The Museum of Science, Boston (MOS) enlisted Moment Factory to collaborate on the new permanent exhibition Arctic Adventure: Exploring with Technology. The exhibition offers a first glimpse of the ten-year transformation of its Blue Wing, the most ambitious renovation in the museum’s 190-year history.
Arctic Adventure invites guests to traverse glaciers using ground-penetrating radar, drill ice cores to extract data about climate change, and locate wildlife with satellite and drone technology.
Guests enter the exhibition through a cave made of real ice, which opens onto a vast arctic tundra vista that unfurls beyond, where sound, lighting, interactive visuals, and set design bring the environment to life.
The exhibition builds on the Museum of Science’s belief that everyone has a role to play in deepening our shared understanding of science, technology, and climate change. To fulfill their goal of offering a transformational learning environment, the Museum staff challenged Moment Factory to help them create a new paradigm for immersive, interactive, and awe-inspiring museum experiences.
Arctic Adventure features four distinct zones, each of which foster unique opportunities for intuitive learning:
- The Polar Frontier: Visitors enter the exhibition through a multi-sensory ice cave, confronted by a touchable wall of real ice that’s complemented by digital windows into ice cave habitats, such as that of the arctic fox. Around the corner from this cave, visitors experience a panoramic view of the northern frontier, where they can spot arctic wildlife and observe changes in the environment.
- The Animals Zone: In the next two zones, visitors learn how to track arctic land animals across an arctic vista using satellite technology and camera-equipped drones to interpret animal behaviours as they adapt to unprecedented warming. Generative, real-time content powers blizzards and storms that take over the vista, inspiring an appreciation of how extreme weather can make arctic exploration more challenging. An underwater hydrophone listening station supports visitors to differentiate the calls of animal species as they watch them pass below the ice beneath their feet.
- The Ice Core Theater: As visitors move forward in the experience, they learn how to extract ice cores with drill rigs, and how to analyze the millions of years of history recorded in bubbles of air trapped within the layers of ice, discovering evidence about the health and history of our climate.
- The Arctic Navigation Zone: Visitors must work in teams to safely traverse a virtual ice field while avoiding losing their equipment (and themselves!) in its deep crevasses. Equipped with ground-penetrating radar and satellite maps, visitors apply real-life technologies and data to reveal and evade the crevasses that are hidden under the glacier’s surface.
As the first major new exhibition unveiled under the Museum’s transformation plan, Arctic Adventure has garnered numerous industry accolades, including the 2021 IES Illumination Award of Distinction for Interior Lighting Design, and a 2021 Concours Idéa award in the Digital Experience category. Other major industry awards are scheduled to be announced in late 2021.
