Project History

 

The Creative Kids Museum Calgary was developed in partnership with May & Watkins design LLC (New York). This was a 2,000 sq ft exhibit space which included a musical hallway/wave, a theater console, and a lip sync station.

 

The Musical Hallway has 88 non-mechanical buttons spread across a curved hallway, both in the walls and on the floor. It was inspired by the jumbo floor pianos that are popular but a maintenance nightmare. We designed the non-mechanical buttons to be strong enough for any adult but also sensitive enough for a toddler to still use. These are durable buttons which have no moving parts and will self calibrate when the environmental conditions change (See Proximity Detection Buttons in the Available Products section) provide feedback to the user by lighting up with high power LEDs when the guest touches them and then playing a sound. The exhibit sound system is driven by computers that play the 30 different sounds and will monitor themselves to make sure they are running properly. If the software detects that the audio player has locked up or crashed, they will automatically restart the audio program and clear up the problem. The system is designed to have minimal maintenance and easy day to day use; just flip the power on in the morning and then off at the end of the day!

 

The Theatre Console interacts with a stage lighting controller and an audio system. Guests can press buttons to play sound effects and change the lighting to set the scene for their friends on stage. Both the sound effects and the lighting scheme can easily be changed to make the system more dynamic. The control panel uses the same non-mechanical switches as the Musical Hallway and has the same durability making them reliable and low maintenance.

 

The Lip Sync Station is an interactive exhibit which plays tunes that guests can select, and sing along to. Guests can scroll through songs, play, pause, and stop the songs with the help of a control panel on the front of the speakers. The play list can be updated easily by adding or removing music from a particular folder. This kind of task can be done over a network remotely, or from the console itself. The console is made to loosely resemble a stereo with oversized speakers and oversized control buttons.