I said to blog more about the statues and interaction design of Stockholm. There’s always a risk though in saying so, will you.. Well yes, but not as I planned. Anyway there are a few things I’d like to tell.
First is Järnpojke (Järn = iron, pojke = boy). First of all because I think it was kind a cute :) He was meditating here all day for the people who worked in the iron mines.
The people that lived and worked next to this little statue took good care of Järnpojke. He always wore some clothes, a scarf or a jacket when it was really cold.
The guide told that the story goes that you’re blessed if you stroke his head, but she thought that was nonsense she immediately added. That was the reason his head was so shiny.
There were more of these kind of meditating statues in Stockholm, nice :)
When we entered the museum (Moderna Museet) we could choose for an audio tour, which I didn’t as I like watching more. But some others did so the lady explained how this worked.
There was this MP3-player-stick with infra-read. When you were in the museum there were several ‘dots’ next to art works. Here you could point the MP3-player to and it would start telling a story.
There weren’t any other controls, except for one; you could point the MP3-player down, to the ground, and it would stop the audio. This reminder me of an umbrella-controlled MP3-player I once saw. With different gestures, like opening (start) or closing (stop) the umbrella, turning (next song) and others you could control the music which was kind a neat. But that was just a concept back then, here they made a little start with an actual product :)
Further they had a quite advanced toilet system.
First of all the lock. They had an explanation (in Swedish) on how to use the handle to close the toilet.As you can see you have to move the handle up to close and down to open. From this explanation I pushed the handle upwards and let it go again. Went very well.
Then, luckily I was already ready and washing my hands, the door suddenly opened! Apparently it wasn’t locked.. After some testing it seemed that you had to move the handle up further and that it then would stay up. Too bad there was no second feedback if you did it well. No problem for Swedish speaking people though as I guess the text will explain this..
Further they had this very good ‘dyson airblade‘, no airplane, but a hand dryer. I first saw this in the museum for Beeld en Geluid (Video and Sound? Well the museum attached to the Dutch public media archives). You slide you’re hands through this and they are totaly dry afterwards, working very well. On the other hand, using a lot of power also I guess and it is no disaster to not completely dry your hands..
As a last thing they had a CCTV system in the toilets. Outside the toilets there was a TV and you could see the toilet room, the toilets, the urinates, etc. This gave a bit strange feeling as you walked in, but when inside this was explained using another work of art:
Tags: art, blog, interaction, interpretation, language, meditation, stockholm
Categories: a cultural journey
