|
Planned Exhibits for the Museum
"Lost at Sea" Theater
Visitors enter to find themselves looking at a sunny seascape as from the deck of a ship at sea. A "storm" suddenly strikes. Through projections and stagecraft: thunder, lightning, gusts of wind transport the audience to a perilous moment as their captain attempts to find harbor on a starless night. Like countless sea travelers they are saved by the beam of a far off lighthouse. This brief virtual experience previews technology, art, and engineering throughout lighthouse history.
Lighthouse Timeline
A large plasma screen is mounted on tracks on a long wall. Even a child's finger can move this screen, which presents computer generated layers of information on the history and evolution of lighthouses over 2000 years. Images, (in color and in motion) and supportive soundtracks document hazardous lighthouse locations, lighthouse types, and great inventors whose devices enabled explorers, traders, and mighty navys to ply the seas. At each point in history the visitor can learn exactly what signals could be received by mariners from ancient lighthouses to today's satellite based GPS.
Tales of the Lighthouse Keepers
Visitors step up to a colorful gallery of "computer characters", ask questions, and hold conversations. The words of each character are based on authentic journals, enhanced by real sound effects. Visitors can ask about the most frightening moment, or a great marine disaster the keeper lived through, or the most gratifying rescue, or how children lived their days or the months they were cramped in these amazing houses located in desolate places or rocky islands out at sea.
The Lens that Lit the World
An unforgettable moment for visitors will occur when the museum illuminates a high order lens. Visitors will see a range of Fresnel lenses, which since 1820 became the standard throughout the globe. The largest of these extend the beam so far the range is only limited by the curvature of the Earth.
The Science of Light
This exhibit will demonstrate the range of the most widely used beams, from ancient times until Fresnel's great lens still in use today. This interactive exhibit will enable visitors to manipulate prisms themselves to better understand the principles of light.
Extending the Signal
The fogs and storms that obscure lighthouse beams require life-saving sound and electronic signals. This exhibit uses visuals and headphones to help visitors learn the principles of sound as related to bells, gongs, whistles and fog horns, and to the use of radar, loran, GPS and other advanced systems that provide mariners with precise location today.
Why Lighthouses Look the Way they Do
An exhibit in which the player can scroll through a wide range of lighthouse types and identifying marks. The player learns how engineering for specific locations dictates architecture, and how design, décor, and sound and light characteristic signals combine to assure the mariner of the exact lighthouse in view. An interactive feature will allow players to design their own lighthouse characteristics.
Good Signals . . . Bad Signals
An immersive experience exhibit in which the visitor must solve the problem of distinguishing correct signals from the false signals once sent by wreckers. Each player has enough information to make informed guesses, but the variance between the true and false is subtle and players must be attentive to bring their craft into safe harbor.
Navigational Interactive
A teaching game based on a recent technology, "tilty-table" plasma screen image of the entrance to a harbor. The player guides a boat to homeport by identifying lighthouses, bellbuoys, and landmarks. This can appear deceptively simple, but even after a briefing on navigational rudiments a careless player can become quite lost, because the 9 foot square sea chart first seen is but a part of a 900 square foot computer generated ocean the player is dealing with! A "pilot's voice" can break in to help a player who is lost or confused.
|
|
