Looking Out 01 – J. Loeb

In Flanders Fields Museum: Gas

The entirety of this museum in Ypres dedicated to World War I is interactive in some way. The viewer is given a swipe card (An example of a ‘tab’ from our reading.) with the name of a soldier from the war, whom they follow throughout the war during the course of the exhibition:

That, however, is “old hat” for interactive exhibits. More notable is the display about gas attacks. There the visitor enters a space featuring tubes of bubbles containing gas masks that turn from clear to sickly shades of green and yellow, a metaphor for the poison gas:

The colors match the audio, which are a number of recordings of accounts of gas attacks, including Wilfred Owen’s “Dulce et Decorum Est.” (https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/46560/dulce-et-decorum-est) By the standards of such experiential spaces, it’s rather old (over 10 years), and small scale, but it achieves its purpose exceedingly well in conveying the harrowing nature of chemical warfare.

links:

http://www.inflandersfields.be/
http://www.hiroshimapeacemedia.jp/mediacenter_d/w_museum/20090608125924565_en.html

Living Wall – MIT Media Lab

The “Living Wall” allows the user to monitor and control the conditions in a room using only the wallpaper itself. The paper and paint that make up the wall paper are controlled by simple touch. They are linked to a computer system through Arduino sensors.

Living Wall

link:

https://creators.vice.com/en_us/article/ezamqa/mit-media-labs-interactive-living-wall

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