The Horse Museum

About the project

The task

Under the concept, the museum is meant for a broad public — VDNKh visitors, school and tourist groups, equestrian professionals — and interactivity was to be at its core. Each zone needed its own way of interacting: here a screen, there a projection, elsewhere an object you pick up. The museum also had to grow without developers: staff add new facts, photos and videos themselves.

What we did

Evolution of the horse

A panoramic projection with a video on the evolution of the horse — an intro and the main narrative with a narrator; a button on a stand starts it and selects the language. Next to it, a touch screen built into a “stone” shows the evolutionary tree: the visitor chooses one of the ancestors — Eohippus, Mesohippus, Merychippus, Pliohippus — or the modern horse and compares them.

In “Gaits”, the wall shows the walk, trot, pace and gallop with the average speed of each. In the centre is a screen with a quiz: the visitor listens to a gait through headphones and identifies it from an animation.

Breed groups

A wall with a printed world map: markers are projected onto it, and a touch launches an animation about a breed; several people can touch the wall at once. A touch screen with a two-level classification of breeds — a section, then a breed with photos, video, text and infographics. “Three breeds” is a transparent touch screen in front of a niche with sculptures of an Akhal-Teke, an Arabian and an English Thoroughbred: the sculptures are visible through the screen, with facts about the breeds displayed over them.

Biology of the horse

A touch console in front of a projection: the visitor chooses a topic on an image of a horse — the sense organs, breathing, circulation, movement and others — and an animation with sound starts on the wall.

The workshop

The “Horse tack” projection surrounds a real bridle, saddle and stirrup on the wall. In “Professions in the world of horses”, the tools of a vet, a blacksmith, a farrier and a saddler lie on a workbench with marker hints: the visitor touches a tool, and a video about the work of that craftsman starts on the screen.

Photo gallery

In the passage between the halls, the sound of a herd that every now and then thunders past the visitors.

Cavalry through the ages

A projection about the horse as a companion of man in battle: an intro and the main film, started in the chosen language with a button on a stand.

The horse in art

A projection onto frames on the wall: paintings with horses arranged by era along a timeline, with the title, artist and year. The paintings are shown in two sessions that alternate in a loop.

National traditions and equestrian sport

A mirror: the visitor places a palm on the handprint next to it, and a story about equestrian traditions begins on the mirror. Two screens with cups: a cup is placed in a socket on the stand, and the screen tells the story of the sport for which that cup was awarded. A touch screen on equestrian sports, horse trials and Soviet records.

World riding schools

A projection room about five schools: the Cadre Noir in Saumur, the Spanish Riding School in Vienna, the Royal Andalusian School of Equestrian Art in Jerez de la Frontera, the Portuguese School of Equestrian Art in Lisbon and the Kremlin Riding School. A school is chosen by turning a model built into the table.

Photo zone

The visitor starts the shoot on a console, sees themselves projected into a field next to a horse, the camera takes pictures, and a QR code appears on the screen for downloading the photo to a phone.

Reception

A screen with a map and a description of the museum’s zones. For the self-service ticket kiosk we did only the design.

How it is built

All applications get their materials through a shared API from the content management system and keep a local copy. We packaged the system — the database, the API and the staff interface — into a container and deployed it on a server.

The interactive features are tied to objects: RFID tags in the cups, a palm reader at the mirror, touch sensors in the workshop tools, a rotating model in the table, a camera in the photo zone.

The transparent touch screen in “Three breeds”: white on it is transparent, so the sculpture in the niche can be seen through the interface.

The language — Russian or English — is chosen with physical buttons on the stands and walls or in the touch-screen interface.

Result