Revolution Lounge, Las Vegas, NV, 2007

Revolutionary in design, The Beatles Revolution Lounge takes guests on an evolutionary journey, where both music and interior transform, creating a psychedelic sensory environment. The first nightlife experience created by Cirque du Soleil, Revolution blends cutting-edge interactive design, art and sound in a contemporary interpretation of The Beatles era at The Mirage in Las Vegas. Guests are encouraged to add their own creativity to the ultra-lounge's décor. "The inspiration for Revolution began with The Beatles' message of love, but the atmosphere is a modern twist on their era of freedom, self-expression and free-love," said Jean-Francois Bouchard, Senior Director of Creation, Cirque du Soleil Experience.

The rich psychedelic experience generated by this installation was created by SDF as the centerpiece of an interactive scenario designed and produced by Virtango for Cirque du Soleil.

Project Details

CRX Display, Cambridge, MA, 2007

This enormous spiral of screens was developed for the Broad Institute in Cambridge. It consists of seventy-six LCD panels whose graphics are visible from both within the lobby and from the street. Exterior controls allow twenty-four hour access to the latest information on biotechnology and genetic research. Smaller controls can be used from the inside by visitors and school groups to locate, read and interact with articles that explain the cutting edge research being pursued at the Broad Institute. The display becomes the intellectual heart of the lobby and activates the surrounding neighborhood, which includes MIT, research labs and residential areas.

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Churchill Lifeline Table, London, United Kingdom, 2005

The Churchill Museum opened to the public on 11 February 2005. Small Design Firm developed the centerpiece interactive for the new space, which is connected to the Cabinet War Rooms in London. The commissioned piece is a 50-foot long table, with projections spanning the entire surface. Over three thousand documents written by Churchill and his comtemporaries and photographs spanning a century of British history can be browsed by museum goers using a new touch based interface. Documents are arranged in chronological order and are explored via touchstrips placed along the length of the table.

The table was designed in conjuntion with Casson Mann, UNA Design, and Electrosonic.

Project Details

Hall of Ideas, Boston, MA, 2002

Small Design Firm was selected to create an interactive presentation of great ideas from throughout history that have transformed the world in a positive manner, in the newly renovated Hall of Ideas at The Mary Baker Eddy Library for the Betterment of Humanity in Boston. The piece consists of a set of real-time computer animations projected and integrated into the design of the Hall. The centerpiece in the Hall is a new fountain, designed by Howard Ben Tre, from which quotations, formed from virtual projected letters, emerge along with the flowing water. After the quotations spill from the fountain, they migrate onto the floor as individual words, which "swim" to their destination - one of two arches in the Hall, where the quotations resolve into their final form which can be examined in detail, along with the author, origin, and date.

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Illuminated Manuscript, Kassel, Germany, 2002

A commissioned work for Documenta11 in Kassel, Germany, the Illuminated Manuscript explores the communicative possibilities of spatialized language in the electronic media. Combining physical interfaces with purely typographical information in a virtual environment, this piece explored new types of reading in tune with human perceptual abilities.

A handbound book is set in a spartan room. Projected typography is virtually printed into the blank pages with a video projector. Sensors embedded in the pages tell the computer as the pages are turned. In addition, sonar sensors allow visitors to run their hands over and to disrupt, combine and manipulate the text on each page. The book begins with an essay on the four freedoms - freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom from fear and freedom from want. Each page explores a different text on the topic of freedom.

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Asia Society, New York, NY, 2001

Small Design Firm has developed three information displays for the Asia Society headquarters in New York City. Visitors arriving to the Society are greeted by projected animated text welcoming them in multiple languages and informing them as to what is currently on display in the building that day. Additionally we designed an interactive handrail where visitors can interface with a projected calendar of Asia Society events and two interactive tables where visitors can spend time learning more about Asia. By moving one of six rocks over a map that is being projected onto the tables, visitors can choose to access a variety of subjects such as headline news, cuisine and The Asia Society Rockefeller collection. In placing one of these rocks over a desired country on the projected map, images and text relating to that topic and country will appear.

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L'Oréal Poetry Harp, Cambridge, MA, 2004

The Poetry Harp is an interactive installation commissioned by L'Oréal for the 30th Anniversary of the phrase "Because I'm Worth It". The piece consisted of 28 cords stretched from the ceiling to the floor below, each associated with a line of text from a poem about a woman's worth. By plucking and pulling on the cords, visitors could release sinuous clouds of letters and billowing ribbons, projected on the opposite wall. The harp was a unique visual instrument that struck a balance between legibility, aesthetic beauty, and interactivity.

The Poetry Harp was awarded Best Professional Design and Best Aesthetics by the Designing Interactive Systems conference 2004.

Project Details

Museum of Sex, New York, NY, 2002

Small Design Firm developed four interactives for the inaugural exhibit at the new Museum of Sex in New York. A set of hardware and software tools was developed for the presentation of rare, and in most cases, never before exhibited documents.

Faced with the problem of providing museum visitors with a means of exploring a Manhattan brothel guide from the mid 19th century and a series of randy comics from the early 1900s called Tijuana bibles, Small Design devised buttons and embedded LCD displays which allow virtual browsing of the rare booklets. To compile an unwieldy collection of legal documents about a bathhouse raid, we developed a framework consisting of a three-dimensional rotating skewer of panels that structure excerpts from the proceedings and other information pertaining to the case.

Project Details

Honda Safety Interactive, Los Angeles, CA, 2007

The Honda Safety Interactive, a physical interactive for the safety section of the Honda display at the L.A. Auto Show, allows visitors to crash a virtual model car and view the results of the crash in real time. Visitors trigger the release of the car and can then run the crash backwards, or forwards, in slow motion. While winding the crash visitors learn about the innovations of Honda's ACE body structure via animations that overlay massive data streams, give close ups of key components and use engaging messages that point out specific features.

Designed in conjunction with George P. Johnson Company.

Project Details

Talmud Project, New York, NY, 1999

The Talmud Project, exhibited at the Cooper-Hewitt Museum's first National Design Triennial, explores the simultaneous display of multiple related texts. Several dials allow the reader to trace ideas from one text to another, examine translations and find text in the larger context of the full corpus.

From the New York Times,
March 10, 2000:

"David Small's Talmud Project is a work of genius. A prototype for an interactive book, produced at the MIT Media Lab, the project may be the Triennial's most powerful piece of architecture. Combining passages from the Torah and the Talmud, in English and French translations, the software enables viewers to manipulate blocks of text into the walls, streets and windows in an imaginary city of words..."

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