KI-X 2012 Museum eXhibition

KIX stands for Knowledge Integration Museum Exhibition. It’s a yearly project culminating in an exhibition, in which the 3rd year students of the Knowledge Integration demonstrate their interests and/or acquired skill sets or personalities through a variety of media. The first of the yearly activities begins with a trip to a foreign city to study museum exhibition; my class (class of 2011) chose Amsterdam and went there for a couple of weeks to study various museum exhibits.

They studied the typography, layout, lighting, content, the traffic patterns of these museums; and over the period of 8 months formed teams, built a theme, topic, made a storyboard and finally constructed their designs in the form of their very own exhibits and opened it to the general public. I had previously blogged about my museum experience here for those who are interested. This year’s batch of KI students went to Berlin and recently exhibited their project and this is their story.

Upon arriving at the exhibit, the first thing that I noticed was how differently this years exhibitions were presented – first they had more individuals in each team and less number teams overall. This afforded them more space to work with and I think they made the best use of the space and this improved the general flow of the exhibition making it a lot more fluid that our exhibition last year.

There were 4 exhibitions on display this year.

1. On Choices and Chocolate
2. Playing With Values
3. Projective Techniques
4. Under Pressure

1. On Choices and Chocolate

This had to be one of the most visually pleasing exhibits that I visited at the fair. I was very impressed with the design elements that went into this exhibition, from the environmental details, the music of the rainforest, the realistic looking chocolate factory equipment filled with brown paint, and finally the reward of the chocolate at the very end which was a very nice touch. I was wondering when I was going to get some chocolate and BAM – my expectations were met!

2. Playing With Values

The objective of this exhibition was to portray the value system present in games such as the kind of person that wins, what choices it takes to win a game and some assumptions that we make while playing with others. I found this exhibition unique because, it reminded me of the quote, [pullquote]You can learn more about a person in an hour of play than in a year of conversation – Plato[/pullquote] .

Another thing I liked about this exhibition was their main typography – it made me smile.

3. Projective Techniques

Marketers and sales folks have known about this for quite some time. That is, the way to sell more product is to please the end user by asking the “what questions” not “whys” What does the Hershey brand make you think of?
Not
Why do you like Hershey?

I was impressed by their use of technology – the Christie Tiles, an interview piece with an authority figure – and how companies like FedEx and Cadbury use object placements to increase the consumer brand awareness. Finally, I loved their logo!

4. Under Pressure

This was one of the most transformational exhibitions that I have attended. The very purpose of the museum exhibition is presented in an impressively. At first glance, Under Pressure seemed the least organized and prepared museum exhibit in terms of the design elements usually present in these exhibits. However, this facade helped showcase effectively the mind of an individual who is in disarray – very disorganized. They presented various ways in which people get stressed and also elaborately suggested a number of stress relieving techniques thereafter.

The most exhilarating experience at their booth was the stress release audio of a voice leading me through a few breathing exercises. At the beginning, I just curious as to what was playing on the audio and had no intention of listening to it myself. However, once I started listening to it, I got more comfortable and relaxed in my seat and started moving back to get some back rest. Right after I did that, as if it read my mind, the voice told me to sit back more comfortably and relax. After this exhibition, I was not in a rush to leave anymore and definitely felt a lot more peaceful, which was the primary intention of a museum exhibition – to help people learn something and then try helping them to apply it to their own lives.