The Wall at Te Papa

There’s a great new interactive exhibit at Te Papa.   The Wall is part of a big new development “Our Space”.   

I stood and watched people interacting with the wall for ages.  Much of the time they were playing with the technology but unconciously perhaps they’re telling the story of New Zealand(ers).  It’s not quite the Minority Report effect but the effect is quite mesmerising  (flickr slideshow).

This is a great example of social tagging – the museum visitors build the exhibit as much as they experience it.  

I’ve just spent far too long trawling through snapshots from the wall from the last few days.  This is quite a different experience.  While the visitors get to see their own selections of images (and videos) as part of a current mash-up, the visitor to the archive gets to see an ever changing community narrative on a different scale.   This changing story, interconnected and complex is perhaps the systems thinking I’ve been looking for.   I wonder how that sense could be conveyed to the people at the wall itself?  

Visitors to the website can upload media and there’s discussion etc.   Look out Wellington for pictures of my kids…

Well done Te Papa.