Science Center Medical Technology, 2009

Berlin, Germany

Dis­cover, ex­pe­ri­ence, and un­der­stand knowl­edge in a play­ful way: Med­ical tech­nol­ogy pro­ducer Ot­to­bock Health­care com­mis­sioned ART+COM to bring to life their var­ied prod­ucts, re­search in­no­va­tions and busi­ness ac­tiv­i­ties in a man­ner at­trac­tive to both pro­fes­sion­als and the gen­eral pub­lic. Opened in June 2009, the Sci­ence Cen­ter Med­ical Tech­nol­ogy pre­sents the ex­hi­bi­tion “Dis­cover, what moves us”, de­signed by ART+COM.

Cov­er­ing an area of 450 square me­tres, nu­mer­ous in­ter­ac­tive media sta­tions il­lus­trate the in­tri­ca­cies of human motor func­tions and high­light how na­ture often pro­vides the best mod­els for highly-de­vel­oped med­ical tech­nol­ogy. Per­cep­tual stim­u­la­tion and vis­i­tor par­tic­i­pa­tion are cen­tral; hands-on ex­hibits in­vite vis­i­tors to ex­plore the fas­ci­na­tion of grasp­ing and walk­ing using their own hands and feet.

One of the high­lights of the ex­hi­bi­tion is the widely-vis­i­ble media façade, con­sist­ing of 15 mov­ing light points whose mo­tions mimic joint move­ments dur­ing human gait. The sim­u­la­tion vi­su­ally pro­jects the theme of walk­ing into the urban do­main. Ad­ja­cent to the en­trance of the Sci­ence Cen­ter an eight-me­tre tall ki­netic in­stal­la­tion — Grasp Pen­du­lum — is lo­cated. Screens mounted on three mo­torised pen­du­lums show vir­tual hands that in­ter­act play­fully across the mon­i­tors.

The de­sign of the ex­hi­bi­tion is based on the cen­tral idea of move­ment and fol­lows an in­te­grated, dy­namic de­sign ap­proach. The media sta­tions are de­signed to feel as if they have arisen out of mo­tion. Their or­ganic round­ness is de­rived from the het­ero­gene­ity of na­ture and re­flects the un­der­ly­ing bionic theme.