Did COVID kill the Instagram Museum?

Instagram museums have been the hottest retail space renovation trend in the past few years, like the Ice Cream Museum in San Francisco or the Cali Dreams Museum in Germany. These interactive playgrounds relied heavily on shared surfaces, appealing to our senses of touch with ball pits, swings and other art pieces you were encouraged to interact with. They also relied on shared spaces and seemed like an antidote to the distance many of us thought we felt before COVID. Now we know better.

Photo by @Joshstyle

Like everything else in the world, they have been shut down by COVID and many are unsure of how or if they will be able to reopen and operate.

So we have to ask.

Is the Instagram Museum dead?

No.

But there needs to be a lot of changes made.

Looking back on our own project with Bayshore Mall, we were tasked with creating an Instagram Museum style installation that would attract people to interact with the installation without much touch involved. It was different than jumping in a ball pit together, a little less frivolous and a lot more elegant. Little did we know how handy this might come in the future.

Our focus for photo activations has now turned to creating interactive pieces that can be triggered and enjoyed with minimal touch and appropriate distancing.

AR FILTERS INSTALLATION

We built a beautiful touch free zone before anyone had heard of COVID. Nothing more than a happy accident, it turns out to be a model for how other companies can transform their Instagram museum spaces moving forward.

Using custom AR (Augmented Reality) filters, people are transformed into a 2D black and white drawing in real-time. The large TV space provides real-time movement tracking and a small camera is used to capture the feed. There is no triggering involved and people are encouraged to take their own photos to share their experience.

SHADOW PAINTING INSTALLATION

A little science and some strong lights makes for a fun interactive shadow game. This is another area where touch is minimized. When initially looking at the space, the light looks white but when you walk in front of the suspended light beams, your rainbow shadow is revealed.

Another variation of this is to position the lights as individual spotlights as pictured below, providing a different effect to the installations and allowing for variety and distanced spaces.

2D CAFE INSTALLATION

Having a live Starbucks cafe allowed for some great photo ops when creating an immersive art installation. The entire cafe was transformed into a 2D black and white hand-drawn art piece. Guests can interact with the tables and chairs that are hand-painted to resemble a 2D drawing. These tables are further apart than they were before, but we look forward to the day that they can be pushed together again.

STEREOGRAM INTERACTIVE ART

Illusion art brings back some retro fun to the installation with the use of stereograms. You may remember them as MagicEye™️. These pieces of art might look like random patterns but look at them long enough and you will find a hidden image. The images created were in line with the season and could easily be changed as needed. Depending on just how distanced people will need to be, other museums might look to include plexiglass barriers or just remove the amount of stereograms they have up at once.

TOUCHLESS PHOTO BOOTH

The setting of this installation was Bayshore, a retail mall in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. The photo booth component was a digital photo with custom designed digital props to allow guests to try out some “Paper Doll Style” outfits. The decor from around the booth made the booth feel like a fitting room so as not to break the immersion of the wall. With innovations to technology, photo booths are able to go touch-less in many scenarios. This enclosed space also offers guests the opportunity to take a photo alongside people with whom they share a space in daily life, such as a spouse or a child. No distancing required! Of course, additional sanitizing is taking place, and that’s honestly something we wouldn’t mind seeing continue when the vaccine arrives.

TRADITIONAL PHOTO OPS

With all of the technology focused features, sometimes a beautiful backdrop gets overlooked. After all, the first Instagram museum was probably the Golden Gate Bridge, or the Eiffel Tower, right? These traditional photo op spaces give guests the chance to take beautiful photos even if they’re a little wary of technology.

We know Instagram museums will come back. Social media has been the way we’ve stayed in touch with people during lockdowns, and returning to physical spaces with beautiful photos will be in even higher demand than it was before. But until we can return to a “normal life” , they will need to evolve. There are solutions available on small and large scale, and MDRN is here to help, along with our partners are Bayshore and Blackbook.