Futures

To celebrate the Smithsonian Institution’s 175th anniversary, a year-long exhibition, "FUTURES," is located at the 1881 Arts & Industries Building (AIB). Part exhibition, part festival, "FUTURES" is a prototype for the building’s next big chapter and its first major exhibition in 40 years. Past future-making artifacts sit in conversation with contemporary objects, provoking questions that address both the hopeful and the ambiguous nature of future-casting. "FUTURES" invites artists, designers, and the public to respond to help imagine the many futures that could be.

The LAB at Rockwell Group contributed a unifying and overarching layer of digital storytelling to FUTURES, involving UI/UX design, software development, and graphic design. The digital experience creates a vision of a bright and fulfilling future, in which technology helps rather than hinders, removing obstacles and paving the way for us to be freer, more ourselves, and more human.

Through a series of touch-less interactions, visitors engage with Beacons to contribute their voice to an always shifting portrait of our Future - a data visualization that represents the power of their voices combined.