Endeavour Galleries


 

National Maritime Museum
September 2018
 

Clay worked with the National Maritime Museum to design and realise a set of 18 interactive exhibits for four new galleries, exploring stories about nautical adventure, polar environments and the rich history of the seas.

Polar Worlds

A large format, multi-user interactive tabletop takes the centre of this bold gallery, exploring ethical, ecological and environmental issues facing the world's polar regions. Up to four players watch a miniature 3D environment deliver scenarios that they get to vote on, with each player's vote influencing the environment in unique ways.

Another interactive touchscreen in the gallery lets visitors explore the crews of the Endurance and Ross Sea Party expeditions to the Antarctic, whilst a third exhibit offers visitors two games exploring ideal diets in polar environments.

Sea Things

The bold central display cases within this gallery require a suite of six interactive digital labels, allowing visitors to explore a virtual 3D recreation of the displays, interrogating objects to uncover stories and imagery from a variety of sources.

Our software allows the myriad of content to be seamlessly delivered and provides a unifying approach to navigating the rich and varied objects on display.

An additional display lets visitors explore a rich flotilla of model ships on display, uncovering stories and the history behind each one. Visitors can also chose to undertake a fun personality quiz, resulting in an ideal job for them to do on one of the ships.

A final exhibit on gallery allows visitors to explore the rich library of personal memories people have of the seashore, tying into a community outreach programme that saw members of the public across the UK contribute sentiments to the museum. Visitors can also leave their own memory in-gallery, contributing to the growing collection of stories over the lifetime of the gallery.

Pacific Encounters

A suite of five exhibits help tell the exciting stories of adventures through The Pacific.

Two libraries of historic images allow visitors to explore the rich and fascinating visual archive of engravings from Captain Cook's voyages, and photographs taken from the 1860s onwards that document the indigenous cultures that were exploited by imperial expansion during that era.

A large-scale, multi-screen ambient animation portrays photographs of Pacific encounters, arranged into a realtime 3D voyage through a set of imaginary islands.

An interactive touchscreen exhibit invites visitors to imagine their own Pacific island, drawing a map by adding land features and details.

Finally, visitors get to discover how Captain Cook's 1769 voyage to Tahiti allowed astronomers to observe the rare Transit of Venus, allowing them to measure how far Earth was from the Sun.

Tudor and Stuart Seafarers

Two interactive interfaces help visitors explore the historic stories from this fascinating era.

An interactive collection allows visitors to explore curious details from a range of maps, picking out hotspots of interest, including imagined monsters of the seas and fascinating geographical inaccuracies.

Another exhibit allows visitors to explore pages from Edward Barlow's fascinating journal, documenting his voyages on various king's ships.

Exhibition Designers:
Casson Mann