The Danish Electricity Museum is a science and cultural heritage museum. The museum has a number of permanent exhibits supplemented with varying special exhibitions. The exhibits are distributed throughout a number of buildings. Our work with the museum has consisted of enhancing current exhibits, as well as developing new installations for exploring energy production and consumption.
The museum visitors include school classes (1/3 of the visitors) and private visitors who attend lectures, follow guided tours, and explore the museum’s exhibits on their own. The exhibits are diverse, and vary from a fully functional water plant to large Tesla coils, small experimental setups, electrical machinery on display, etc.
CAVI has collaborated with the museum to create innovative, interactive exhibit concepts, resulting in an inspiration catalogue with 10 well-developed concepts. Two of these concepts, The Energy Table and The Energy Floor, are available as videoprototypes below.
The Energy Table
The Energy Table is a full-room installation. At the centre is a table, above which are mounted a camera and a projector. On the table are six miniatures of power generators, e.g. a windmill and a water power plant. Additionally, there are five to ten miniatures of devices that correspond to full-size devices placed around the table. When visitors stand next to a miniature power generator, they activate it, indicated by a glowing aura projected from above. They can now use physical icons, Electricons, to create flows of energy on the table by physically placing and moving the Electricons on the table. They can lead energy to the miniature devices on the table, thus activating the full-size devices in the room. The devices require different amounts of energy, and visitors can collaborate by combining flows of energy. The various Electricons function as switches, resistance, batteries etc., allowing for the execution of a wide variety of scenarios. The table can also be set up for the visitors to meet certain objectives, thus acting as a board for playing power games.
The Energy Floor
The Energy Floor is an immersive exhibit environment consisting of a number of physical devices that consume energy (e.g. a television set, a radio), devices that produce energy (e.g. an exercise bike, a water turbine), and a camera and a projector mounted on the ceiling for tracking visitors and projecting visual elements on the floor. When visitors enter the exhibit space, a small halo of energy is projected around them, and follows them as they move. They may increase their energy level, indicated by a flow of energy from the device to the visitor’s growing halo, by using the devices that produce energy. They can then use their energy to activate devices that consume energy, resulting in a shrinking halo as energy flows from the visitor to the device. Visitors may combine their energy to activate devices that consume much energy, or to make smaller devices operate more intensely.
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