top of page
Top

Through my research, I believed that by filling in unexpected encounters within a form of journey, visitors will have a more memorable experience. This memorable experience can be interpreted as a form of learning, sensational evocation, memory trigger and visitor participation. This approach in exhibition design is important because it allows the visitors to engage with the content by giving them a sense of personal discovery within the exhibition while prolonging their curiosity. 

In the exhibition “Humans of New York; Image of New York”, I would like to enhance the visitor experience of learning during a journey, to encourage visitors to explore and wander before they enter into their planned destination and create a more memorable journey for themselves. These unexpected encounters shall engage both foreign travelers and local visitors through the same set of designed content in order to create a successful experience and a common platform for the two groups of visitors to mingle and share their experience. Even though the two type of visitors will have a different expectation for their destination, it is believed that the accidental discovery by the travelers and the surprise discovery by the locals will stimulate a similar learning experience.

Exhibition is an interpretive, narrated journey where visitors can experience a more memorable learning through curiosity and discovery based activity. 

Memorable Experience through personal discovery can be achieved through: 

 

1. learning / problem solving 

2. sensational evocation 

3. memory trigger 

4. visitor participation 

As part of the opening event for the exhibition, “Humans of New York; Image of New York”, a city-wide story hunt challenge will be happening on May 18th, 2014. 

Participants can sign up here in teams of 4-6 people, to participate on the day of event. Over 60 stories from the Humans of New York collection will be installed throughout the city. 

Upon walking into the second floor right wing gallery hall, visitors will first be welcomed by the title wall at the end of the hallway with an illustration of a silhouette composed of faces from the HONY stories. The images composed by these faces can either be the shape of a human casting his/her shadow or the shape of the island of Manhattan with its shadow cast as a person. The intent of this illustration is to communicate the main message of this exhibition, that the image of New York City is composed by the Humans of New York. And by using Stanton’s works, “one story at a time”, we can truly represent the larger image of New York by highlighting every single story. 

As visitors walk into the gallery hall, they will first be attracted by the colorful wall on the left, with scrolls hanging down from the ceiling. These translucent screens bear the selected works of Stanton’s that represent the six key elements that he has explored: empathy, support, happiness, regret, struggle and celebration. In between these six screens, there is one empty screen. It is a cutout, looking out the existing window. This special screen is to prompt visitors’ minds to start thinking about what their connection is to the exhibition by asking: “What’s your story? What are their stories?” 

 

As visitors exit the gallery on the second level, they will be prompted to go down to the patio to visit how globally Stanton’s work has inspired others to start their own “Humans of …” for their community. When visitors arrive at the patio, they will immediately see the immersive floor graphic that represents the faces of New York with a colorful background. This floor graphic is designed to activate the space and engage visitors to come closer to the archway. Details of the global inspiration will be presented on printed fabric screens hanging from the arches, displaying on both the inside and outside of the archway. 

At the center arch opening, visitors will find mobile camera devices such as iTouch, with a special designed application to prompt them to participate and share their thoughts after visiting the gallery. 

As visitors enter the gallery, they will be immersed in an open room filled with floating balloons on the ceiling. Each balloon contains a story of HONY and a photo by Stanton. Visitors can feel free to engage with these stories one after another by pulling the balloon down one by one. The room will be lit by existing track lighting and a large seating will be placed on the entrance wall for those who need to rest. Smaller seating cushions will also be used for visitors to lay down and enjoy the image of New York City that is being composed by the story balloons. 

When visitors read and connect with the stories of HONY through a cube balloons, one side of the balloon will be used to present a story from HONY. The cube balloons are to be made with reflective silver mylar and custom printing of Stanton’s work. As visitors release the stories back to the field of balloons, they will feel enlivened with a sense of understanding how the stories of HONY compose the bigger community of New York. 

 

Along the two long walls, ten different large illustrated characters’ faces from Stanton’s work will be installed to allow visitors to move along the wall and listen to the re-enacted conversations. These audio wall illustrations will allow disabled visitors to engage with the content without reaching and pulling the balloons. 

 After the visitors sent their thoughts through the Memory Archive App., they can see an instant feed of their comments in relationship to other participants. 

In this interactive touch station, visitors can access other stories and discover a bigger network through their experiences or emotion. 

 

Visitors can choose to print a copy of the story of others or their own through sending to the instaprint stations. 

bottom of page