Listen! Play! Make Music! was a temporary exhibition at Experimenta Heilbronn, a science centre for children. Working at Space 4 as a freelancer, I had the pleasure to design this exhibition as well as to give support throughout the planning process. The brief was to create a playful and educational environment, where visitors could explore how we perceive, generate and transform  sounds. The experimental instruments were made by renowned artist Michael Bradke.

The two storey exhibition space was transformed into a walk-in comic strip, where children were encouraged to act like the little heroes in this story of sound and music.

The ground floor featured softer tones and language that was clear and formal, but still inspirational. Here, the children could experiment with the sounds generated by simple materials such as metal, stone or glass. They could hear for themselves how things chimed, tingled, clanged or rang if they hit, bumped, stroke or blew on them.

On the first floor, the little visitors could compose music by jumping on the disco carpet, or by shining a light onto a surface. They could even change their voices into monster speech. In another area, they could experience how electronics transformed, distorted, muffled and reconstructed familiar sounds – taking the children into new worlds. Upstairs, the design was particularly bright, an explosion of vivid colours and shapes.

TEAM:  Franziska Schmidt, Angelika Vogel, Katarzyna Bodziak under the lead of Space 4.