Suburbia Touch Table

Multitouch Table
Minnesota History Center, St. Paul – 2015

The Suburbia Touch Table told the story of suburban expansion that has occurred since the mid 20th Century in the area surrounding Minneapolis and St. Paul. Using a considerable collection of aerial photography of the Twin Cities, the table allowed users to view change over time in the areas surrounding seven shopping malls, which represent diverse geographic regions around the Twin Cities suburbs. Users were able to select a mall by dragging its logo into a viewer, and then slide through five different years of that mall and surrounding area, as well as pan and zoom on each image. An additional layer displaying highway and landmark overlays could be toggled on and off as a point of reference and an info button brought in brief information about each era on the given map set.

The touch table experience was developed in collaboration with Ideum and the final interface was the result of several iterations of interface designs and user testing. The interactive was originally developed for Suburbia, a short-run exhibit at the Minnesota History Center. It also made a brief appearance in the Then Now Wow exhibit at the History Center.

Award:
Silver, Interactive Kiosks, 2016 American Alliance of Museums MUSE Award

Role:
Creative Direction, User Experience Design
(On staff with the Minnesota Historical Society)

Play the Past

Mobile Game
Minnesota History Center, St. Paul – 2014, 2017

Play the Past was an engaging student-directed field trip experience supported by technology. Students used iPods to explore the Then Now Wow exhibit. They entered historical situations and, through critical thinking and collaboration, earned badges and collected digital items for later use. Back at school, the interaction continued, as students and teachers built upon the experience through further research and classroom activities.

Interactions within Then Now Wow included earning a day’s wage in an iron mine, playing the role of a hunter or clerk and making trades in an 1800s fur trade environment, exploring contemporary expressions of longstanding Dakota traditions, and surviving life on the prairie in a sod house. The game was integrated with physical interactives in the exhibit so that players received real-time feedback on their devices when interacting with exhibit components. They could also trigger events through the game to change the exhibit environment, such as a locust storm in the sod house.

In 2017, the game expanded to the Minnesota’s Greatest Generation exhibit at the Minnesota History Center. The expansion added three new hubs: Depression, War, and Boom to complement the content in that exhibit. Augmented reality functionality was also added, allowing students to meet characters in historical images and find enemy threats in a giant wall mural.

Play the Past was developed in collaboration with Field Day Learning Games and utilized the ARIS platform for the in-gallery app experience. The original experience in Then Now Wow launched in 2014. The game was discontinued in 2020.

Awards:
Bronze, Education Category, 2014 American Alliance of Museums MUSE Award
2014 AASLH Award of Merit

Role:
Creative and Technical Direction, User Experience Design, Physical Interactive Integration, Media and System Design
(On staff with the Minnesota Historical Society)

Black Sunday Theater

Immersive Story Theater
History Colorado “Living West” Exhibit, Denver, Colorado – 2013

In the Living West exhibit at the History Colorado Center, visitors enter a theater space depicting a 1930s house on the Colorado plains. Excerpts from oral histories and memoirs are used to narrate a story about the Black Sunday dust storm that engulfed the region on April 14, 1935. As the show progresses, visual effects out the window reproduce the giant dust cloud approaching the house until the space is overtaken by darkness. The combination of the visual effects and surround sound gives visitors the sense of being immersed in a dust storm – so effective, some visitors thought we had pumped actual dust into the theater.

Award:
Mountain-Plains Museums Association Technology Award

Role:
Producer, Creative and Technical Direction, Editing, Sound Design, Media and System Design

Exhibit Development, Design, and Fabrication (Prime): Science Museum of Minnesota

Dust Bowl Exterior

Dust Bowl Interior

Then Now Wow

Exhibit
Minnesota History Center, St. Paul – 2012

Then Now Wow is an episodic Minnesota history exhibit exploring the regions and cultures of the state featuring over 20 multimedia components. Multimedia highlights include a Dakota tipi featuring contemporary artist and storyteller Bobby Wilson, an interactive iron mine allowing visitors to explore the dangerous jobs within, a sod house environment with digital scenery outside the windows depicting changing seasons and a locust storm, an Ojibwe boarding school environment juxtaposed with student stories from a contemporary Ojibwe school, and Broken Promises multimedia interactive putting users in the position of the Dakota having to make choices about signing treaties while giving up land and ways of life. An online version of Broken Promises is available here. Even though Broken Promises is a 10-minute experience, analytics built into the interactive indicate that 70% of visitors consistently make it all the way through the interactive.

Award:
Award of Merit, 2013 American Association for State and Local History

Role:
Producer, Creative and Technical Direction, Media and System Design
(On staff with the Minnesota Historical Society)

Dakota Tipi with Bobby Wilson

Iron Mine Interactive

Boarding School Media Presentation

Broken Promises Treaty Interactive

The 1968 Exhibit

Traveling Exhibit
Multiple Venues – 2011-2018

The 1968 Exhibit looked at how the experiences of the year fueled a persistent, if often contradictory, sense of identity for the people who were there. The exhibit was rich with over a dozen multimedia experiences, including Vietnam war stories presented in a real Huey helicopter, prominent installations about Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Democratic National Convention, a voting interactive utilizing an authentic 1960s voting machine, as well as a multi-player music quiz and a “Design your own Album Cover” kiosk.

The exhibit toured to ten venues nationally from 2011 to 2018 and was on display twice at the Minnesota History Center in St. Paul at the beginning and the end of the tour. Several venues experienced record attendance while hosting the exhibit.

Award – 1968 Huey Helicopter Vietnam Stories:
Honorable Mention, Multimedia Installations, 2012 American Association of Museums MUSE Award

Role:
Producer, Creative and Technical Direction, Media and System Design
(On staff with the Minnesota Historical Society)

The above documentation is the video only. The original installation was presented in a setting with a scrim. Objects lit up at certain points during the show.

Movie and TV Lounge

1968 Music Trip Quiz

This Must Be Hell

Immersive Environment
Minnesota History Center, St. Paul – 2009

Visitors enter the fuselage of a real World War II era Douglas C-47 and are seated on the same bench paratroopers would have occupied during major invasions in the war. Using oral history excerpts from members of Minnesota’s greatest generation, a story about paratroopers preparing for and executing the D-Day jump on Normandy unfolds. Visitors are confronted with accounts of life and death during wartime.

An immersive 16-channel sound system, video projection, and visual effects outside the plane windows provide visitors with a realistic representation of an invasion. This Must Be Hell is the feature multimedia experience in the Minnesota’s Greatest Generation exhibit at the Minnesota History Center.

Award:
Silver, Multimedia Installations, 2010 American Association of Museums MUSE Award

Role:
Producer, Editing, Sound Design, Visual Effects, Media and System Design, Installation
(On staff with the Minnesota Historical Society)

This Must Be Hell Overhead

This Must Be Hell Entrance

This Must Be Hell Interior Projection

This Must Be Hell Interior Window Effects

Minneapolis in 19 Minutes Flat

Minneapolis in 19 Minutes

Documentary
Mill City Museum, Minneapolis – 2006

Minneapolis in 19 Minutes Flat is a dynamic, yet quirky documentary, which provides an entertaining historical overview of Minneapolis. The film features local storyteller and humorist Kevin Kling who wrote and narrated the piece. It is shown exclusively in a 50 seat high-definition digital cinema at the Minnesota Historical Society’s Mill City Museum in Minneapolis.

Award:
Silver, Video Category, 2007 American Association of Museums MUSE Award

Role: Producer, Director, Editor, Visual Effects
(On staff with the Minnesota Historical Society)

Open House

Exhibit
Minnesota History Center, St. Paul – 2006

Open House: If These Walls Could Talk was a highly interactive exhibit documenting the 150-year history of a real St. Paul residence. Each room in the house represented a different era in time. Visitors were encouraged to explore and, in doing so, discover stories from some of the 50 plus families who at one time occupied the house. Many of the multimedia elements were triggered through tangible interfaces and were often emulating era-appropriate technology, such as the lantern slide in the 1880s parlor.

Open House was on display for thirteen years at the Minnesota History Center. It was retired in the summer of 2019.

Awards:
Award of Merit and WOW! Award, American Association for State and Local History
St. Paul Heritage and Preservation Award for Community Education

Role:
Producer, Editing, Sound Design, Show Control Programing, Media and System Design, Installation
(On staff with the Minnesota Historical Society)

The original occupants of the house were featured in this parlor, which was filled with interactives. Six lantern slides told the story of their immigration from Germany to the United States. Touching the keys on the piano triggered an unexpected sound of a woman saying, “Just don’t ask me to play,” supporting the surrounding story of her stage fright.

In the kitchen, stories centered around the Italian family who lived in the house at the time in the 1930s. Opening the stove played an oral history story about how they were going to feed an entire wedding party hosted at the house.

The dining room featured three stories illustrated with video and imagery in plates and enhanced with sound and lighting effects.

In the bedroom, visitors were prompted to sit on the bed, and in doing so, triggered a story about it continually falling down. At that point in the story, the bed dropped.

In one of the hallways, visitors discovered this opening where they could peer down into what looked like a basement and hear stories of how different occupants of the house used it. The illusion was so convincing, the museum director at the time thought we had actually cut a hole into the floor.

The final room in the house depicted the Hmong family who lived there in the 2000s. A media presentation in the window and on an era appropriate television told their harrowing story of fleeing their war-torn homeland in Laos and immigrating to the United States.

Flour Tower

Immersive Ride
Mill City Museum, Minneapolis – 2003

Audiences board a freight elevator and ride through eight floors of a recreated Minneapolis flour mill. Scenes on each floor come to life with working machinery, video projection, and immersive audio as the voices of actual millers tell their stories of working in the mills. Behind the scenes, a complex media system controls the experience, triggering 16 channels of matrixed audio, high-resolution video, theatrical lighting, industrial motors, and the elevator itself.

Award:
Jim Blackaby Ingenuity Award, 2004 American Association of Museums MUSE Award

Role:
Producer, Editing, Sound Design, Videography, Show Control Programming, Media and System Design, Installation
(On staff with the Minnesota Historical Society)

Flour Tower Manger's Office Floor

Flour Tower Women's Packing Floor

Get to the Basement

Immersive Story Theater
Minnesota History Center, St. Paul – 2001

Survivors of the tornado that ripped through Fridley, Minnesota in 1965 recollect their experiences of the storm and its aftermath in this immersive basement environment. Multi-channel audio and visual effects out the basement window give visitors the sensation of a tornado tearing apart the structure above.

Award:
Award of Merit, 2002 American Association of Museums MUSE Award

Role:
Producer, Editing, Sound Design, Media and System Design, Installation
(On staff with the Minnesota Historical Society)

Get to the Basement Interior

Category: Awards

Suburbia Touch Table