Canterbury Museum

Making WW1 data fascinating

Lives Lost, Lives Changed
Client
Canterbury Museum
Year
2017
Experience yourself
View Project
Type
Projection

The Challenge

Lives Lost, Lives Changed is an exciting new exhibition at Canterbury Museum about Canterbury's involvement in the First World War.Click Suite worked on a range of digital interactives for the exhibition, including this centerpiece entry experience. The exhibition needed some kind of introduction to the exhibition - a piece of multimedia that would do the job of giving visitors a broad overview of the entire war, New Zealand's place in the war, some interesting facts, and finally hitting home the true impact of the war through the numbers involved.

It was a tricky brief – a video with lots of numbers in it, but it also had to engage visitors, draw them in, and set some context for the exhibition to follow.We decided that a straight out video on a wall might not be the most engaging for visitors, especially because we needed to contain so much data and content.We proposed creating a surface in front of the wall, and adding layers of shapes that would help break the content up and add visual intrigue.

The Solution

The result was a huge custom-made wall of 3d boxes and silhouettes at different depths. This acted as our canvas, which we projection-mapped to create a stunning animated infographic on an epic scale. The resulting effect is of a complex multifaceted display, with a world map, detail maps, archival footage and images, animations and infographics. After absorbing a brief history of the war, you're given a series of shocking facts and figures, ending with a sombre and powerful reminder of the cost Canterbury paid in lives.

We include unusual facts that visitor will not be familiar with to create impact (for example, more than 10,000 horses were sent from New Zealand - only four returned).The whole sequence moves along the wall, subtly bringing the audience physically along the wall with it, and eventually on into the exhibition beyond. Andrew Hagen from Schtung Media crafted a moving score and sound effects that elevates it emotionally, and the whole experience combined makes it truly an entry experience to remember.

Work index