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Communicate!
The story of human communication
Timeline: 3 months
Client: National Museum Scotland
Value: £20k
Aim: To produce two hands-on interactives for the Communicate! Gallery at the Museum of Scotland
What we did: Initial concepts for the two interactives had already been produced by Stuco. The first was speaking tubes - a complex pattern of tubes that twist and turn throughout the exhibition space returning to an 'exchange' where users could 'connect' callers. The second interactive was a pair of Aldis lamps, like those still used on ships today.Speaking tubes: Three "caller" cones, individually colour coded, were installed at each end of the Communicate! gallery. These connected back to the "exchange" via a network of 76mm aluminium tubing. The connection tubing had to bent to shape by a specialist and brought on-site and secured to the gallery roof (approx 5m high) in large sections to keep audible loss (created at joints) down to a minimum. The "exchange", a desk housing all three tubes, allows a user to connect "calls" from the individual cones by using a flexible tube that snapped into place by way of magnets.Aldis Lamps: A simpler installation to achieve than the Speaking Tubes, we constructed two steel lamp housings and fitted an array of super-bright LEDs. Instead of having a mechanical mechanism to achieve the on/off action we decided to do it via electronics - hopefully increasing the longevity of the interactive. The lamps were bolted to the floor, about 10m apart, and users had to communicate by way of morse code.
External Link to Client's Website: http://www.nms.ac.uk/