Sunday 10 October 2010

Rotunda Visit - Andy Ayres

The very informative and action packed rotunda visit was everything you could of asked from a museum exhibition. The old building had a modern well designed flow, smooth well labeled signing with neutral colours and modern interactive features.  

The 'Shell Geology Now' room was the main room in the rotunda building with TVs, interactive instillation, models and fossils. The first TV as you walk in is a nice feature to get you involved straight away. Nice use of the sound beam allows you the hear the video if you want to, and so not to disturb the other visitors if not.
The dinosaur skeleton is accompanied by a video of the local person that discovered the first section, this adds a personal aspect to the feature as well as answering more in depth questions about the dinosaur.

The interactive dinosaur instillation is a massive feature in the museum which allows the user to design their own prehistoric habitat. Plants, landscape, dinosaurs and wildlife are all things which the user has to choose from. The program is very eye grabbing and massive in terms of screen size. Color and font size make it easy for small children and adults alike to use. On the downside the program is that its interesting for only 2 minutes as thats how long it takes for you to complete the exercise. It seems very one dimensional and in a way pointless as you don't learn a great deal.  To use the touch screen it can hurt your fingers after a while because of the pressure you have the apply to register a click, so it could be difficult for young children. 

I found the other shell installation a lot more interesting as it was educational, interesting, challenging and informative than the other more larger installation as you could learn about coastal erosion, how they find oil, protect different settlements and meet the geologists. 

Great Stuff! Andy  

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