Connect Worlds is an immersive, interactive ecosystem promoting whole system thinking

Presented in the museum's iconic Great Hall, Connected Worlds immerses visitors in a fantastical animated world where your actions (gestures, movements, and decisions) impact how well the world is kept in balance.  The project is “designed to encourage a systems thinking approach to sustainability where local actions in one environment may have global consequences,” say the team at Design I/O, the exhibition’s creators.

There are six ecosystems within the exhibition: jungle, desert, wetlands, mountain valley, reservoir, and plains. Each has its own trees, plants, and animals, but they share a common supply of water.  The ecosystems are fed by a central waterfall that is projected 38-ft high in the exhibitions and flows out across an interactive floor that spans 2,300 square feet.  

Visitors work with a fixed amount of water in the system and have to work together to manage and distribute the water across the different environments. Clouds return water from the environments to the waterfall which releases water to the floor when it rains. As the different environments bloom, creatures appear based on the health of the environment and the type of plants growing in it. If multiple environments are healthy, creatures will migrate between them causing interesting chain reactions of behaviours.

Museums worldwide are in the process of integrating technology into their existing layouts. In our Museum 2.0 Observation, we speak to some of the world's most exciting curators about what tomorrow's museums will look like.