Connected Worlds: Educational large-scale, interactive ecosystem at the NY Hall of Science

Published: Tue, 06/30/15

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Connected Worlds: Educational large-scale, interactive ecosystem at the NY Hall of Science

June 30, 2015


[This educational interactive environment looks intriguing; the description is from Design I/O, where you can find a video and lots of images. –Matthew]

Connected Worlds

An Interactive Connected Ecosystem

Connected Worlds is a large scale immersive, interactive ecosystem developed for the New York Hall of Science. The installation is composed of six interactive ecosystems spread out across the walls of the Great Hall, connected together by a 3000 sqft interactive floor and a 45ft high waterfall. Children can use physical logs to divert water flowing across the floor from the waterfall into the different environments, where they can then use their hands to plant seeds. As the different environments bloom, creatures appear based on the health of the environment and the type of plants growing in it. If multiple environments are healthy creatures will migrate between them causing interesting chain reactions of behaviors.

Connected Worlds is designed to encourage a systems thinking approach to sustainability where local actions in one environment may have global consequences. Children work with a fixed amount of water in the system and have to work together to manage and distribute the water across the different environments. Clouds return water from the environments to the waterfall which releases water to the floor when it rains.

Connected Worlds was conceived, designed and developed by Design I/O in collaboration with the New York Hall of Science. Connected Worlds is made possible with generous support from The JPB Foundation, the National Science Foundation, Google Inc., and The Nasdaq Educational Foundation, Inc. The Design I/O team consisted of Emily Gobeille, Theo Watson and Nicholas Hardeman with additional design and animation by Josh Goodrich and game consultation by Zach Gage. Sound Design by MOST Original Soundtracks. Photos by David Handschuh.

Connected Worlds was developed with openFrameworks an open source creative coding toolkit.


 
 

Managing Editor: Matthew Lombard

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