IMPERIAL WAR MUSEUM
CONCEPT DEVELOPMENT / USER TESTING / MOTION DESIGN / SCRIPTING / VISUAL-FX / 3D MODELLING / EDITING / FILMS / ARCHIVE EDIT & TREATMENT / SOUND DESIGN / SOUNDSCAPES / BESPOKE COMPOSITIONS / STUDIO RECORDING / HYBRID INTERACTIVE PROGRAMMING / GAME DESIGN / ILLUSTRATION / ANIMATION / PROJECTION MAPPING
SECOND WORLD WAR GALLERIES
AY-PE designed, created and delivered 23 varied AV exhibits across IWM London's seven Second World War galleries including touchscreen interactives, soundscapes, largescale projected films, LED display ceiling and more.
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The Second World War Galleries share stories on a global-scale, exploring the world war from the perspectives and experiences of different nations and backgrounds, helping to combat prejudices in modern society. AY-PE's AV plays a focal part in delivering these key interpretative messages, within the IWM's £30m new galleries projects.
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Client: Imperial War Museum
Exhibition Design: Ralph Appelbaum Associates
Project Management: Fraser Randall
Hardware: Sysco
FRACTIOUS '30s
The introductory AV, is a short, looping film succinctly showing the global decline into war. AY-PEs careful design, projection mapping and use of the multi-angled shards allowed for impactful interplay between single pane and full scale visuals with archive, CGI, motion text and graphics, as well as 2.5D imagery and a bespoke evocative musical score, bringing the fractious situation of the 1930s to life.
IMMERSIVE AV
35 ceiling-mounted LED lightboxes where immerse the visitor in a sky-scape of dogfighting planes, Blitz bombing, day to night sequences with accompanying multi-channel, surround soundscape.
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AY-PE graded and edited sequences of newly shot footage, projected across three stretches of gallery wall ranging from 9.5 to 11.5 metres width. Soundscapes of ambient desert, Pacific coast and Russian terrain sweep audiences into the context of the immersive landscape backdrops with the Battle of the Atlantic, evocatively capping the experience.
UNIQUE INTERACTIVES
Enigma interactive takes the visitor through key steps of the iconic code-breaking machine, letting the visitor ‘learn by doing’ activities of the breaker.
Our War Reporter software works with the set-works (Unusual Projects). A visitor builds their choice of digital newspaper front page at the spin of a ‘headline’ block and a click of a camera button - self-exploring the nature of propaganda in war reporting.
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Japanese Expansion interactive blends a table-based capacitive touch-foil with an overhead projector. The table transforms into animated map sequences, touch areas and swipeable events, to explore the Pacific area.
War Art explorer deep dives on a gallery of artistic political messaging.
LAYERS OF EMPIRE
Projected 4K onto 3 metre high, 7 metre wide, wraparound walls, an animated film engages visitors in the scale of the British Empire's global contributions, diversity of people and resources. A bespoke soundscape of subtle musical score, ambient Empire sounds and newly recorded Empire accents and voices immerse the visitor further. They are then invited to explore two Empire interactive databases which AY-PE designed to be accessible, open to learning styles and intuitive to use, to access 100s of assets and records.
STORYTELLING
Archive and text blended AVs weave through the exhibition, each with its own messaging and soundtrack in a holistic look and feel.
‘Theatres of War’ cover events in the Pacific, Russia and NW Europe include map design, motion text, cross-gallery sound design, BSL and bespoke animated SFX. 'The Big Three' film features additional scripted voice over narration, BSL and subtitles, choreographed in synch across a three screen, triptych projection.
THE TELEGRAPH,
UK PRESS
The audio-visual spread throughout the galleries are enormously effective... so artistically done that it could almost be on show at Tate Modern.
PERMANENT EXHIBITION OF THE YEAR WINNER,
M&H AWARDS
The Second World War and the Holocaust Galleries literally and figuratively, bring global and personal stories of humanity and inhumanity, into the light.