Library of Congress
The Source: an experiential gallery where kids become researchers.
The Library of Congress holds 184 million items, the largest collection in the world. For most of its history, seeing them required a reader card, and you had to be sixteen to get one. It is, at heart, a research institution. As the Library’s Shari Werb puts it, this is a place where people are “reading to learn, not learning to read.”
BACKGROUND:The idea for a gallery of their own began with a letter. A young boy wrote to the Librarian of Congress with a simple question: why did he have to wait years to explore somewhere that sounded so wonderful? The Library took it seriously and built The Source, a 4,000-square-foot experiential gallery for kids ages 8 to 15.
Hyperquake designed the digital experiences at the core of the gallery, working alongside exhibition designers SKOLNICK Architecture PLLC. Our charge was a deceptively hard question: how do you turn a child into a researcher? The answer was to make research something kids do with their hands. We worked closely with the Library and tested every idea with real kids, then built a set of physical-digital interactives that follow the Library’s own research process. A child picks up an artifact, scans it, and its story opens up on a screen, ready to study the way a researcher in the reading room would.
OBJECTIVE:The first thing you see is a whimsical, oversized card catalog. Open any drawer and the object inside appears to spill up the face of the structure in light and sound, with more objects tumbling from the ceiling above. Pull the drawer holding The Wizard of Oz and a tornado of books spins into the air.
It’s nostalgia for the parents and pure magic for the kids, and it gets them curious enough to open the next drawer. We designed the projection-mapped animations and the custom audio behind every drawer.
MY ROLE:Animations:
Live Event
Credits
Client: LIBRARY OF CONGRESSSTUDIO: HYPERQUAKE; CLAIRE BRADLEY (PRODUCER); RYAN SCHOENNER (CREATIVE DIRECTOR), HENRY SPRICK (PRODUCER)ARCHITECTURE: SKOLNICK Architecture PLLCAvailable Light'
Cerami & Associates
Goppin
ATOMIC
Ron Blunt (Photography)
David Freemas (CinematographyScope
Motion DesignPROJECTION MAPPING