Color of Life
California Academy of Sciences / Tellart
Exploring biology through the lens of color
Color of Life is an ongoing exhibit at California Academy of Sciences. The exhibition explores the role of color in the natural world. Working with Tellart I helped create multiple installations designed to engage audiences through playful interactive storytelling. The exhibits invite visitors to discover colorful insights about nature, based on the Academy’s collection of 46 million scientific specimens.
“...stunning interactive environments take you over the rainbow and reveal the significant roles color plays across a spectrum of species. ”
As a creative technologist I supported design and engineering, contributing to each project phase—concept, design, deployment. In the early stages of the project I developed a number of prototypes aimed at exploring interactive color stories from the animal kingdom, including how creatures see and biological camouflage. Throughout the project I worked with the Tellart team to research and development custom electronic sensors, computer vision systems and interactive storytelling solutions. I was also responsible for the production of the sound design, and built out a unique audio software in order to drive an immersive soundscape and dynamic instrumentation of the playable strings.
Color Visualizer
The Color Visualizer is the central interactive exhibit that invites visitors to pluck large musical strings in order to reveal stories describing how plants and animals use color to camouflage and communicate. New color stories are discovered by interacting with different combinations of strings. Through tangible interaction, immersive audio and generative graphics, the system can express a vast range of colorful mixes that lead to hundreds of stories.
Bee Vision
Earth’s flora exhibit unique reflective patterns visible in ultraviolet wavelengths. Unlike humans, bees have a special knack for natively seeing these UV patterns on flower pedals. This special ability is thought to have co-evolved in order to help bees become better plant pollinators. Our team developed the Augmented Reality viewer to help audiences visualize how bees might see these invisible patterns.
Process
My goal is to always push the boundaries of experiential storytelling and interaction design. Such practice is rooted in sketching and prototyping. In order to overcome the unknown challenges facing novel ideas, I rely heavily on iteration and experimentation, always looking to capitalize on each new discovery.
Developing the immersive soundscape and testing the Color Visualizer hardware prior to installation
Snapshot of the sound application I developed for Color Visualizer
The exhibit was developed over the course of a year — engineered to sustain daily use by hundreds of visitors. The installation was installed in 2014. The project was developed in close partnership with our client, California Academy of Sciences, and with support for fabricators Octo PD, Lassen Hines, Group Delphi and Dallas Swindle.
An early sketch I submitted for Bee Vision
