Touch the Unreachable - Looking For Finnish Identity, Designing art education learning experience

Abstract

The Touch the unreachable is a concept study on how to use interactive storytelling techniques, video/animation and graphical visualization for art educational purposes. It relates to the project of the 3D reconstruction of the Finnish Pavilion in Paris 1900, produced by the Media Lab's Sysrep research group, led by Professor Lily Diaz. The Touch the Unreachable concept is an application designed for the museum environment and aims to promote knowledge of Finnish cultural heritage. Through 14 panels painted within the pavilion, the experience helps the visitor to understand how Finnish figurative communication identity was build at the end of the 19th century and how the same illustration traditions are still in use during our time. Step by step the visitor follows Finnish artists through history and comes face to face with the same problematic situations as experienced by the artists. The main task of the visitor is to establish a theme and create four example prints that reflect Finnish culture and identity for the Finnish Pavilion in the Paris World Exhibition in 1900. Through doing and experimenting the visitor builds up her own understanding of how the Finnish image identity was built at the end of 19th century. The application is designed as a touch wall which uses Flash technology. The concept study bases on toolshow people dialog with visible elements and face and questions the past and how storytelling, playing and interactivity by doing is used in museum environment. The concept consists of a design document, content document, and various artworks (including the visual study for the interface and 3D characters of Wemmeri and Ludzia).

The work has won two prizes: 2010 - Gold, 2010 MUSE Award, Los Angeles USA, The Media & Technology Standing Professional Committee of the American Association of Museums (AAM) 2010 - :output competition - one of the winner, Amsterdam Netherlands