One & All

Interactive Exhibition at Somerset House
National Trust / Trust New Art, 2017

Situation

The National Trust wanted to celebrate 50 years of stewardship of Britains coastline, and worked with creator Benjamin Wigley to commission an immersive digital artwork to be exhibited online and at Somerset House in London.

Task

Lead the User Experience and Design of the project, collaborating with the creator, producers, and three major British artists to help translate their vision into a workable digital experience online and at Somerset House.

coast Screenshot 2015-09-09 18.56.32.png

Design Process

02. Developing a Solution

The production and creative team met to discuss the challenge and together developed the concept of a virtual coastal ‘walk’ - where the user would encounter a series of virtual artworks, each tackling a different aspect of our relationship with Britain’s coast. I would collaborate with 3 commissioned artists to create new digital experiences online and in Somerset House.

03. Artwork A: Tania Kovats

Tania Kovats’ work centres on our experience of nature. “How can we bring this to life online?” – this was her challenge to me. We discussed making a live representation of the ebb and flow of the tides around Britain’s coast. I presented Tania with some live data visualisations I found fascinating, and the concept of a tidal map with live coastguard radio audio emerged.

martynhut narrow.png — 04. Artwork B: Martyn Ware

Founder of 70s new wave bands The Human League and Heaven 17, Martyn was inspired by the idea of a wandering beach-hut that could record stories from local seaside communities. For the exhibition, I designed an experience that gave visitors authorship to remix visuals of the places and stories collected to recreate new meanings of belonging through chance association.

sketch mockup.jpg — 05. Artwork C: Owen Sheers

Owen and I worked to produce an interactive essay that presents visitors with the essential directional choice of coastal walking - sea on the left or sea on the right.
Following this choice the poem can be experienced in either direction, inspired by the reflective and non-linear interaction design of The National Film Board of Canada.

prototype development.png — 06. Prototyping & Testing

I created an interactive prototype to gain useful user insights and understand how the different artworks could be best experienced online.
Based on the results, we shortened part of the experience to ensure that users remained engaged, and created more shortcuts that allowed for more flexibility in the navigation.

07. Designing the Interface

One of the challenges of the project was to combine three unique and artistic visions of the coastline into a single context. We needed to create a usable experience that met sophisticated behavioural expectations by the users, but still maintained as much as possible the integrity of the artworks.

Project Credits

Creator - Benjamin Wigley
Experience Design – Simon Allen
Production – SoundArt UK
Digital Development - JB Cole
Supported by Trust New Art

Exhibition at Somerset House

To launch the online exhibition, we held a physical exhibition at Somerset House. Visitors could interact with the digital exhibit, or explore one of four rooms inspired by each of the works.

It attracted a large amount of press across major newspapers, was featured on the National Trust website homepage, as well as being commended by Sir Peter Bazalgette of the Arts Council, and Dame Helen Ghosh of The National Trust.

40,000

Visitors to Somerset House

340,000

Project Outcomes

The exhibition online reached an audience of almost 340,000 people, and the gallery space had 40,000 visitors during its 6 week opening.

Learnings

In the years since this project launched, it’s been on my mind quite a bit how to archive digital artworks for posterity. Interactive experiences degrade overtime without expensive maintenance, and rarely do commissioners want to commit to paying for upkeep.