You-Know-What

“The Experience Design Group powers your brain”

After the annual Nobel gala dinner there’s an afterparty hosted by students from Stockholm’s universities. In late 2009 the Experience Design Group was asked by the organising committee at Karolinska Institutet to craft an experience honouring the Nobel laureates. We interpreted and re-negotiated the brief — originally, to make visual portraits of the laureates — and, after researching their achievements and designing experiences in line with them, decided to give every attendee a “brain”.

The evening started on the buses from the gala dinner to the nightcap: random guests on every bus burst into “If I Only Had a Brain”, leaving fellow guests amused, confused, and curious about what might happen once they arrived. On checking their coats, each guest received their individual brain. It could be charged with knowledge at stations around the venue — one had written quotes projected inside a picture frame on the wall, one was a whispering station, and so on. Every time a guest used their brain, a circular projected neural-network visualisation in the ballroom responded; as the evening progressed, the network reflected the accumulated activity in the room.

Another of the experiences was Telomere cookies — chromosome-shaped, dipped in differently flavoured frostings, wrapped and presented on a wall. Unwrap one and it would reveal what you might look like at a different age.

The following year I returned in a coordinating role: nine months with my Konstfack colleague Prang L and the Nobel NightCap committee, scoping and writing the brief for the 2010 edition, then handing the project off to the first-year EDG students and running a workshop with them and students from the Stockholm School of Economics.

Done with the Experience Design Group at Konstfack, part-time, for about eight weeks. My role: co-designing the event and figuring out the RFID solution for the brain stations and the network.