Human Rights

Lightwell created various pieces of multimedia for The Holocaust and Human Rights, a new permanent exhibition at the Sydney Jewish Museum in Darlinghurst.

Four thematic animations are projected onto an array of circular tables in the centre of the space, each focusing on a different human rights issue.

The animations blend significant events, quotes, facts, data visualisations and interviews to form a narrative which prompts visitors to reflect on and discuss these issues.

Two long, thin portrait monitors are embedded into the timeline on the back wall. One monitor shows a chronology of advances in human rights law, and the other depicts a timeline of human rights violations (genocides).

At the entrance to the Sanctum of Remembrance, a series of niches within the wall display the portraits of men, women and children who died in the Holocaust. Over the course of a day, the display continually refreshes the portraits, drawing from a database of over a thousand images.

Visitors can search for specific families and individual people using a nearby touchscreen.

Called Zachor (Remember), this piece acts as a constantly-changing digital memorial which can be added to and administered by Museum staff.

The Holocaust and Human Rights opened in December 2017.

Defining Moments

The Defining Moments Discovery Wall is a five-screen multi-user touchwall located within the Gandel Atrium at the National Museum of Australia, Canberra.

Visitors can explore a fluid timeline of defining moments in Australian history, supported by a series of interactive animations and sound effects.

Image courtesy National Museum of Australia

Each defining moment is described and visually illustrated through archival imagery and objects held within the Museum's extensive collection. 

Networks of related moments can be revealed as dynamic visualisations to assist visitors in navigating through the content.

A series of ten interactive animations are scattered throughout the interface, each based on a specific defining moment. When tapped, they either reveal an interesting fact or ask the visitor to answer a true or false question.

Visitors can vote for their favourite defining moment, and are shown a series of data visualisations which illustrate the most popular moments.

We also created a custom-built web-based Content Management System which allows the Museum to remotely administer content and change settings on the wall.

Image courtesy National Museum of Australia

The Defining Moments wall was completed in mid-2017.

200 Treasures

Lightwell produced a number of multimedia components for the Australian Museum’s 200 Treasures exhibition at the Westpac Long Gallery.

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Situated at the end walls of the gallery are three 5-metre multitouch walls where visitors can discover the stories of 100 influential Australians.

Lightwell also created a suite of interactive apps with quizzes, animated collages, videos, interactive conversations and games that are interspersed within the Level 1 exhibition.

Our projects were developed in C++ OpenFrameworks, with a bespoke Content Management System in Ruby on Rails.

Images and video courtesy of the Australian Museum.

A Fine Line

A fine line is an 8-screen video piece displayed at the Commonwealth Bank’s new headquarters in Darling Square. It uses the diverse natural variables of land and sea temperatures to create a data-generated landscape that takes us into the next 100 years.

Over an hour, the lines of geological forms and rippling water are drawn and change in response to each year’s variation in temperature. Motion, frequency and speed tell the story of these predictive datasets, creating the abstract patterns of this imagined world.

The data for this artwork was created with Prophet forecasting software and interpreted in C++ openFrameworks.

Spiders

Lightwell produced two pieces of multimedia for Spiders - Alive and Deadly at the Australian Museum, an interactive exhibition that allows visitors to engage in experiences that provide a glimpse into the fascinating world of spiders.

We produced an interactive floor projection featuring the Communal Huntsman Spider, and an immersive cave experience about the life and habitat of the Tasmanian Cave Spider. 

The interactive forest floor projection is located at the entrance to Spiders and acts as an attractor and fun introduction to the exhibition. As visitors step onto the projection, they hear the crunching of leaves underfoot and see Communal Huntsman spiders scuttling into the exhibition space.

The floor projection uses four projectors and four Kinect cameras mounted overhead to track the positions of visitors. We created the application using C++ OpenFrameworks.

Image courtesy Australian Museum

The Tasmanian Cave Spider experience forms a key component of the Spiders exhibition.

As visitors enter the dark tunnel, they are surrounded by sounds of dripping water, echoes and points of torchlight revealing background projections of cave walls, stalagmites, crevices and spider webs.

In the centre of the cave, visitors' shadows are cast onto one of the walls, where Tasmanian Cave Spiders crawl on their bodies and they can interact with sticky sheet webs.

All applications were created using C++ OpenFrameworks.   

Spiders- Alive and Deadly opened at the Australian Museum in Sydney in October 2016.

The Holocaust

Lightwell produced a variety of multimedia components for the redevelopment of The Holocaust, a permanent exhibition at the Sydney Jewish Museum in Darlinghurst. Our scope of work included large-scale projections, videos, animations, touchscreen interactives, and iPad apps.

Scattered throughout multiple levels of the exhibition are four thematic films covering different aspects and stages of the Holocaust, from pre-war Jewish life to displaced persons camps.

We also designed and produced a large-scale projected animation which illustrated the camp system that spread across Europe from 1938 to 1944.

Accompanying the projection are three touchscreen interactives, each focusing on a different aspect of the camp system - individual stories, the spread of camps over time, and types of camps.

With thanks to X Squared Design (exhibition designers).

SLNSW Voyages of Discovery

Voyages of Discovery takes visitors on an interactive search for Terra Australia Incognita - the unknown southern land. Exploring the State Library’s incredible maps, journals, drawings and books, this scroll down responsive web app explains how the European discoveries of Australia were gradually pieced together.

Read a description of the story below, or check it out on the Library's website here:

+ Voyages of Discovery

Voyages of Discovery was created using an AngularJS framework and an integrated Drupal backend provided by the Library. This responsive scroll-down web app provides visitors with a new and exciting way to understand one of the Library’s greatest collections. 

The site is interspersed with large-tiled images, animations, videos, maps, puzzles, flip-books and 3D objects.

In collaboration with the Library's curatorial team, Lightwell handled the copy, curated the content and coded each story to create a self-contained storytelling experience.

With thanks to the State Library of NSW.

High Water

By artists Michael Thomas Hill, Indigo Hanlee and Lightwell, High Water has been selected as a permanent public artwork to activate the new Green Square town centre in Sydney.  

Scheduled to be installed in the public plaza outside the library in early 2018, the artwork is a 9 metre two-sided blade with high resolution LED screens which will graphically interpret local weather patterns and tidal information using integrated sensors and live data feeds.

The blade’s program will be created using a mixed style of hand-created watercolours and generative art – computer produced patterns designed by our team that constantly transform in relation to linked live data. In this generative watercolour the weather system will ultimately take on the daily role of creator.

Watery blues at the tower base will rise and fall with the tidal patterns of the hour. The skies above will shift in pattern and colour depending on the sun’s position, temperature and wind directions.

A complementary web app will allow visitors to understand the data, colours and patterns in real time and see visual summaries of local environmental conditions over the day, week and year.

This artwork will turn what is accessible, but often intangible data into moving watercolours to create a visual language for the changing environment – painting a long-term picture of the environmental changes in Green Square.

High Water has been commissioned by the City of Sydney.

Southern Tanami IPA Digital Storybook

In collaboration with the Central Land Council, we've produced a bilingual digital storybook that presents the operational and management plans developed for the Southern Tanami Indigenous Protected Area (STIPA).

Read a description of the project below, or check it out at www.walyaku.org.au.

The Southern Tanami Indigenous Protected Area Digital Storybook Plan of Management contains short videos, animations, a seasonal calendar and interactive maps. As an audio-navigated website in both Warlpiri and English, it translates their existing management plan into a form accessible to the Warlpiri traditional owners of the region.

The program was developed for web, tablet and smartphone, with an offline version available for people without internet access. We also produced 38 mini documentaries that were shot within the STIPA or developed from existing media.

The Southern Tanami Indigenous Protected Area Digital Storybook Plan of Management was first presented at the Natural Resource Management Conference in Darwin on 23 November 2016, and has since been launched in the communities of Yuendumu, Nyirrpi and Willowra.

With thanks to Central Land Council, Alice Springs Film and Television, the Southern Tanami IPA Coordinating Council, the Southern Tanami IPA Management Committee and Warlpiri rangers from Yuendumu, Willowra and Nyirripi (past and present).

Rutherford's Den

Lightwell produced two pieces of multimedia for the redevelopment of Rutherford's Den at the Arts Centre in Christchurch, New Zealand - the Rutherford Wall, a four-screen multitouch interface, and a 'Future Energy' Kinect interactive.

Ernest Rutherford was a New Zealand-born physicist whose work in the early 20th century shaped our understanding of nuclear physics and contributed to the development of several innovations we rely on today. Rutherford studied at the University of Canterbury, where the Arts Centre is now located.

Image courtesy Arts Centre Christchurch

The Rutherford Wall focuses on the life, work and legacy of the notable physicist. Containing animated lab equipment, images of Rutherford's colleagues and family, an interactive 'gold foil' experiment and flip-through notebook, the Wall acts as an engaging introduction to the entire Den.

Image courtesy Arts Centre Christchurch

In the Future Energy room, a Kinect interactive allows visitors to control an animal avatar to discover and interact with different types of energy - climb a wall and soak up solar rays as a tuatara, or flap your wings as a kea to explore wind energy.

We animated and developed the Kinect interactive in conjunction with Esem Projects, who produced the design and illustrations.

Photo & designs by Esem Projects

Rutherford's Den officially reopened to the public in August 2016.

With thanks to exhibition designers Esem Projects and The Arts Centre in Christchurch.

Reserve Bank of Australia

To celebrate the launch of the Reserve Bank of Australia's new line of banknotes, Lightwell has created a 4 screen multi-touch installation for their museum in Martin Place.

The installation will be updated each year with new notes as they are released to the public.

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Exploring each new note’s key security features, production process and historical context, the touchwall is interspersed with interactive animations, a magnifying glass, UV tool, videos and high-resolution images.

Displayed on four 55” Planar screens, the application was developed in C++ with an integrated Content Management System in Ruby on Rails.

Lightwell worked with the Reserve Bank of Australia and Freeman Ryan Design to develop the concepts for this project.

Peace Wall

The Peace Wall is a 5 screen multi-touch installation created for the Shrine of Remembrance in Melbourne. 

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Based on the concept of “peace” (whether it’s attainable, how we can go about achieving it or whether it’s even our responsibility to try), our team designed a project that lets visitors explore the issue and have their say.

Interspersed with hand-drawn animations and a fully-interactive map that relays the most recent data from the Global Peace Index, this installation marks the conclusion to the new Galleries of Remembrance.

With thanks to Wax Sound Media (audio designers).

Parramatta Dairy

Working with interpretive designers Trigger and Parramatta Park Trust, Lightwell developed five pieces of multimedia which interpret the Dairy Precinct at Parramatta Park. We populated a pair of historic buildings and the surrounding landscape with two soundscapes, two projections and a series of iPad apps.

The Dairy Cottage was built in 1797 by ex-convict George Salter, and is one of the oldest buildings in Parramatta. We created an app for three iPad Pros which acts as both a digital label and interpretive device for a series of object displays. 

A soundscape located in the roof of the cottage evokes the sound of the people who once resided in the building - footsteps, rustling clothing and plates clinking resound in the space.

The Rangers Cottage contains a 'sunken dairy', dating back to when the Precinct was used for the Government Dairy. An introductory motion graphics piece, constructed of archival images and footage, tells the history of Parramatta Park.

We cast, shot and produced a projected video piece which portrays milkmaids working in the Sunken Dairy. 

iPad apps monitor the temperature both inside and outside the space.

Out the back of the two buildings, the sounds of children playing and splashing draw visitors to the back corner of the garden. This soundscape acts as a recreation of the nearby swimming spot on the Parramatta River, nicknamed 'Little Coogee'.

The redeveloped Dairy Precinct opened in October 2016.

With thanks to Trigger and Parramatta Park Trust.

Dyeing Breath

By artists Michael Thomas Hill, Indigo Hanlee and Lightwell, Dyeing Breath is a three-screen video installation comprising of an iPad interface and a C++ app. The program warps 360-degree video footage shot with a 6 camera Go-Pro rig. 

Dyeing Breath won the Chippendale New World Art Prize 2016, in response to the theme of spirit.

In addition to the installation documentation below, a low-res, single-screen WebGL version of the program can be viewed here.

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Dyeing Breath is an unveiling of our environment’s ever-present spirit. As the landscape exhales, plumes of brightly coloured smoke reveal a hidden life force. These vibrant breaths hang against their environment in moving clouds of colour - the invisible has been made visible.

Visitors can use the zoom, scale and axis sliders on the interface to change the views of the video.

The video installation was exhibited at The Old Rum Store in Chippendale, curated by the Chippendale Creative Precinct.

State Library of NSW Stories

Stories is a series of storytelling websites for the State Library of NSW. You can read a little description of the project below or check out our first three stories here:

+ The Holtermann Collection
+ The Derby Collection
+ Eora: 1770-1850

Since 2015, we've been working with the State Library of New South Wales to help create a digital storytelling project as part of their new website. The sub-site, Stories, offers visitors an engaging way of understanding the Library’s image and object collections.

We created these digital stories as scroll-down responsive web apps, developed using a BackboneJS framework and integrated Drupal backend provided by the Library.

Our in-house team handled the copy, curated the content and coded each story to create a self-contained storytelling experience. The responsive sites are interspersed with large-tiled images, animations, videos, maps, interactive nodes and hand-drawn illustrations.

Check in regularly to the Library’s site as new stories get released throughout the year.

With thanks to the State Library of NSW.

Forgotten Songs

Forgotten Songs is a permanent public art installation comprising 180 bird cages that play a soundscape of birdsong. Commissioned by the City of Sydney, it was permanently installed at Angel Place in December 2011.

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The calls are from bird species that used to live in the city before the arrival of Europeans.

During the day, you may hear the calls of the Eastern Whipbird, Rockwarbler, Regent Honeyeater, Grey Shrike-thrush, Fan-tailed Cuckoo, Spotted Pardalote, Brown Gerygone, Jacky Winter, Scarlet Robin and many others.

At night, the soundtrack switches to nocturnal birds like the Australian Owlet-nightjar, Powerful Owl, Southern Boobook, Barn Owl, Tawny Frogmouth, and White-throated Nightjar.

MAAS Experimentations

Lightwell produced an interactive digital chemistry installation for the Museum of Applied Arts and Sciences' (MAAS) Experimentations Gallery at the Powerhouse Museum. 

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Based on a fun interpretation of the periodic table, visitors are able to explore elements and make fun experiments on a multi-user touchwall.

Hand illustrations and animations were created by our in-house team, with all content, photographic images and scientific direction provided by the museum.

With thanks to exhibition team at the Powerhouse Museum.

Into The Blue

Documenting the terrain and diverse range of flora and fauna found in the Greater Blue Mountains Area over a period of 12 months, Lightwell produced a five-screen video installation for the World Heritage Interpretive Centre in Katoomba which focuses on key landmarks and seasonal changes in this region.

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Combining panoramic sweeps and aerial shots with macro detail and textures, this 30 minute production was installed in November 2012, and is designed to provide visitors with an expansive look at these landscapes via large-scale projections that wrap around the gallery walls and onto the roof.

Accompanying the video installation are two multitouch interfaces that present detailed information about the tracks and trails that snake through this region and the plants and animals that belong in this place.

With thanks to Freeman Ryan Design (exhibition designers).

Sydney Institute of Marine Science

SIMS is a research and training institute based on the shores of Sydney Harbour at picturesque Chowder Bay. Lightwell developed the interactive and video programs for their new interpretive centre in conjunction with exhibition designers Five Spaces Design and Peter Campbell Design.

One of the pieces we developed was an Oculus Rift-based virtual underwater dive of Sydney Harbour. Visitors can explore the sea floor and discover animals such as a blue groper, weedy sea dragon, moray eel, and giant cuttlefish. Corals, sponges and sea urchins encrust a central rock platform, accompanied by a slowly waving kelp forest. Looking up, they can see their air bubbles float to the surface towards a circling bull shark contemplating its next move.

We also created a suite of interactive workstations and touchtables on Coastal Erosion, Exploring the Sea Floor, Phytoplankton and the East Australian Current. Interspersed with animations, illustrations, videos and high-resolution imagery of the sea floor, each installation is unique and an important showcase for the research that is being developed at SIMS.

Above: The Coastal Erosion, AUV, Phytoplankton & Ocean Currents interactives.

One of the best parts of this project has been the opportunity to work directly with the marine scientists. Our teams have worked together to curate the Institute’s extensive content and choose media that complements each story. We hope this new exhibition, in conjunction with the educational programs that run at SIMS, can contribute to more informed debates at a time when the need for greater public understanding of what’s happening in our oceans could not be more acute.

International Cricket Hall of Fame

We worked closely with the team at the Bradman Foundation for a period of 2 years to develop over 20 touchscreen and multitouch applications for the International Cricket Hall of Fame in Bowral. 

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Located in the surrounds of the Bradman Oval in Bowral, the Hall features a series of permanent exhibition spaces filled with a rich assortment of historical and contemporary perspectives on one of the world’s most popular sports. 

Lightwell created an extensive suite of applications that span a variety of styles and user-experiences, from timelines and video databases for the cricket tragic, to multi-user fielding games and Google Maps-based data visualisations. 

This extensive project was completed in January 2008.