is also apparent on the other. Both sides register the simultaneous navigation visually and via a haptic resistance, which is intended to illustrate a physical-digital encounter and connectivity.

About the project

In January 2021, the Museum für Naturkunde Berlin and ART+COM Studios launched the NuForm research project. For two years, the project will develop and test new forms and formats of encounter communication that are intended to sustainably expand the museum exhibition experience.