The Immigrant's Suitcase: Sketch Up Visualization

If you have been following my previous posts, you are aware that  Adriana and myself are working on creating an interactive exhibit featuring an immigrant's suitcase. Our first step was to put some ideas down on paper and sketch it out.  To refresh your memory, this is was our original drawing:

While Adriana did a mighty fine job drawing the above picture, we wanted to have a more detailed visualization of what our exhibit might look like.  This is where Google Sketch Up comes in.  If you are unfamiliar with the program, it is an open source 3D modeling program that lets you, well, model things.  While it is particularly useful for architecture and engineering, it also works great for modeling museum exhibits. 

These are some preliminary ideas of what our exhibit could look like. 

Our focus is on the suitcase itself, but it is nice to imagine how the suitcase could be displayed within a larger context.  The images on the left wall show the three immigrant identities we hope to explore - Ukrainian, Chinese, and African American.  The right wall features introductory text and a Canadian Pacific Railway poster encouraging westward settlement, written in Ukrainian.

If we zoom in on the table, we get a better picture of the suitcase and the artifacts.  The artifacts again represent the three immigrant identities - Matryoshka nesting dolls (Ukrainian), Cowboy hat (African American ranchers) and an art piece featuring Chinese script. Adriana is currently figuring out how to fabricate the Matryoshka dolls using the 3D printer.  If we have additional time, we hope to make at least one of the artifacts interactive, perhaps make the dolls talk or pop open in some fashion.

Now the suitcase itself is pretty bare at this point, just containing the necessary technology - RFID equipped passports, a laptop, solderless breadboard, arduino, and an RFID reader.  Our goal is to construct a false bottom to place over the technological components to hide them from view, which will allow us to place a few artifacts on top.  Upon entering the exhibit the visitor will receive one of the passports and when they near the suitcase, the signal will be picked up by the RFID reader inside. The RFID reader will communicate with the laptop using the arduino, instructing it to turn on a video which will then be displayed on the screen mounted to the lid of the suitcase. 

The process is probably a bit more complicated than I have laid out and will most likely require additional technology, but this will become more clear as we progress in our research and fabrication. Any suggestions for improvement or modification are most welcome!          

The Immigrant's Suitcase: A Foray into Interactive Exhibit Design

In my last blog post, I described an idea to make an Interactive Suitcase that would communicate the journey of an immigrant by making the objects of their suitcase interactive.  Having an idea is half the battle, but carrying it out is still quite overwhelming.  Thankfully, I have teamed up with my colleague Adriana Ayers, who possesses and abundance of creativity and technical capabilities.

After the initial idea came about, we let our imaginations run wild, thinking of all the possibilities for our suitcase.  Adriana began sketching the suitcase and outlining some of the items we might be able to include.  Toys? Musical instruments? Maps? Letters? Photo albums? Money? Clothes?  Over the course of a couple of weeks, we had more ideas than we knew what to do with.  The items in the suitcase also depended on the ethnicity of the immigrant whose story we wished to tell - did we want to explore Ukrainian, Chinese, Japanese, or Irish backgrounds?  One thing we knew from the start was that whichever immigrant identity we chose, they would be settling in Alberta.  As born and bred Albertans, we have to show a bit of provincial loyalty.

 Preliminary Sketch - drawn by Adriana Ayers

As we continued to toss around different ideas, the story of an Ukrainian immigrant became most appealing.  We thought we could include some Pysanky eggs and have them change designs upon being touched, as well as some Ukrainian nesting dolls that would pop apart by activating a switch.  We also wanted to incorporate some archival materials because, well, we are historians and have a particular affinity for old things.  Using digitized copies of photographs, we wanted to create a digital photo album depicting life in Ukraine and Alberta.  While these were just a few initial ideas, we were quite excited about the potentials of our project. Adriana even went as far to conceptualize a display of numerous suitcases with different immigrant stories - visitors would come to the exhibit and receive a passport that would only open the suitcase with the corresponding ethnic identity.   The possibilities seemed endless!

The possibilities are still endless, but the reality is, we are constrained both by time and our technical capacities.  After posing our ideas to our professor, it was clear that we needed to scale back the project and have a more defined focus.  While it would be cool to make twenty different objects in the suitcase interactive, I do need to graduate by October.  Our initial concept hasn't changed, but we are going to focus our efforts on making interactive passports that will send signals to a computer (cleverly disguised within a suitcase) and prompt the display of one of three immigrant stories. Using archival materials from Alberta, we are in the process of creating videos about the immigration of Ukrainians, African Americans, and Chinese to Alberta.  The passports will each contain a RFID (radio frequency identification) tag that will tell the computer which video to play - in this sense, it is "opening" the suitcase and displaying the immigrant experience. 

We haven't completely abandoned our ideas for the interactive objects.  If time permits, we are going to try and fabricate at least one object with an interactive component to display in the suitcase.  Or, with the brand new MakerBot Thing-O-Matic 3D printer, we may try and print an object for display.  A lot of the details are still up in the air, but we are proceeding with a more defined focus.  Up next, figuring out how exactly RFID's work! (So far my research has involved staring blankly at various websites, but I have renewed hope thanks to some great resources sent my way by Devon Elliott).

Be sure to check out Adriana's blog for her take on the project!