Client

The Science Museum Group

Prompt

Resign the Science Group’s online archives containing over 10,000 artifacts focusing on science and technology for over 1,000 years.

Background

As a part of my Masters's course, we were tasked with redesigning the Science Museum Group’s archives. Many of the items housed in the archives were once state-of-the-art technological innovations of their time. Although most are obsolete today, they symbolize the progress of technology and its impact on humanity (for better or worse). I wanted to focus on this technology theme and use it to showcase the collection. The goal was to have the viewer question technology. How long will current “cutting-edge” technology will remain “cutting-edge”? What will one day become obsolete? Have they already impacted our lives and for better or for worse? 

Response

The three technologies I channeled were Artificial Intelligence, Blockchain Technology, and Virtual Reality. The results were three innovative ways to get the public to engage with the Science Museum Group's online archives. Computer Vision was harnessed to give users easier access to collecting and sorting through the collection and make digital “mood boards”. I worked with a Machine Learning engineer to develop a prototype of this tool. I researched a carbon-neutral blockchain platform, that would convert the images of the museum’s collections into NFTs. Lastly, virtual reality would remotely grant users access to the actual warehouses where most of the Science Museum Group’s collections are stored.

This work was featured in a Medium Article published jointly by Falmouth and the Science Museum Group. You can see this work as well as the work of some of my colleagues below.