Premier’s Design Award for Melbourne Museum’s The Melbourne Story

Premier’s Design Award for Melbourne Museum’s The Melbourne Story

 

A dynamic map that forms the centrepiece of The Melbourne Story exhibition at Melbourne Museum has been awarded first prize in the Commercial Multimedia Design category of the Premier’s Design Awards 2008.

The dynamic map, which was created for the Museum by Melbourne-based interactive design company ENESS, depicts Melbourne’s physical growth from settlement to the present through projections onto 39 variously-sized plinths. The map forms a key element in The Melbourne Story, an exhibition that traces Melbourne’s unique and changing history from the 1830s to today, which opened at Melbourne Museum in March 2008.

As visitors approach the dynamic map their presence causes images projected onto the plinths to flip, float and fade into a large map of Melbourne and its surrounds. The images, plinths and map has a 360 degree viewing spectrum and creates a dramatic effect that fits in with the exhibition’s exploration of Melbourne as a dynamic and diverse city.

The Melbourne Story has proven a massive hit with visitors keen to learn about the city’s history – well over 190,000 people have already experienced it as Melbourne Museum comes off a record financial year for visitation. There exists few comparable opportunities for this kind of exposure of the innovative work of companies such as ENESS.
In awarding the dynamic map first prize, the judges’ commented on its “intelligent approach to displaying museum content to patrons by acknowledging that not all content needs to be physically in the ‘real world’ for it to be appreciated. It also exhibits entertaining design and could easily be expanded commercially into other institutions such as galleries or as an interface for student work at educations institutions, literature and books at libraries and video film archives”.

ENESS has a ten year history of installation art and more recently has excelled in developing interactive environments for commercial, public and private entities achieving interactivity, product awareness and artistic merit.

The Premier’s Design Awards is a biennial awards program developed by the Victorian State Government to recognise design excellence in Victoria and is one of the key features of the State of Design 2008 Festival; Victoria’s Design Festival. The Premier’s Design Awards 2008 exhibition showcases all winning designs and will range from various fields including architecture, interior design, graphic design, multimedia design, landscape design, fashion design, set design and industrial design.

The Premier’s Design Awards 2008 exhibition is currently on display at Melbourne Museum until 3 August 2008.

Melbourne Museum, Nicholson Street, Carlton. Open daily 10.00am – 5.00pm. Admission: Adult $6, children and concession FREE. For further details phone 13 11 02 or visit museumvictoria.com.au/melbournemuseum