Artifact Interactives

Through four small screens, visitors at the Changing the Face of Medicine exhibition can interact with 3-D reconstructions of artifacts to reveal their inner workings. Visitors twirl panoramic image sequences of an artifact to view it from every side, or use sliders to compare items. The simple interfaces have an immediacy that helps visitors connect more directly with items that on their own might at first elude understanding. A sphygmograph, for example, is reconstructed in 3-D and animated to show how the enigmatic device captured a patient’s pulse: visitors can rotate the animated scene to explore every angle and intuitively understand how it worked.