E5.1: Mood Boosting Museum Artifacts with Latoya Flowers

Full Interview with Latoya Flowers

Mood Boosting Museum Artifacts

Name: Latoya Flowers

Role(s): Senior Multimedia Creative at The Field Museum, Documentary Filmmaker, Multimedia Producer, Photographer and Projection Mapping Artist

Where to find her work: The Field Museum and latoyacharisseflowers.com 

Latoya’s documentary film, Still Searching, was selected for the Hulu Kartemquin Accelerator Program, and she also received a Still I Rise Films Fellowship. Make sure you watch Latoya’s TEDx QuincyStudio Talk with Still Searching’s inspiring artist Damon Lamar Reed. 

CreativeStack’s Kirsten Nelson spoke with Latoya Flowers about the narrative and media design of the Wild Color exhibition at the Field Museum in Chicago. 

Kirsten Nelson: In late 2020, when the Field Museum was planning a major new exhibit to welcome visitors back in the fall of 2021, what experience or mood was central to your design? 

Latoya Flowers: For “Wild Color” we wanted to create an exciting experience for our visitors and showcase our collection of different colorful species. We started with design and multimedia experiences to set the mood and tone. We knew we wanted to get creative with lighting, sound, media and projection mapping to bring those experiences to life. 

KN: It looks like the result is an exhibit that lifts people's spirits, just as you described when we first talked about this project. That must feel good. 

LF: Yes, it does. We did an evaluation of the exhibit as a team, about our challenges, what we want to do differently next time, and how did this process differ from our past processes? 

And what stood out to me was, this exhibit is something that we had to put together really fast. We only had a year to produce it. 

And you know, my exhibit director, he really stressed that this is something that was needed for the museum. Because we were still in the pandemic when we were planning it, but we were fully reopening when it was going to come out. 

At that point, we'd be at full capacity, and we wanted something for visitors to just be excited about when they come to the museum — to experience something different. To really enjoy our collection and see it up close. A lot of these artifacts and objects and species that haven't been on display, people get to see them for the first time and then really learn how nature and color are so intertwined with each other. So that was the point of making “Wild Color,” to really show off our amazing collections that we're known for. 

KN: I remember you also mentioned you were doing a lot with the sound elements of the exhibit, too. 

LF: Yeah. When we were coming up with the idea of “Wild Color,” it wasn't only showing off the collections, we were trying to figure out what other things we could do with the design. We wanted to have different color areas on the rainbow spectrum, with a Red Room, Orange Room, Yellow Room and so on. 

Then we started thinking about the layer of media, how would that be used throughout? 

And so one of the ideas I had was to use soundscapes associated with the color in each room. If you walk into yellow, it would sound really happy and cheery. Blue is very deep and melodic. Purple is very electric. Orange is also very energetic. So we tried to create that through soundscapes — we work with a music composer, Joshua Beck. I’ve worked with him on a few other exhibits. Collaborating with him is always awesome. 

We brainstormed what sounds came to mind when we thought of specific colors. And then he took it from there and just created these sound beds with a variety of sounds that we could listen to and choose from.

Then once we installed it in the hall, we were able to test the levels to see how the sound bleed will translate from one space to the other. And surprisingly our sounds blended very nicely. Once you were in the red and then you went into orange, you can hear the difference, but it wasn't overpowering. But it was enough to make you feel like, OK, what's happening over there? 

So, yeah, I'm really happy with the soundscapes. It was really creative and I feel like it adds that extra layer of immersive excitement to the space. 

KN: Yeah, it sounds almost like it adds to the narrative pull of the exhibit, like if you start to hear yellow and how energetic it is, you’re probably moving toward it. 

LF: Yeah, and each one is so different. Yellow is so happy and cheery and you hear some insects. But then green is completely atmospheric. You’re just hearing birds. And you can see the green gallery, so it is like a pull. It helps guide you through each space. You know, where you don't feel like you’re stuck in one space too long, because you’re looking over and you hear what's happening over there, and it’s like, can I get a peep of that? And they can see it because we didn't use a lot of solid walls like we do in some of our galleries. You can see into the next one a little bit. So we use sound to help drive you through the space. 

KN: In your creative process of working with the sound designer, it sounds like those feelings and ideas also play into the visual elements.

LF: Yeah. One thing we did for our final gallery, which shows different kinds of colors, like black and white, iridescent and some others, we decided to take all of the sounds you heard from red up through purple, and then we put it into one track. So as you're leaving, you're starting to rehear some of those sounds that you heard earlier on, but it's in more of a musical track, which is really cool.

KN: Does the sound play randomly or is it a track that’s on a loop? 

LF: It’s a track that’s on a loop, but it’s on a very long loop, like nine minutes. We stretched it out so that it doesn't feel too redundant. The good thing about these galleries is that they're not really huge in size, and there aren’t a ton of objects in each one, so it's not a space that you're going to spend much time in. Maybe two to three minutes tops, and then you moving on to the next space. 

KN: It sounds like each room creates a pretty big impression — can you describe the narrative arc that was created for the exhibit? How does the experience progress and build through all the colors? I think you mentioned that Blue was going to be a big moment.

LF: Blue is the biggest room, and it has the biggest media piece in that space. But at the start of the exhibit, once you walk through the door, you're seeing a lot of different animal objects. And the first media piece you would see is the yellow butterflies in the yellow room. But first you have to go from red to orange. Orange is one of the smaller galleries. There are some different gems in there and fish and other little things. But then once you get the yellow, you see these big, ginormous projected butterflies you can take a picture with. Then you go into green, and green is no media, just lighting effects, using gobos to do leaf patterns on the floor, and different leaf objects that you can check out. And then it's this ginormous projection in the blue space.

So yeah, it's a really good, gradual build up. And we did that on purpose, because we didn't want it to feel like each room had to have a big media piece. And that's what we used sound and photo ops and different multimedia to really round out the experience, so that each room felt different. 

KN: The pacing sounds really good. Green is a good little refresh moment, it fits right into the narrative. 

LF: It’s also like a very small gallery, like the size of orange. There’s some really cool objects in there, but you really flow through pretty quickly. That was intentional, because we knew all the galleries weren't going to be the same size. That was one of my ideas —  if all the galleries are not the same size, it doesn't make sense to put a media piece in every single gallery. It makes sense to let one gallery just have sound effects, or let one gallery be sound effects with lighting effects. Or let another gallery be the large media piece, but then we go back to lighting effects and just sound, you know, switching it up for every space so that they all don't feel the same. And you don't know what to expect when you get to the next room.

KN: A surprise around every corner, I like it. About the photo ops, do people just expect that now? People want them, right?

LF: Not necessarily at the Field Museum. We don't we don't really do photo ops. The only area where I can remember where we intentionally put a photo op was for SUE [the Tyrannosaurus Rex exhibit]. We positioned SUE in a certain way so that it would become a photo op for people. 

That's not something we usually do for exhibits. But for this exhibit, because it was more playful and just more about exploring color and wildlife, we decided to have the butterfly projection photo op. And we wanted to add something for adults and kids to interact with. 

KN: Yeah, you become the butterfly. I saw the images — for big kids and little kids, different sizes.

LF: We have that big mural wall with the plants, and for one butterfly, we scaled it up for an adult size. And then next to it is one that’s scaled down for a child’s size. That's something we thought about. At first it was just going to be one butterfly projection, but a lot of people asked, well, what happens if you have a kid that wants to take a photo and it's not their size? So we created two butterflies. 

And they change, they cycle through. I worked with an illustrator, Laetitia Auguste. She created the butterfly illustrations. 

I went through with the content developers and picked out a bunch of yellow butterfly species so we could show the vast variety of butterfly species. Then Laetitia created illustrations from those photographs. And the projection cycles through all of them. We wanted to have it as a nice perk, so if you wanted to take a photo, you could have multiple photos of different butterflies. And then we also added some animation to the wings to make it more than a static projection. 

To me, that is just one of the little things that wasn't a high-tech component, it was something that was done with just animation and projection. It could have easily turned into something a little more complicated with motion detection and all of that stuff that people usually do. But again, this was an exhibit that we had a decent budget, but not a huge budget. So we had to come up with some really creative ideas on how can we bring that interactive component without it being a full-blown interactive? 

KN: Yeah, exactly, because they're still really human-centric. All these ideas are about how it's going to make the people feel in the space. 

LF: Yeah, that's something we thought about a lot, how do we want people to feel. When you're in the red room, how do you feel? And then when you get to orange and yellow and blue, like how does your mood change? We wanted yellow to feel happy and exciting, so the butterflies were a part of that happy feeling. And we wanted blue to feel calming, you know, and to feel meditative. So we thought a lot about the mood and feelings throughout the galleries. 

KN: I love the idea of going through there almost for a mood boost. And when we talked before the exhibit opened, I loved one of the things you said, about how you wanted to show how our Earth is really magical, all the magical aspects of what surrounds us every day. 

LF: That's what I love about the blue projection. My thought process with the the footage that you see playing is showing everything that associates with the color blue on our planet. So we started with the sequence of showing the Earth first, then you see clouds, and then you start to see different birds and under the ocean. Everything that's in that footage is blue. And some of those things surprised me, like the blue pigeon. I didn't know there was such thing as a blue pigeon. They have red eyes — they’re beautiful though. Or one of my favorites is the poison dart frog. He’s a little blue guy. 

And I enjoyed editing that and putting that together and just doing all of the research on like the different species that are blue and putting that into that projection. Because in that space, the projection and the objects surrounding it complement each other so well.

KN: It really is amazing how everything on our planet all fits together so beautifully. There’s a reflective floor too in the Blue Room, right? 

LF: Yeah, I think the idea that the exhibit designer Sara Daley had in adding that reflective floor was to make that room feel more expansive. The images from the projection mapping and from the footage are already beautiful. So once you see that reflection of light, it just makes it feel really magical in that space. And then plus it invites people to step on it and to walk on it and get close to the projections, and not feel like it's a theater like they have to sit far away.

KN: Yeah, inviting people in in a new way. That's cool, because usually people are so intimidated by video content and they stay at the back wall, you know? 

LF: Yeah, and I feel like if that flooring wasn’t down there, people would be keeping their distance from it, but because it is down there and it does something to your mind which just makes you want to walk on it. They're able to get very close to the projections. There are some really cool photos that I posted from Instagram of people doing cartwheels and headstands, yoga poses on the mirrored floor and their reflection is so cool. So it has become more of a photographic moment for people as well. 

KN: You’re a documentary filmmaker, so when you were editing the footage together, that knowledge probably helped in crafting the flow of the images, too. Can you talk about your idea for complementing the content with projection mapping?

LF: I went through and selected a bunch of really beautiful stock footage and then edited that together first, and then I worked on a projection mapping so that the colors on the wall will change as the footage is changing. Now that’s an extra layer of immersive feeling, where it feels like the room is changing colors. When you see the blue iris flower blooming, it looks more like purple, so then the projection mapping turns purple. But then the next shot is this sequence of clouds. So the projection mapping turns a very light blue to match the clouds. And once it goes to the ocean, I added this really cool watercolor painted psychedelic effect, because you're seeing these jellyfish and they’re flowy in their movement. So the room is constantly changing, which is why the projection mapping worked really well with it.