Universal Live inspires the next generation with Eureka! Spark Gallery

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Universal Live was appointed the technical partner to Eureka! The National Children’s Museum in Halifax for its most recent installations in the Spark Gallery. The interactive projects are the result of a collaboration between Universal Live, Eureka! and Lumen Art Projects and have been nine months in the planning.

Delivering and maintaining full technical support to the exhibition, Universal Live provided the computers and twelve large screens and developed the interactive sensors and the provision of twenty high-end projectors used in a variety of clever ways. This included the use of super-short throw lenses which allow visitors to get up-close to the action without casting their shadow.

The floor to ceiling short-throw projection provided by Universal Live is showcased, in Arboreal, the interactive, animated environment created by US Artists Moses Journey and David Glicksman and, in ShapeShift, original artworks by Think Create LLC (Deqing Sun & Peiqi Su) and Interval Studio, both from the USA.

The installations in the Spark Gallery span two floors of the museum and launched following a private VIP viewing in December, attended by artists and event organisers alike seeking inspiration for their next projects. The full exhibition is now open to the public and will run until September 2020 with regular evening events for the more grown-up children!

Arboreal is in the ground floor Spark Gallery and is a fun, animated, colourful projection of a nocturnal forest alive with playful creatures with which audiences can engage and interact; fireflies find, swirl and land on you, glow-worms follow your steps, frogs play memory games with you, stomp-pads on the floor allow you to feed the monsters (if you’re quick enough!) or play pinball in the trees, plus you can create your own music loops in the Crystal Cave.

Shapeshift occupies the first floor Spark Gallery. Here, the technology reacts to how the visitors move through the space and, once again, every element within the room is interactive, from converting digital to analogue with ‘FlipDot’ screens to using your fingertips to create music, sounds and imagery with ‘Variant:’ or interacting with a floor-to-ceiling projection to create your own ‘Butterfly Effect’.

Eureka! chief executive, Leigh-Anne Stradeski, said: “Our Spark Gallery continues to go from strength to strength. We’re indebted to Universal Live for their support in delivering an innovative and high-tech experience for our visitors.”

Neil Clappison, commercial manager, Universal Live, added: “We were delighted to partner with Eureka! and Lumen Art Projects on Shapeshift and Arboreal. We all brought different knowledge and expertise to the project, and together we produced an engaging and technically innovative experience for a broad age group.”

Molly Hookings
Author: Molly Hookings

Molly joined the editorial team in March 2019. She has several years’ experience working in broadcast and journalism, as well as marketing and PR. Past experience includes working for the BBC and independent publishing houses. If you have a story you think Molly might be interested in, please email: molly@eventindustrynews.com