The Museum of Natural History Vienna, together with the Ars Electronica Futurelab and INSEQ Design, has developed a new platform for science communication. With the aim of awakening researcher’s instinct in visitors and enabling the general public to participate more closely in the scientific processes Deck 50 invites people to find an individual and experimental approach to knowledge and research. By means of Citizen Science, and through their active participation in the research-process, museum visitors are thus able to experience the connection between science and society. The digital information system thus becomes a contact point for a wide variety of target groups and a hub for scientific innovation: a publicly accessible laboratory with workshop boxes and microscopes and a versatile encounter zone with interactive research stations and a screen for immersive projections serve as a stage for science and platform for interaction.
Katrin Vohland, Director General of the Natural History Museum Vienna, Iris Ott, Head of the Department for Science Communication and head of the project Deck 50, talk about the importance of innovative methods in science communication, the new Deck 50 and Citizen Science at the Natural History Museum Vienna. Also interviewed were the research assistants Karina Grömer, Vera Hammer, Andreas Kroh, Frank Zachos, as well as Jakob Illera, exhibition architect from INSEQ Design, and Marianne Eisl, Stefan Mittlböck-Jungwirth-Fohringer and Johannes Pöll, from the Deck 50 project team of the Ars Electronica Futurelab. Read more about the project on the Ars Electronica blog.