Exhibit Prototyping Workshop at Dharohar

Last week I was in Udaipur, India working with the team at Dharohar to create open-ended exploratory exhibit prototypes for their experimental art/science center called Third Space Mini. This was a new workshop format where we spent four days brainstorming exhibit ideas around their upcoming themes of toys, cloth and language, constructed playful prototypes, gave each other feedback and fine tuned the details of the experiences.

I tried to strike a balance between sharing my experience designing exhibits with working alongside the team (and creating a little project myself).

We built the prototypes with a combination of familiar materials, large sheets of cardboard and digital components and at the end of the week had five really nice starting points for facilitated, learner-driven, robust exhibits. Check out a few videos of the team showing off their ideas:

One idea from a group focusing on language was a black out poetry exhibit inspired by the work of Austin Kleon that allows people to create their own poems.

Another group also focused on language and riffed on a old Exploratorium exhibit called reaching for meaning where you can change the words in a sentence but by keeping the order of parts of speech, it still makes grammatical sense.

Another prototype exhibit experience under the theme of toys was this DIY tops building and testing station that used hardware pieces to experiment with differently shaped designs.

Shivani (in between facilitating the workshop) added some micro:bits to styrofoam blocks and used the accelerometer to create a digitally enhanced building set for toys.

And I took on the final theme of cloth and developed a quick idea of a servo motor that could swing different pieces of fabric so that you could observe the different patterns of motion.

It was so fun to think about the qualities that make up open-ended, playful, exploratory exhibits and actually put the ideas into practice with some physical prototypes. I’m looking forward to seeing how this experience moves the group’s thinking forward in the development of their art/science space in Udaipur!