Best Design Studio: Medium
Local Projects
Planet Word: The World's First Voice-Activated Museum of Language
Environmental Design | Creator: Local Projects | Commissioner: Planet Word
Planet Word is a new, interaction-first museum exploring the way language shapes the human experience. Housed inside one of Washington DC’s National Historic Landmarks, the museum features wonders like a smart paintbrush that lets visitors "paint with words" and voice recognition experience allowing visitors to come face to face with 30 native speakers and signers, rendering the unique characteristics of their languages unforgettable. One of the most spectacular experiences in the museum uses a projection-mapped sculpture of 1237 words to tell the story of English as a continually evolving lexicon, shifting and growing as it encounters and embraces the world.
Despite opening during the second wave of the coronavirus pandemic, Planet Word exceeded expectations, with visitors enthusiastically booking tickets in advance for a reduced-capacity experience that put visitor safety first. Press lauded Planet Word for establishing a new paradigm for the museum experience—one with exciting interactivity built right in.
Norton Art+
Pop-Ups, Display, Exhibit & Set Design | Creator: Local Projects | Commissioner: Norton Museum of Art
What happens when a traditional art museum brings individual works of art to life through digital interactivity?
The Norton Art+, a new augmented-reality (AR) iPad app, helps visitors more deeply engage and create with featured contemporary artworks, informed by the work’s form and the artist’s process. From Nick Cave’s Soundsuits, to Ugo Rondinone’s whimsical faces in the Norton’s Sculpture Garden, the Norton Art+ app goes beyond simply adding a layer of digital information over the works by empowering visitors to create and install new virtual artworks inspired by the museum’s collection.
The app allows visitors to explore creative and educational content tailored to six key contemporary artworks in the museum’s collection. A unique interaction has been created for each artwork, informed by the work’s form and the artist’s process. This digital layer focuses visitors’ attention on the visual and process-driven dimensions of an artist’s work, and creates a connection with visitors by activating their own creativity, spatial awareness, and sense of play.
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