The Mixing Room–Te Papa

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Last week when I was down in Wellington for the ONYAs (Congratulations Keith!) I visited Te Papa to see The Mixing Room exhibition telling the stories of young refugees in New Zealand running from the 10th April 2010-2013.

For me this is the rewarding part of being a technology evangelist. This story started two years ago when I was building a demo for the WEB09 keynote in Auckland. The demo I gave inspired Te Papa’s interactive developer Tim Tait to attend a 3 1/2 Silverlight camp that I’d organised for Wellington. This lead to Tim learning Silverlight and making the following comment on his blog:

Before this week I had hardly touched Silverlight and now I don’t think I can live without it. Even though Silverlight is very different from Flash, I think having that Flash background let me pick it up fairly quickly.

Tim followed this training with his first Silverlight exhibition celebrating Kura Pounamu the Treasured stone of Aotearoa New Zealand (video). This lead to Tim’s latest exhibition:

The Mixing Room mosaic is projected 6 metres high within the exhibition and is made up of thousands of photographs taken of and by young refugees that have participated in The Mixing Room project. It will be updated throughout the duration of the exhibition. So why don’t you contribute?

Here is a video I shot as I experienced the exhibition. The stories are moving and the space draws you into the experiences of our newest New Zealanders.

Experience the online version of the mosaic:

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Related:

Once again great work Tim and Te Papa.