Connected Worlds is a large scale interactive ecosystem developed for the New York Hall of Science. The installation is composed of six unique habitats spread out across the walls of the Great Hall, connected together by a 3000 sq ft interactive floor and a 45 ft high waterfall. Children can use physical logs to divert water flowing across the floor from the waterfall into the different habitats, where they can then use their hands to plant seeds of their choice. As the habitats bloom, creatures appear based on the health of the environment and the type of plants growing in it. If multiple habitats are healthy, creatures will migrate between them causing interesting chain reactions of behaviors.
Connected Worlds is designed to encourage a systems thinking approach to sustainability where local actions in one environment may have global consequences. Children work with a fixed amount of water in the system and have to work together to manage and distribute the water across the different environments. Clouds return water from the environments to the waterfall which releases water to the floor when it rains.
CREDITS
Connected Worlds was conceived, designed and developed by Design I/O in collaboration with the New York Hall of Science.
Connected Worlds is made possible with generous support from The JPB Foundation, the National Science Foundation, Google Inc., and The Nasdaq Educational Foundation, Inc.
The Design I/O team consisted of Emily Gobeille, Theo Watson and Nicholas Hardeman with additional design and animation by Josh Goodrich and game consultation by Zach Gage.
Sound Design by MOST Original Soundtracks. Photos by David Handschuh.
Connected Worlds was developed with openFrameworks an open source creative coding toolkit.
