The interactive exhibits in Cleveland Museum of Art’s Gallery One offer a new opportunity for patrons to appreciate art.
Visitors are engaging with displays and curating their own tours, thanks in part to Christie MicroTiles and Christie Interactivity Kit. Blending art and technology as part of a $100 million renovation, Gallery One’s “Collection Wall” is a 40ft.-wide multi-touch screen comprising two 15-units wide by five-units tall Christie MicroTiles videowalls using the Christie Interactivity Kit. Another four-unit wide by three-unit tall “Line and Shape” MicroTiles videowall also with an Interactivity Kit is located in Studio Play, Gallery One’s childhood learning zone.
Inspiring visitors and motivating the younger, tech-savvy demographic to explore the museum’s thousands of works, the Collection Wall allows up to 16 people to interact simultaneously with the wall using RFID tags on iPad stations. The resultsthey create also suggest further topics of interest. Visitors can personalize and build his or her collection, curating their own tour on the iPad using the museum’s ArtLens app.
The Line and Shape wall lets up to three children simultaneously draw lines or shapes. The content management software then finds and displays similar shaped artwork from the museum’s collection, encouraging participants to see shapes in everyday life.
Doug Fortney of Zenith Systems, project integrator, and his team also wrote software that generates a dead zone around the initial touch, preventing accidental touches such as a piece of loose clothing from creating an unintentional result. Powered by Baanto ShadowSense, the Christie Interactivity Kit adds multi-touch interactivity to any large-format, rectangular digital display. It lets multiple users interact simultaneously with a videowall with the resolution and speed needed to support finger-based gestures such as flicking, pinching, rotating, and scrolling. Scalable, and designed in pieces, Christie Interactivity Kit attaches to a videowall perimeter and is configurable into 84 different sizes with no drivers or manual calibration of sensors or cameras required.
“The technology is all about understanding how to look at art, appreciate art, and understand how different works of art have connections to each other, and this has become an iconic symbol of the gallery engaging visitors of all ages and backgrounds to interact with art in ways they have never before experienced,” says Christie’s Bob Christopher, central regional manager, Fixed Install.
