Exhibition Visits (Part 2)

Other interesting ideas I found at these places were the incorporation of special features like wax figurines, and reaching out to other senses rather than just sight. Audio and touch was used at the Castle so you could feel certain objects whilst hearing about them, (and some history) and move others saying "pull me", giving more interactivity.




The sense of smell was used at the Natural History Museum...? Impossible...



The third location was a FirstSite exhibition of students work fromthe University of Essex. It featured a few pieces (shown below) in a contemporary setting (like a small version of the TATE modern) which had been built into a small shop in a back-street full of shops, right in the shopping centre.






Other features of the exhibitions that were taken into account were lighting and placement. The Castle had some nice pieces of artillery and weaponry with a strong white background and generous lighting, the Natural History museum had an AMAZING glass cabinet which was well lit and double-sided, and the little FirstSite shop had shelves hung from the ceiling.




Finally on the way home we took a detour to Mersea Island (I was mis-informed that the destination was in Colchester), home to the Island Art Cafe. This lovely little cafe was home to both a homey cafe serving all types of food, and a small art exhibition, which I thought was an interesting mix. Great lighting accented the pieces, and people had the option to have some food and refreshments whilst observing the work of local artists, which they could then purchase.

Exhibition Visits (Part 1)

Today I had a little trip up to Colchester (with a little detour on the way home) to view some exhibitions.

It didn't go quite to plan, but I did visit three of the four places listed in my last post, and an extra one instead.

Sticking with the idea of steering clear of the regular art exhibitions, I started off with a visit to the Colchester Castle Museum, followed by the Natural History Museum. Colchester Castle was home to a great number of historical artefacts based on the Roman Invasion.




The castle park itself (the grounds as well as just the castle building) we found had a sense of exhibition to it also, with maps of the grounds pointing to extra little pieces like this gate with some information:




The Natural History museum had fantastic displays and models of wildlife, whether it be models of rare breeds of bird, to a cat sitting in a window of a house, to a fossil of a whale or a crocodile's skull.




In the Castle, I found the arrangement to be very directional at first, although the guidance was sort of lost when you headed upstairs because there were multiple ways to go.




However the Natural History Museum was very open and you could choose where you wanted to go and what you wanted to look at at anytime.



This was a great contrast between layouts and both give interesting ideas as inspiration for a floorplan.

Places selected to visit

Looking at Colchester, it seems there are some great places to visit that are all relatively near to each other. They consist of:

The Natural History Museum - CO1 1DN
Colchester Castle Museum - CO1 1YG
The Minories - CO1 1UE - Featuring a DENNIS WITH MILLER exhibition
The Island Art Cafe - CO1 1JN

I plan to visit these tomorrow. They are all relatively near to each other and provide a great range of style from historic artefacts to paintings.

Exhibitions

To 'research' different exhibition styles, layouts and features I have decided to go to some exhibition spaces.

Firstly, I decided I want to venture away from 'normal'. When I hear the word 'exhibition' I think London, TATE, etc. Yeah, sure I could go to all the glamourous up-scale places in London, but I don't want to do that for two reasons;

- EVERYONE is going to do this. At least most people. After todays lesson I have found that people have already started venturing out into London, and there is more art and exhibitions in the world than just the capital. I WANT TO DO SOMETHING DIFFERENT.

- I've been there before, it's all the same. I know, the exhibitions change. But the place stays the same. But most are just rooms with paintings on the wall. What about different places, like an airfield museum? Where there are physical objects to be arranged. I know the TATE modern would have to deal with this, but other people will have/are going there. Like I said, I want to diverge from the popular choice.

Doing some research on the Internet, mainly based on visitessex.com (and touching on www.essextouristguide.com also) I found that Colchester is a great place to visit.

Places I intend to visit perhaps to gain more of a comprehensive view to the word exhibition than just an arrangement of paintings, on wall(s), in room(s).

Concept For Our Presentation

After attending the lesson today, our group has decided that we all like Matt's idea of the History of Computer Gaming.

Having drawn up an initial sketch of the floorplan and shown it to us, we have determined that there will be projectors showing different stages throughout gaming history, one of 'Pong', one of 'Sonic the Hedgehog' and then more recent, third generation characters.

Other suggestions that came out were different logos on each person's board for consistencey, the grass that features in 'Sonic' games running along all the boards for consistency.

Also, having seen the Messanine area, a greater understanding could be created of the exhibition space and what is available to us. Great lighting which was mostly natural would be good for an exhibition, except ours will have projector(s) screening animations. It was suggested that the boards could be arranged to block out as much of this light as possible (quite a shame really).

We all like this idea though, now we just need to progress it to make it presentable for next week.

Thinking as a whole

When you see big events on television that look professional, whether it be an art exibition in the TATE or a gorgeous wedding reception or 60 minute makeover, there is always a colour scheme behind it all.

Focusing on the wedding reception idea specifically, there is a consistent colour scheme throughout the whole event. This could be the concept of our class; to have a consistent and professional colour scheme that everyone sticks to.

The colour of course would have to be decided, but there is still the great freedom of shade variety, you could have a constant change between people's work e.g. the boards neatly in lines going from near-white to near-black. Like pale blue to deep blue.

Advancement Of Ideas

Having spoken to Mariana (the lecturer) about the concepts that I have thought of, it was agreed that the concept of colour although interesting, is much too broad.

Now having a better understanding of the module and that the concept will be for the whole class and not our group, I can fine-tune the idea so that it is suitable.

So what could I do with this idea of colour?

One idea I have had (which sort of brings my two ideas together in a way) is focusing on the lack of colour like I have mentioned previously. With only black and white (picturing a tuxedo) this could be portrayed as professional. Higher class clothes meet higher class work...

Another venture from this could be to focus on shades. With reference to the PANTONE colour libraries, a colour scheme is picked by designers using different shades of the same colour.



Again, this could be classed as professional as most (good-looking) websites are based on a colour scheme of one or two colours in multiple shades.