Sacramento Children's Museum Projects
Sacramento Children's Museum Projects from Marthe Aston
Sacramento Children's Museum Projects

Here we have three projects for the Children's Museum.
Story Factory is a performance stage for developing stories.
As a “factory”, this installation is made up of industrial materials which children might not usually have contact with: rivets, bolts, steel, structural beams, resin, plywood, etc.
Local agricultural buildings are referenced, which children see all the time. Just as objects are thrown around these industrial settings, each activity is “strewn” around the stage, and referenced by one of the museum’s brand
colors.
Spinning wheels randomly choose character, setting and action; the backdrop changes by a crank; kids can add their own title to the marquee; they can perform stories with puppets; or dress up and act out their story. Inspiration comes from the colorful graffiti art, since a main requirement was that every letter of the alphabet had to be on the exhibit. Lower letters are of various touchable materials.

Floor Plan
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Section
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Section
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Front Elevation
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View into Dress-up area
Augmented Reality Sandbox is a virtual hands-on exhibit that focuses on geography and topography. It needs a darker area for its video projection, so I created a tranlucent box with a topographic line representing what can be found inside. Since it has to be built on an extremely tight budget, the parts are designed as components that can be easily constructed. Inside, children play in a sandbox, where an immediate virtual topographic map is projected on the shapes they create. Holding their hand at a certain level creates "rain" that flows through their created landscape. The UC Davis WM Keck Center for Active Visualization in the Earth Sciences (KeckCAVES) developed the system as an open source educational tool.
Augmented Reality Sandbox
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During Construction
Little Free Library - it must be wheeled outside everyday, hold up in all weather, be noticeable, and represent the Sacramento locality. So, took a local element, the valley oak, as the basic element (with a little floating tree-house).
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Sacramento Children's Museum Projects

Here we have three projects for the Children's Museum.
Story Factory is a performance stage for developing stories.
As a “factory”, this installation is made up of industrial materials which children might not usually have contact with: rivets, bolts, steel, structural beams, resin, plywood, etc.
Local agricultural buildings are referenced, which children see all the time. Just as objects are thrown around these industrial settings, each activity is “strewn” around the stage, and referenced by one of the museum’s brand
colors.
Spinning wheels randomly choose character, setting and action; the backdrop changes by a crank; kids can add their own title to the marquee; they can perform stories with puppets; or dress up and act out their story. Inspiration comes from the colorful graffiti art, since a main requirement was that every letter of the alphabet had to be on the exhibit. Lower letters are of various touchable materials.

Marthe Aston
New Braunfels, TX