Lake Winnipeg Exhibit Nears Opening

It’s nearly here, the culmination of five years of thought, research, design work, programming, and development. Lake Winnipeg: Shared Solutions (LWSS) opens on World Water Day, Saturday, March 22, 2014. It’s been a long process, and I still have to pinch myself to realize that we actually built this thing. It’s amazing to work on a project that is mostly spreadsheets and line drawings for so long, and then in a few short weeks have it sprout up all around you like a grove of new trees.

You can get a sneak preview of the exhibit when CTV’s morning show visits on Thursday, March 20, and again on Friday the 21st when Global has their morning show at the Museum. Of course, the best way to see the exhibit is to come on down – as part of the Science Gallery’s permanent exhibits, LWSS is free for Museum Members and reasonably priced for everyone.

Today is Day One of the installation of the Science Gallery’s new exhibit, Lake Winnipeg: Shared Solutions! Lake Winnipeg is one of the most endangered lakes in the world, due to its huge watershed – water from four provinces and four U.S. states, from as far as the Rockies, flows into our Lake, carrying nutrients and pollution from cities, farms and industries. This state-of-the-art exhibit allows visitors to explore our local Great Lake and try to find solutions to this pressing problem. The exhibit features a high-tech lake simulator, the Watershed of the Future, which lets visitors take control of the decisions that affect the lake’s health. Do we improve the city’s sewer systems, or look for better ways to fertilize crops? You decide! The Watershed of the Future is based on information provided by dozens of scientists and industry experts, and shows not only the effect of your decisions on the Lake’s health, but also on the economy and the quality of life of Manitobans. The exhibit also features a live Lake Winnipeg ecosystem, natural history specimens, satellite imagery, and information on how you can do your part, at home or work, to help save our Lake.

We’ll be posting behind-the-scenes images and commentary as the exhibit is installed, so you can peek behind the curtain and see how the magic happens here at The Museum. The exhibit is scheduled to open on World Water Day, Saturday, March 22, 2014!

Things are shaping up – all of the computers and speakers are connected, and all eight touch screens are working. Basically, the simulator prototype is operational. Today will be spent installing the latest software updates and making sure everything is networked properly.

The first image below shows the simulator in “single-player mode” – this is our default experience, where a visitor can come up to the table and use any one of the eight touchscreens to have their own experience. A series of problems are available for you to examine, and each problem has three possible “projects” – these are different ways to address the problem. Each potential project will affect the health of the Lake, and also carry an economic and social cost or benefit. As you make choices, you are shown the results of each choice and warned if you are reaching a critical point.

In single-player mode, everything you do feeds your own version of the Lake, and so your results won’t depend on any other people at the table. It’s a great way to explore some of the issues facing the health of Lake Winnipeg. The central projection surface is used to show various lake images, and also when a big event like a storm or flood occurs – these events hit every player at the table, although your results will depend on what you have done in the game so far.

The simulator also has a “multi-player mode” – we’ll be using this when we have school groups booked, or when we can have a program leader interpreting the exhibit. In this case, all eight screens feed a single model of the Lake shown using the central projection, and so the results depend not only on what you do, but what others at the table do as well. The program leader can encourage discussion and debate, and just like in real life, good results depend on everyone working together.

In multiplayer mode, there is also a new feature we’re calling “polls”. Some issues are too broad to be narrowed down into projects, and these show up in multi-player mode as a question on the main projection surface. Everyone is asked to vote on a given poll issue, and the majority vote determines which option is fed into the model. Again, having a program leader present can help spark debate and discussion, leading to informed voting and a deeper understanding of the issues.

Once the simulator is installed, we will be running it through testing to make sure it works as intended, and also to make sure it is fun to play. If you are interested in volunteering as a tester, contact me at scyoung@manitobamuseum.ca and I’ll provide more information. This is a volunteer opportunity, but you can help us make this important exhibit the best it can be!

Day Two of the Lake Winnipeg: Shared Solutions simulator installation, and we have first light from the projection system! The simulator comprises a table with eight individual touch-screens, surrounding a large projected image covering the table. In regular mode, visitors can take control of their own version of the Lake at each station, without being affected by what other visitors do. Big shared events like floods and storms will show up on the central projection, and affect everyone at the same time.

We can also run the experience for a group, where all eight stations are playing in the same Lake. All of their choices will feed into a central lake, and the effects will be displayed using the central projection screen. The “score” is depicted using a green algal bloom. The bigger the algal blob, the worse the health of the Lake.

The second image shared here shows the unfocused, rough, first image from the projector onto the table. The green blob is the algae. None of the touch screens are active yet, but when they are connected, they will form a seamless part of the image.

It’s been a while since I have updated this blog, because I have been working on the next big exhibit for the Science Gallery. “Lake Winnipeg: Shared Solutions” is scheduled to open in March 2014, but a big piece of it is being installed this week so we can do on-site testing and evaluation of the prototype. The exhibit addresses the health of Lake Winnipeg and what feeds into that (complicated) issue.

The exhibit is a partnership between The Manitoba Museum and the International Institute for Sustainable Development, with support from a diverse group of stakeholders. The completed exhibit will have images, text panels, a live aquarium, and insect and plant specimens, but the centrepiece is the Watershed of the Future simulator. Basically, we have built the Lake Winnipeg Watershed in a computer, and visitors will be able to become Lake Stewards, controlling all of the decisions in Manitoba that impact the health of the lake. It’s a hugely complicated piece of exhibitry, with eight touch screens, a giant projector table, and a rack of computers, running custom software developed in concert with a huge group of experts and stakeholders from around the province. To make sure we have gotten it right, and also that it is a fun experience for the average person, the simulator is being installed this week, and we’ll be opening it up for testing over the coming month so we can refine the experience.

This is the first time we’ve been able to do a “Beta” test of an exhibit like this. It’s a great way to make sure the exhibit works properly, but also allows us to refine things like the timing of the experience, clarity of instructions, and complexity of the experience. We’ve spent a long time making this as accurate an exhibit as we can; now we want to make sure it is also as fun and interesting as it can be.

The Alpha version of the Watershed of the Future simulator in the workshop in Vancouver.

I’ll be posting more about Lake Winnipeg Shared Solutions in the coming weeks as the exhibit is installed and testing continues. We’ll be bringing in the experts and stakeholders who helped develop the simulator, but we’re also interested in feedback from the Museum’s regular visitors: school groups and the general public. If you’d like to be a part of our testing process, drop me an email and we’ll hook you up.

Did you know that one of the most successful small rocket programs in the world is run from right here in Winnipeg? Magellan Aerospace (formerly Bristol Aerospace) builds the Black Brant series of sounding rockets for customers around the world. Payloads launched by Black Brants have been studying the upper atmosphere and near-space environment for over 50 years, and have even been launched from right here in Manitoba (at the Churchill Rocket Range on the northern coast of Manitoba). So it’s no surprise that we’ve always wanted a real rocket for the Science Gallery. Well, now we have one!

If you’re like me, we probably look back on your elementary school days with a mixture of nostalgia and dread. Yes, your hair really was that bad back then! However, there were likely some standout moments as well. For me, it was the annual science fair – the time of the year it was OK to be a science geek. I remember the brainstorming for topics, the hand-lettered backboards with pencil crayon drawings, the obligatory volcano and solar system model made of Styrofoam balls. For me, the science fair led me to a career in science communication – now I have a nicer backboard and better pencil crayons, but essentially I get to do science fairs every day!