Pohjoinen Valo Museo: Visualizing Light through a Virtual Museum

Abstract

This paper describes a design project that investigates exhibition design within the virtual environment. Pohjoinen Valo Museo, translated from Finnish as the Museum of Nordic Light, is an interactive, virtual museum environment that presents virtual exhibitions as a way to visualize unique lighting phenomena that occur in the Nordic region. The virtual museum is the product of an architectonic formula, one that combines metaphors of physical space and enclosure with the principles of contemporary exhibition design. A virtual exhibition can be defined as an experience that removes visitors from physical space, inviting them to interact with a world of information, display, and sensorial stimulation facilitated by digital technology. Visitors may access this new venue of interactive exhibits using any computer in the world. The Pohjoinen Valo Museo project seeks to explore the potential of designing an exhibition for the virtual environment using a metaphor for building in virtual space (e.g., for spatial definition, orientation, and navigation). Figure 1 illustrates the Pohjoinen Valo Museo's Light of Day Gallery on the autumnal equinox. The entire Pohjoinen Valo Museo virtual museum environment can be viewed at the following URL: http://www.orangehaus.com/pvm . Flash Player 5 or higher is required to view the site. A free download is available at http://www.macromedia.com