Behavior Develops Kirchner's Exhibition Web Site and Sketchbook Kiosk for the MoMA
September 7, 2008 | Levent OZLER
Behavior Design once again reunites with The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA),New York, to create the online companion piece and interactive touch screen kiosks for their latest exhibition, Kirchner and the Berlin Street. The show brings together German expressionist painter Ernst Ludwig Kirchner's renowned Street Scenes series with 60 related prints and drawings.
The Kirchner project is the third major initiative Behavior Design has undertaken for MoMA, contributing the interactive components for both, Georges Seurat: The Drawings and Beyond the Visible, and The Art of Odilon Redon. This latest collaboration addresses the growing contribution of digital media to viewing and experiencing art.
Behavior used the Kirchner project to expand their ongoing initiatives to innovatively integrate technology with art and worked closely with the MoMA team to develop inspired concepts and solutions. Originally schooled in architecture, Kirchner rebelled and evolved his painting style through erratic and energetic compositions. These contradictions carry into the site's design themes. From the playful typographic scale and color relationships, to the juxtaposition and comparisons of form and details, the site reaches in and taps into the idiosyncracies of Kirchner himself, bringing his expressions to life.
Behavior sets the thematic tone by contextually super-imposing one of Kirchner's masterful color paintings over a faded image of a busy Berlin street corner. The homepage reel parades and magnifies all seven paintings, introducing visitors to the urban frenzy so expressively captured by Kirchner on the eve of World War I.
Behavior used Flash action-scripting and XML to enable visitors to survey and contrast works within a flexible and dynamic platform. The three primary sections of the site are organized to articulate a chronological context from which to consider - not just the paintings - but how they evolved within the mind of Kirchner from ideas, perceptions, and sketches into masterpieces. Setting the Stage is a biographical peek into the artist's major life events, while Cities, Nudes, and Dancers explore Kirchner's very real passion for studying competing forms. Lastly, Street Scenes presents and compares the seven master paintings together with related sketches, studies, and works.
The site's design concepts employ slender rectilinear shapes, mimicking the tall and slight forms depicted in Kirchner's work. These subtle and reserved design parallels - inspired by street themes - achieve a balance between simplicity and sophistication. The goal is to provide engaging utility while providing an elegant backdrop for Kirchner's art to speak for itself.
Much like MoMA's on-site exhibition, Street Scenes offers a means of comparing the paintings with related works, allowing visitors to choose what to survey side-by-side. The feature's goal is to engage visitors in a kind of dialogue with Kirchner; the on-site kiosk also adheres to this objective.
MoMA exhibition goers can expect to get an even closer look into Kirchner's sketchbooks by means of the touch screen kiosk. Behavior unveils three of Kirchner's sketchbooks through a graceful digital page-turning feature, allowing guests a page-by-page exploration of an otherwise inaccessible treasure.
"The exhibition site and kiosk hope to offer an exclusive glimpse into the subjects and energies of Kirchner's Berlin," comments Ralph Lucci, Principal and Creative Director at Behavior Design. "Chaotic sketches and strolling street scenes are at once connected, through inspiration and execution. Behavior and MoMA became highly engaged in expressing the essence of these concepts within the ambitions of digital media" says Lucci.
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