Challenge

The Tech Museum of Innovation in San Jose, California wanted to create interactive installations to introduce visitors to the concept of synthetic biology. The subject matter is particularly challenging, firstly introducing fundamental building blocks of organic biology before introducing ‘what-if’ scenarios involving concepts from synthetic biology. The Tech Museum also serves a diverse audience and the exhibits had to be designed with visitors as young as eight years old in mind — however, care was also required to make sure that the experiences could hold the interest of teenagers and adults too.

Outcome

Local Projects created the BioDesign Studio – four unique interactive exhibits, each requiring its own custom-built hardware and software solution. The Creature Creation exhibit enabled visitors to create and test new virtual life forms by snapping together physical pieces of magnetic DNA. The Living Colors Lab exhibit used projection mapping to guide visitors through a real-world lab experiment mixing DNA into bacteria to create new glowing colours visualized by thousands of petri dishes. The Pattern Design exhibit enabled visitors to take control of the rules behind nature’s emergent systems in order to design new coat patterns on life-size animal sculptures. And finally the Exponential Self exhibit enabled visitors to experience the magnitude of exponential growth first-hand by embodying a cell and using gestures to initiate cellular division until a massive colony of their cellular likeness filled a screen.

Online Resource

The video opposite gives a an overview of four unique exhibits created for the BioDesign Studio.