The exhibition "Dive into the Neckar" introduces visitors to the Neckar River in Baden-Württemberg. The Neckar is a tributary of the Rhine in Germany from the source to the mouth it is 367 km long. The river is characteristic of many habitats, animals, and human intervention in nature in Baden-Württemberg. The Neckar makes it possible to learn about a wide variety of topics and to immerse oneself haptically, visually, and auditorily in the habitats.

media installation in action︎︎︎

Our concept consists of the combination of relief, an iPad and a wall projection. The course of the river Neckar is projected onto the relief of Baden-Württemberg. With the help of a rotary control on the relief, the user can choose between the themes landscape, wildlife and human, which are then displayed as icons on the river course with the help of a projection. For each category there are three sub-themes, which can be selected by touching them on the relief. After selecting a topic, the user receives further information on the information level of the iPad. A video of the selected topic is played on the wall projection with atmospheric sound. In this way, visitors can immerse themselves in the habitat and experience the places created along the Neckar River and experience the themes in a realistic way.

The main element of our exhibit is the relief on which the course of the river is projected from above. The relief consists of 15 layers made of 1 cm high Kappa cardboard. The 15 layers were lasered out and then glued to each other. Our exhibit is designed for single-use, which is why we projected a recess at the bottom right. This not only makes the visitors themselves the center of the exhibit, but also makes it easier to reach all the topics. In order to still be able to recognize Baden-Württemberg and not to take the relief out of context, the complete outline of Baden-Württemberg is glued to the floor. This allows visitors to enter Baden-Württemberg and thus become a part of it.

The technical setup of the Relief consists of a Bare Conductive Arduino Board with nine capacitive buttons and a rotary control with a potentiometer. The Bare conductive Arduino board has 12 capacitive inputs, which we have used as capacitive buttons for our nine theme points. The projection then shows the user where the capacitive buttons are located for each category and these are also only activated in the respective state. We 3D-printed the rotary control ourselves, sanded it down, and painted it white. For the display of the current category, we have included an elevation as a pointer. The functional interior consists of a potentiometer, which is limited to two sides.

The iPad is the information level of our exhibit, where visitors can get more detailed information on the individual topics.

The iPad application has a simply designed Idle Mode, which is to be seen when the exhibit is not being operated. In addition, there are start-up screens for the respective over-themes, which appear when the dial on the relief is turned. These adapt to the design concept of the content pages. For each of the three over themes Landscape, Wildlife, and Human, we chose a different color to visually differentiate them from each other.

In the layouts, we worked not only with typography, but also with photographs an illustrations to simplify or supplement continuous texts and thus convey the information in a more appealing and vivid way.

We have added an additional layer of information for children. This contains a short piece of information or a small task. An illustrated person complements this area and makes it more appealing to children.

The wall projection shows a matching video with sound for each selected category, giving visitors not only a visual but also an auditory impression of the topic. The wall projection was complemented by a static headline pasted on the wall. Thus we give our exhibit a headline and the wall projection is made more interesting.