National Army Museum 2008
The National Army Museum aims to explain the impact that the British Army has had on the character of Britain, Europe and the world. The museum shows visitors how the actions of a few can affect the futures of many, and how Britain’s past has helped to shape the world – the world today and in the future.
After a tendering process blackbox-av were set the task of providing a new interactive system, combing interactive touch screens with an easy to use and stunning interface to show a series of videos. The National Army Museum wanted to use the touch screen technology to give visitors an insight into the history of the British Redcoat infantry during the period of John Churchill, the Duke of Marlborough. Using a mixture of high quality re-enactment footage and a series of live actor talking heads supplied to blackbox-av by the organisation we created relatively simple, yet stylish, menu system that enabled visitors to scroll along a series of characters from this turbulent period in European history. This is display was part of a much larger project covering the history of the Redcoat from 1415-1792.
Interactive Installation
Visitors using the installation are presented a clear menu of options and a horizontally scrolling list of historical characters from the Marlburian period. When they select the character whose story they wish to hear the menu screen smoothly fades away and is replaced by a windowed video screen, which plays edited re-enactment and actor video. The visitor can choose to watch the entire video or interrupt it and select a different character at any time.
