Your Hidden Archive
Your Hidden Archive is an interactive tooth sculpture that allows users to share their life and meaningful experiences with one another. The sculpture is designed to be displayed in a museum exhibition setting, with a projection mapping system that showcase stories from iPad.
Team:
Bosung Kim, Eric Cheng and An-Kai Cheng
Roles in the project: Fabrication, Animations, Character Design,
How might we create a learning experience for users that is both enjoyable and educational?
Background
For this project, we collaborated with Dr. Paola Cerrito, she focuses on the understanding of life history evolution within the genus Homo and on the evolution of menopause.
Her research “Parturitions, menopause and other physiological stressors are recorded in dental cementum microstructure” explains that by observing and looking at the peeled tooth layers or “tooth rings” can find evidence of medical history, biological history, and serious personal events in an individual’s life.
Research & Ideation
We started by incorporating key ideas of her research: in nature, many things undergo layering as a result of an accumulation over time. This dynamic growth appears in different living creatures, providing insight into their history and undergoing layering due to an accumulation over time. Teeth are not classified as bones but are considered as dynamic skeletons and living organs that respond to the environment and continue to change throughout one's life. As a result, teeth serve as a biological archive of an individual's life experiences, and this record looks the same across all individuals.
Moreover, teeth from various species, including humans, have the ability to preserve information or evidence over time, similar to an archival process. This means that teeth can retain clues or information about a person or animal's health, diet, and environment, which can be studied and analyzed by scientists and researchers to gain insights into the past.
Following feedback on our ideas, we settled on creating an interactive experience that enables individuals to share their experiences through a tangible sculpture and a corresponding projection. Through this experience, users will gain insight into how cementum layers accumulate over time by exchanging their stories with one another as well as delivers important facts of Dr. Cerrito’s research.
Development
︎Fabrication
Final Product