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!