TRACES: story of a nation
Applied thesis project for MA in Exhibition and Experience Design at FIT in New York City
Concept development · Data visualization · Drawings · Exhibition design · Experience design · Graphic design · Visualization
Traces: story of a nation is a physical translation of Your Story Our Story, an online initiative by The Tenement Museum. This project invites users to share their personal stories of immigration, migration, and cultural identity through objects and traditions. Each unique story reveals one individual’s experience, and as a whole, they shape the country and the patterns that bind us together.
After defining the project goals and carefully curating the objects-stories from the Your Story, Our Story platform, the exhibition organically became a celebration of the diversity and uniqueness of America’s social fabric. The stories told through the objects respond to archetypes of love, failure, triumph, loss, and rebirth, with immigration as the common thread. This perspective enables the audience to relate to those behind the stories in order to facilitate a feeling of empathy. The exhibition will address the experiences of the immigrants through the different phases they encounter in their physical and personal journey. From leaving their place of origin to the moment they reconcile their identity to become part of a new community. This will be achieved through the display of objects and the personal stories tied to them, and the use of musical elements throughout the exhibition.
The exhibition venue is City Hall Park, a public park surrounding New York City Hall located in the Civic Center of Manhattan. Some of the public buildings located around the park are the New York Supreme Court, the Jacob K. Javits Federal Building, and the building of the Department of Citywide Administrative Services. In addition, there are tourist attractions adjacent to the park, such as the Brooklyn Bridge, the Woolworth Building, and the African Burial Ground National Monument. City Hall Park plays a key role in New York’s civic life with a long history of gatherings, rallies, and public events. Most recently, it became one of the main gathering spots during the George Floyd protests, turning into an encampment for a couple of weeks during the summer.
The experience is clearly divided into beginning, climax, and resolution, and the tempo of the accompanying music changes throughout these areas. The change in tempo purposely varies the pace of the visitors and the level of emotional engagement as desired. A slower pace at the beginning and the final areas for a reflective state from the visitor, and a faster pace in the climax for a more impactful reaction. Music has long been overlooked as an interpretive tool in the design of exhibitions, but it could certainly benefit the experience of the audience by slowing them down and fostering a deeper engagement with the content. I explored a more qualitative way to experience an exhibition on immigration that will spark a new appreciation and personal connections by influencing the pace of visitors and their emotional impact with the use of music.
