Mary Beth Nolan

11/18/99

Multimedia Research Paper

For this project, I went to the Museum of Science in Boston to visit the Virtual Fishtank exhibit, which incorporates all of these mediums to create an educational and fun experience with Multimedia. The Virtual Fishtank was created by Nearlife, Inc., a Cambridge company, and is the first exhibit to open since the Museum of Science joined forces with the Computer Museum. The presentation combines many types of multimedia together to educate and entertain the people who visit the exhibit.

Multimedia is the combination of audio, motion, and visual aspects to create an entertaining presentation for the audience. It allows the viewer to feel that they are interacting and involved in the exhibit through the uses of pictures and sound. Multimedia is described as "the combined use of several media, such as movies, slides, music, and lighting, especially for the purpose of education or entertainment." There are many different components of multimedia, including sound, color, motion, pictures, and video. "The combined use of media such as text, graphics, video, and sound, as on a computer system." Multimedia is often used with computers to create memorable and informative presentations.

Sound is one of the most important parts of a multimedia experience. It can include, but not be limited to, music. The audience can get a better feel for the subject of the presentation when the audio components are effectively used in an interesting manner. For the Virtual Fishtank exhibit, playing sounds of water and bubbles in the background, like those heard in real fish tanks, made the experience more effective by hearing the noises that are associated with the ocean and fish. The use of sound was effectively used in the exhibit, although it could have been better. The goal of the sound of bubbles was to make it seem more like a fish tank inside of the exhibit area. Because it was not the prominent part of the presentation, it was in the background and added to the effect without taking anything away from the main part of the exhibit.

Color is also a crucial part of a multimedia display. It can either add to the effect or take away from the overall presentation depending on how it is used. Bright and attention getting colors are often used to make the viewer interested in the display. Muted colors can take away from the effect that the viewer sees and make it plain and less exciting. In the Virtual Fishtank exhibit, different shades of blue were used around the exhibit. Other prominent colors that were used included purple, green, and yellow. The fish that were shown on the screens were in various colors, many with designs and patterns as well. The goal of the use of this medium is to catch the viewer's attention with the color and then they will be more interested to watch the presentation because of it, and I think that for this exhibit the creators accomplished this goal.

Motion is a significant element of a multimedia exhibit. It adds action to a display and makes it more animated and entertaining to the viewer. The fish, that were moved by computers that the audience controlled, were able to move in several different directions including up and down, and scatter from each other. Motion was a major part of the exhibit at the Museum of Science because the virtual fish seemed more realistic when they were swimming and moving around. The display screens in the Fishtank exhibit showed the fish so that the viewers could see how they are moving and interacting with other fish as they pushed buttons on the computer screens to control them. The goal of the use of motion in the fish tank exhibit was to make the fish realistic and give the viewers a visual of how it works when they move. Motion was effectively used in this exhibit and I think that the goal was reached. Motion is a very intricate part of multimedia presentations and brings what may have otherwise been a one-dimensional object to life.

Pictures and graphics make up a major part of the overall multimedia experience. They catch the viewer's eye and display what the creator wants to project as the basic images to represent their presentation. In the Virtual Fishtank display, the graphics used for the fish are cartoon adaptations of real breeds of fish. This makes it more user friendly to younger children who became interested in seeing the fish and then learned about them because of the presentation. The graphics were detailed with fins and scales, and were very colorful as well. They made up a very important component of the exhibit because the graphics would be the first thing that the viewer sees and would make an impression on them. The Virtual Fishtank's graphics were one of my favorite aspects of the exhibit and I think they added a lot to the effect and how the audience reacts to it.

Video is an important part of multimedia presentations, which can present material using several aspects of multimedia at one time. Video can combine moving pictures, graphics, sounds, and colors; all wrapped into it's own presentation. Prerecorded video clips can add a great deal of information and professionalism to a presentation. Large television screens were used in the Virtual Fishtank exhibit at the Museum of Science, and the information sent from the individual computers that the audience used was what was presented on them. This allowed the viewers to see video of the fish moving around across the screen in whichever way they told them to through the computer controls. Through the use of video and television screens, the audience was able to get a better sense of what the exhibit was about and became more involved in the presentation.

The exhibit at the Museum of Science was targeted towards young children, but one thing that I found while exploring through the exhibit was that all ages enjoyed it and gained a positive experience from it. I took my younger sister and her friend, who are 15 and 16 years old, and they played on the computers for a while and thought that the displays were very interesting and informative. During the time that we were there, it was very crowded with younger children who enjoyed playing with the virtual fish. It was Veteran's Day when we went so there were a lot of families with young children that were visiting the museum. Their parents were also involved and found that it was a really fun activity for their kids and even themselves. "The Fishtank has been successful because it integrates playful, artful design with leading-edge technology in the service of education," says Dr. Tinsley Galyean, founder and CEO of Nearlife, the company that designed the Virtual Fishtank. All ages would like seeing this exhibit, even though its' primary target is elementary school aged children.

The written information provided in the exhibit describes how the presentation can be paralleled to many other situations in life. "In this exhibit, you can create your own artificial fish, tell it how to behave, and watch it interact with other fish in the giant fish tank." The exhibit allows the audience to not only watch a multimedia display, but take part in it by moving the fish around. The display at the museum listed other similar examples of systems that must work together to complete a task or cooperate with each other in society. "Many other things work the same way -- ant colonies, highway traffic, market economies, computer networks. In each case, the patterns are determined not by one single leader, but by lots of simple interactions among neighboring objects." It takes a lot of components to make up a whole in these cases, and the multimedia exhibit is just one example of a presentation that is made up of many different things.

Computers are a major part of multimedia and have drastically effected the way that multimedia is used. In the exhibit at the Museum of Science, they are described as being an intricate part to the exhibit because you can use them to experience the presentation. "Computers can help us explore these ideas, you can use a computer to simulate the movements of lots of fish." The computers in the exhibit let the viewer touch buttons on the screen to make decisions such as what direction that they want the fish to move, or what options they want to include. The visitors to the exhibit get an interactive experience through the use of computers and multimedia together by allowing them to control the movements of the virtual fish. The Fishtank exhibit combines computers with multimedia. This is the first new exhibit since the Computer Museum has become part of the Museum of Science in Boston, and it is very appropriate because of the unique combinations of technology and multimedia that are used.

The multimedia enhancements used in this exhibit helped the exhibit attain its' goals by being an entertaining and useful resource. The combination of graphics, video, sound, motion, and color make up a major component of the Virtual Fishtank exhibit. All of them are used well and contribute their own aspects to the whole project and make it a more valuable experience. They were each appropriately used to help reach the overall goals; especially the uses of pictures, graphics, video (through the use of the television screens and computers), made the presentation worthwhile. The enhancements that are used accomplish the goals that the creators set out to achieve by making the exhibit not only educational but also enjoyable for the audience.

The strengths of this exhibit were the graphics and video elements. The graphics were bright and imaginative, and made the audience interested in what was happening. The video and motion on the screens was also important because it showed how the fish were moving and what they were doing. Also, the colors used were appropriate and added a lot to the overall impact of the exhibit. The colors that were used the best were the mixes of blues, greens, and purples that made the fish look like real fish but also were bright and vibrant enough to attract the attention of the viewer. The most appealing part of it was that it was interactive for the viewer and that they could choose a fish and interact with other fish in the virtual fish tank.

The exhibit did have some weaknesses however. For example, there could have been more in depth videos about the different kinds of fish, or even the different kinds of systems that work together like a school of fish. If they did have videos like that it would make it more educational for children to learn about each kind of fish or the basic group systems that they reflect. Another thing that could have made the exhibit's environment more appropriate would have been better lighting in the area where the exhibit was. The sound was not a major part of the presentation, and although the background sounds were a good idea, the creators could have effectively incorporated other sound clips into the interactive part of the exhibit.

Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed seeing the Virtual Fishtank exhibit at the Museum of Science. I would recommend it to anyone who is interested in learning about how things work together in groups, specifically schools of fish. Also it is ideal for those who are interested in multimedia presentations because it effectively uses many different types of multimedia at once to create an informative and exciting presentation. The Virtual Fishtank exhibit is a presentation which a family can go to and each member of the family can get something out of it; whether it is playing with the fish on the computer screens, or learning more about the actual fish and comparing their systems to computer networks, ant colonies, international markets, and complex systems in today's society.

In conclusion, I think that the Virtual Fishtank exhibit at the Museum of Science uses the enhancements of multimedia very effectively in the presentation. Each component of multimedia that is used; (color, sound, motion, graphics, and video), is functionally used and makes the overall production better. The exhibit is informative and educational, while still being fun for the viewer to interact with.

Works Cited

1.) The Museum of Science, The Virtual Fishtank Exhibit

2.) Microsoft Bookshelf 1996-1997, Encyclopedia

3.) Picture used is a copyright of Nearlife, Inc. of Cambridge, MA.

4.) The Museum of Science website: http://www.mos.org/