Recoilers and Headphones – Vejle Art Museum

Vejle Art Museum has a simple mission – to invite each and everybody to experience art, from classic to contemporary – It aims to use art as a catalyst for reflection and dialogue about individuals, society, and cultural identity, inspiring and challenging audiences. Accessibility to all is a founding tenet of the museum, with the oldest donations dating back to the 1890’s establishing a museum in Denmark with free public access to all citizens.

Amongst a number of current exhibitions here is The Golden Age gallery which showcases a collection of new art, all inspired by Denmark’s ‘The Native Land’ (Hjemstavnskunst) art style; beech forests, coastlines, storks, farmers and stone dolmen. This style focuses on everyday life, landscapes, and people from artists’ own local regions. It emphasizes realism, rural traditions, and a strong emotional connection to place.

To promote reflection in this gallery a large seat has been provided, however this seat does more than offer a place to sit and think, it also adds to the visitor experience by allowing access to four audio points. Built into the seat are our Double Cup Headphones, audio players and Horizontal Recoilers which help avoid the obvious trip hazard that would otherwise be posed by the cables if left hanging.

As visitors lift the Double Cup Headphones from their unique hanger, the in-built autoplay functionality activates audio relating to the surrounding artwork, no buttons required. While the Recoiler feeds out the cable and retracts it as needed. This offers a clean, personal and reflective experience avoiding the noise pollution that speakers would have created.

This is a great example of our unique Auto-Play Headphones and Recoilers in action. It’s difficult to think of another solution that would have seamlessly combined audio with seating such as this.