Pulitzer Arts Foundation

The Pulitzer Arts Foundation had a really interesting opportunity when they were planning their exhibit, Kota: Digital Excavations in African Art. They had access to a large data set and they were looking for a way to not only visualize the data, but to allow visitors to interact with the data in a way that would help them to look at the art in a different way. We brainstormed with the Pulitzer team to develop a concept for a full immersion room experience.

The interactive that we created for them spanned a 70″ touch screen table and extended visuals onto the 4 walls surrounding the table, creating an experience that was truly unique. The experience employed this large data set of reliquary figures and allowed users to group and sort objects from the exhibition using their observational skills. They could then dive deeper and view data about their groupings to see what similarities and differences the objects had. Meanwhile, a “cloud” of related objects projected on the walls would swirl around the user and light up in response to their input.

Keeping in Pulitzer fashion, it was decided that the interactive “game” should not have didactic text or instructive prompts. This allowed us to posit an interesting hypothesis; could users, through open ended play free of instruction and objective, learn what he hoped they would learn through the experience. Through playtesting and observation we found this to be true – users could “play” with the objects and through this play, observations and patterns would emerge.