ARoS Public Community Hall
In 2016, ARoS Art Museum in Aarhus, Denmark unveiled ARoS Public, a reinvention of the art museum experience as an innovative public forum for learning and interpretation.
Overview
At the heart of the ARoS philosophy is the belief that art is most valuable when it sparks new forms of social connection. The ARoS team challenged Local Projects to create interactive installations that would transform an entire floor of the museum into a “mental fitness center,” engaging visitors’ senses, stimulating their imaginations, and creating new forms of social connection around art.
The result is ARoS Public, a community forum containing three digital interactive exhibits developed by Local Projects: The Art of Creativity, The Art of Commentary, and the Art of Looking.
Services
Exhibit Design, Media Design, Media & Software Development
“Each ARoS Public experience invites visitors to create, share, converse and collaborate through the museum’s collection.”
The Details
ARoS Public uses technology to put their collection in the hands of visitors. These experiences were designed to be both playful and insightful, showing that adults can have, as the museum puts it, “smart fun.”
In The Art of Creativity, visitors turn into creators and muses, using existing artworks to make their own. The Art of Commentary records conversations between two visitors, revealing individual connections to works of art. The Art of Looking uses eye-tracking technology over 20 years in the making to trace the movement of visitors’ eyes as they examine each artwork, and show each visitor the hidden details of their searching gaze.
“Traditional museums are not designed to encourage social interactions. We explicitly wanted to change that.”
