AllofUs educates the Saudi youth about alternative energy with exhibition
Design consultancy AllofUs (based in the McCann London headquarters) has created a central piece for the King Abdullah City for Atomic and Renewable Energy (KACARE) in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, under an initiative created by the current King to educate the Saudi youth of today about alternative energy.
The concept, design and bespoke software for a central hall interactive in the museum was created by AllofUs, working alongside Beck Interiors, KCA London, Electrosinic, SI Electrical and LED. The multi-disciplinary design consultancy was appointed through London-based design team, KCLE, who collaborated with AllofUs on exhibits for the science museum.
The brief was to make an interactive centrepiece for the 27m long central hall of KACARE bringing together the fifty or so exhibits. The project involved projection mapping and multi-user interaction, with an AllofUs team flying out to Riyadh to put the installation in place. The custom made software for the piece uses the openFrameworks toolkit to project rich, real-time visuals onto the surface of the three seven-metre long wave-shaped tables visualising four alternative energies - solar, wind, geo-thermal and atomic - with LED light strips complimenting the visuals.
Nine Kinect cameras are used to detect user movement over the tables which trigger the interactive animation and content, as the Kinect inputs and outputs had to be calibrated to match the space onsite the team developed a solution which allowed them to calibrate the settings in real-time using XBOX controllers.
Senior creative technologist at AllofUs, Chris Mullany, commented: “Helping to develop the Central Hall installation at KACARE was a great experience. It involved a range of technology solutions and the end result was really immersive. Finally seeing people interact with it is very rewarding.”
The exhibition is now open to schools and educational groups and will open to the public in the near future.