National Anzac Centre
National Anzac Centre voted Australia's best museum in the TripAdvisor Travellers’ Choice Awards 2016
Rated one of Lonely Planet's top 26 worldwide travel experiences for 2015, Winner of Best Heritage Tourism Project at the Western Australian Heritage Awards 2015, and won silver at the Australian Tourism Awards for Best New Tourism Business. Plus, within 6 months of opening, the Centre smashed its first year visitor targets.
In this evocative exhibition, the Gibson Group was tasked with integrating a variety of audio-visual technologies to bring World War I stories to life via two unique interactive experiences. On arrival visitors are assigned one of 32 character cards containing a photograph and name of a soldier or nurse who served in World War I. A computer-readable (fiducial) icon is printed on each card, which visitors place against Character Posts located throughout the exhibition space. Interpretative text, authentic documents and photographs about that particular individual’s story are then displayed on an interactive touchscreen as a personal diary that the visitor can interrogate.
Courtesy of the National Anzac Centre
The Character Posts use bespoke reader technology the Gibson Group specifically designed and built for the exhibition. Information to create the stories was sourced from National Archives Australia, Archives New Zealand and the Australian War Museum, and is contained in a backend CMS that lets curators update and add content.
The exhibition experience culminates in a 4.8 x 2.7 metre digital Tribute Wall where visitors can discover all 32 characters in the exhibition using 3 x 65" portrait mounted touch screens. The primary intention is to encourage visitors to leave a personal tribute, using an on-screen keyboard designed as an early 1900s typewriter. When a tribute is submitted it appears on the multi-screen array for other visitors to read. The message also syncs to the associated National Anzac Centre website, on which people can also leave tributes which are in turn displayed on the Tribute Wall.
Courtesy of the National Anzac CentreThis project was created in collaboration with Australian design partners Thylacine and Mental Media and with production support in New Zealand by TouchTech and Jerry Hewitt.
