EyeGaze have worked with many prestigious clients down the years but the Leonardo da Vinci temporary exhibition at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London at the end of 2006 was the most high profile multimedia tour we had attempted.
I am happy to report it was a huge success.
The focus of the exhibition was carefully selected pages from the notebooks of Leonardo which contain many sketches and explanations of his work written in the codices that he intriguingly chose to employ. Unfortunately for the exhibition his notebooks are all rather small so during the busy time, which was virtually all the time, it was difficult and tiring to get a close look.
Working with our partner,
Acoustiguide, we produced two amazing tours. One for hearing patrons and another in British Sign Language. The techniques we had developed to create a reliable yet extremely high quality multimedia experience on a handheld device lent themselves perfectly to the gallery environment and to exploring the background to the work of the grand master.
A row of leather benches down the centre of t
he gallery gave visitors the opportunity to relax between examining each of the displays and this is where our guides really came into their own. You could simply use the touch screen to tap in the exhibit number of the display you had just visited or intended to go to next and you would be treated to a diligently researched and professionally scripted range of background information, interviews, videos, animations and images that would truly enhance your understanding and enjoyment of the sketches and notes from the man himself.
A few examples of the sections on information include a video guide to the creation of some of his weird and wonderful percussion instruments and an interactive opportunity to listen to the sounds that they made; there were a range of animations produced by the brilliant artists at
Cosgrove Hall Productions that brought some of Leonardo’s sketches to life; there was a video that revealed the mystery of the real Da Vinci code that he used in many of his writings and there were many in depth analyses of his breadth of genius. The image is captured from a video of a group of enthusiasts who built a glider based on the specifications from Leonardo’s sketch. As you can see, the glider flew.
The feedback back collected from visitors to the exhibition that used the multimedia guide where overwhelmingly positive. It even got a special mention on the BBCs Newsnight Review where the commentator was very impressed.
