'Wizard of Oz' prototyping of the interaction design
Havis Amanda, an Art Nouveau statue sculpted by Ville Vallgren and situated nearby Helsinki’s old market, is annually crowned with an over-sized hat by Finnish students during the Finnish spring festival ‘Vappu’. For the Havis Amanda- Mon Amour group exhibition, celebrating the 100 year anniversery of the statue, the Helsinki City Museum asked us to create an installation though which visitors could experience crowning the statue and learn about its history.
We created an interactive video installation, in which museum visitors could watch archive film material of the statue and its surroundings triggered by crowning a virtual statue with a paper hat. A static image of Havis Amanda was projected on top of film footage, and by moving a paper postcard shaped like a traditional student hat in front of a projection of the Havis Amanda statue, the video footage changed, showing people gathering around the statue. When a museum visitor moved the postcard onto the head of the projected statue, the crowning ceremony film footage started.
Here is the PDF of our project report: Havis Amanda Documentation
The installation was exhibited at Jugendsali, Helsinki from May 1-31, 2008.
Programming and interaction design: Anna Keune, Kristine Visanen, Abhigyan Singh
Video editing: Suvi Kitunen, Juha Kronqvist, Mikko Pykäri
Exhibition set up: Aleksi Hyvönen, Sonja Krogius
Project leader: Lily Diaz