Digital Catapult is the UK’s leading advanced digital technology innovation centre, accelerating the adoption of new and emerging technologies to drive growth for UK businesses across the economy. Their London centre facilitates technological development, testing and adoption with on-site labs, as well as hosting a wide range of events.
We were approached to come up with a concept and identity for an interactive exhibition that could engage visitors to the centre in thinking about how present-day technologies can create positive future impact.
Following a series of workshops with the comms and technology leads, we landed on the idea of the Digital Catapult centre being a catalyst for collaboration and conversation – a space that encourages interaction between the right people and businesses to accelerate us all into the future. We named the exhibit “Critical Dialogues” to convey a sense of urgency in those conversations and encourage participation.
We collaborated with Nexus Studios, a specialist data visualisation agency, to explore how we could create an interactive installation that could respond to visitors’ questions and answers.
Nexus Studios used Nalla’s concept and developed it further to create an artistic experience that helped visualise the critical conversations happening regarding emerging technologies like AI and 5G. Nexus created a bespoke, interactive physical installation for Digital Catapult’s offices and a companion website, as well as crafting a set of beautiful, live data visualisations to represent these critical conversations. Each visualisation reflects real-time answers, Twitter responses and in-person polling.
“Our aim was to reflect the dynamic conversations around complex topics through data-driven visualisation that are both beautiful and meaningful. This is important — not just in an artistic sense but in what it holds for society.”
Colin Davis, Executive Producer, Interactive Arts at Nexus Studios