Work      Teach      Information

Museums Alive

2022 Design Platform, NUS DID



In this joint platform with Architecture and the Innovation Design Program, students collaborated and designed immersive and interactive museum experiences for actual art collections held by the NUS Museum and Singapore Art Museum. Students leveraged emerging digital technology and develop a wide range of projects that challenge the traditional boundaries of museum artifacts and spaces.

In collaboration with:
Yen Ching-Chiuan (DID)
Thomas Kong (DOA)
Khoo Eng Tat (iDP)






Student Projects


Just a Little Peek
Chua Zixin, Gerrica Eponine Tan Fei, Wang Yu Wei, Hong Jit Sean Brandon, Lucas Tay Hao Yang

Dioramas are a common archetype used by museums to allow people to view architectural spaces and settings. Just a Little Peek seeks to subvert viewer’s conventional experiences of a diorama by warping their perception of scale. Using local artist Cheryl Teo’s artwork as a medium, it allows users to take on the role of miniature humans immersed in a life-sized diorama, as well as the role of a giant peeking into the diorama from above.





Visible Vault
Ho Yi Jing, Huang Kai Xing, Koh Zhe Wei, Er Wen Xuan, Felicia Gan

The Ng Eng Teng collection represents the most comprehensive collection of works by a single artist in Singapore. Yet, only a quarter of the 1200 pieces are on display in the NUS museum. The Visible Vault is a virtual reality museum platform that aims to showcase the entire body of work through the creation of an interactive and immersive datascape built upon artwork metadata and artist biodata. With these two pieces of information, users can unravel and forge connections tying an artist's life and career, thus enabling a holistic understanding of the motivations behind an artist's practice and the hidden journeys that led to his success. An additional filtering function encourages users to sieve out notable artworks, through which they may potentially discover easter eggs tucked away in an artist career. The Visible Vault challenges the conventional spatial and programmatic organisation of museums, combining the experience, education and archiving of art.





Paper Trail Alive!
Joshua Tan Jianhao, Hazel Phua Xin Yi, Khoo Chew Seng Ian, Janessa Song Mun Yoong

Paper Trail Alive aims to bring exhibitions alive through play and exploration. An immersive experience that allows visitors to interact with match-box sized paper models of Singaporean artist Cheryl Teo, brought to life through AR animations. Explore the colorful enlarged replicas of her works as they form the interesting world of Paper Trail Alive!





Borderless
Luke Goh Xu Jie, Wong Eng Geng, Abigail Leong Song Ning, Song Yang Ting, Camille David

Borderless redefines the museum experience by fostering cross-cultural interactions through the use of technology (MetaMirror). Inspired by the installation “Eccentric City” which revolves around the theme of childhood, Borderless provides a platform for the exchange of experiences across two different countries.

The MetaMirror is a new form of mixed reality technology that enables a new form of communication between individuals, allowing you to take a glimpse at people on the other side. It will enable reflections from a person to act as an avatar to interact with projections of people from another space, seemingly existing together on the same mirror plane. Our Computer Vision (CV) program is fed with a live video feed of the space from a camera embedded behind the mirror surface. It detects the presence of augmented reality(AR) markers in the frame of the video, compares the AR markers’ identity to its corresponding prompt within the system, and displays a virtual element on top of the AR marker.

The story curation platform aims to make sharing stories simple, by prompting and guiding visitors to curate their unique stories for the world to see. It has a curated prompt framework, guiding visitors to create consistently framed stories based on the theme of the exhibition, and in the case of Eccentric City, the theme was childhood.








SAM Downstairs
Ria Arinah Bte Muhamad Redza, Elicia Low, Ashley Thong Woon Hui, Joanne Chandini Joseph, Lim Wen Ting Vveronika

SAM Downstairs is a Sensorial Museum for the Visually Impaired in a Transportable Architecture. In this project, SAM downstairs takes on the story of Utama's kitty from SAM's existing Touch Collection. By placing museums into a vehicle, the proposed museum aims to reconcile the relationship with the visually impaired (VIs) and enable artists to reach out to heartlanders. The immersive and interactive museum experience of the Sang Nila Utama story is illustrated through tactile and audio-sensorial experiences. The aim is to convey the idea of the ambiguity of the discovered animal from the myth by leveraging the participant’s imagination and tactile interpretation. The architecture of the mobile vehicle then spatially guides them by organising and creating depth latitudinally and longitudinally. It is a reconfiguration of the original spatial exploration of the Utama’s cat, reflected in the Sang Nila Utama’s story.







Sand Blox
Wu Junyi, Srikesh S/O Sundaresan, Lee Si Ying Sharon, Ng Yu Zhe, Zhu Yuxuan

Sand Blox is a competitive, mutiplayer VR game where players focus on developing their city faster than their opponents with the limited sand blocks available. Sand Blox is set alongside Lin De Rong’s Re-Materialising Sand exhibit to captivate visitors into understanding sand scarcity.









Human Figure to the Human Body
Zoe Kwok Ziyi, Teo Tze Yang, Tan Zhi Qi Vivien, Aw Ker Wey, Isaac Tan Hung, William Warumpal Archery

This project proposes the notion of re-embodiment on the discourse of perception, using the human body as a tool for an immersive museum experience. Combining the use of virtual reality (VR) and a physically-experienced installation, it aims to challenge current ocular-centricity in art and spatial experience in museums and VR.










Copyright 2024 Clement Zheng