Pokot Lens

Experience Design

Partnered with the American Natural History Museum in New York City to explore how to "decolonize" the existing “Man in Africa” Hall, which opened to the public in 1968. 

Art Center Spring 2022

Team: Leeann Wei, Serafina Yu, Hongming Li

Overview

Our project is adding into the Pokot Diorama experience by bringing the flat diorama to life through the addition of two side screens as well as a projection and audio experience. We are focusing on showing the blend of technology and social media and how it can add new experiences to the diorama. 

POV

African people have continued to show that tradition and technology can coexist alongside one another and go hand-in-hand on a daily basis. Social media and the internet have allowed and provided deeper first person connections that move these static objects beyond the eyes.

Design Purposal

Co-Curated Experience

We would like to create co-curated content with the famous Pokot athlete Tegla Loroupe as well as the Pokot Community Center to show their own perspectives about Pokot today. 

AMNH Exhibit Case

The case study diorama that we chose in the African People Hall of the American Museum of Natural History, was the Pokot Diorama the reason we chose this diorama is through our research we learned that there is so much more than what is being shown. 

Design

Left Screen Visualization

The left screen will be a special social media data visualization that is co-curated with the Pokot Community Center and Tegla Loroupe. Through co-curation context, it will allow a specially curated feed that will not have to worry about visitors filtering information themselves and whoever upload unverified information to be seen, in order to maintain the specificity and authenticity. 

Main Diorama

As we are co-curating this project with the Pokot Community and Tegla Loroupe we would like to have the script for the experience be written alongside with them. The buttons at the bottom control the narration that is being shown in the main diorama. 
The diorama hasn’t been touched since the hall first opened in 1968 and we believe that bringing these static moments to life through narration is a way to decolonize these from just being objects displayed in a museum.

Right Screen Tiktok

There will also be a specially curated feed with #PokotFYP that Pokot people have uploaded, we decided to do this because TikTok is an app that many people of all ages are familiar with.

Physical Prototypes

Final Render