Darkhive: digital archive
Bringing new light to the dark side of science in the depths of the Science Museum's digital archive.
Speculative project for MA Graphic Design to stretch my skills and design thinking
The brief
The Science Museum’s digital archive holds over 480,000 historic items from science, transport and technology. Create a new interface for the archive bringing a new audience to engage with the digital collection.
Problem
The current interface and search facility is frustrating for casual users hoping to browse, making it difficult to find a way in to this vast archive. Many artefacts remain hidden, unseen and under appreciated. The Science Museum wants to increase people’s science capital to reduce STEM divide and encourage people from diverse backgrounds to consider working in science rather than thinking ‘science isn’t for me’.
Insight:
The search bar offers unlimited rewards… if only you know the elusive magic word. Despite its potential for discovery, it becomes a barrier to accessing the digital archive.
During this project The Cure released a new album which went straight to the top of the charts with sales mainly on vinyl, CD and cassette. I heard Robert Smith talking about his music and the moon landings. Songs of a Lost World is a reflective, dark composition, echoing his grief, losses and discord with how the world has changed since then. I enjoyed listening to him describe an object he used on the album cover and video and realised I would like to listen to him talk more.
I was a Cure fan in the 90s, and his reappearance thirty years later, into this shiny new world of dazzling smart phones, social media and perfect pouting influencers is, to me, a glorious reminder of life before the internet... when a search bar would be somewhere to meet your friends for drinks. So to shift my perspective on this project, I decided to use Robert Smith as my user persona and created a solution to appeal to him, and his analogue-loving Cure fans.
Research:
Research question: How can graphic design reimagine the Science Museum digital archive to embrace the dark side of science for an alternative audience who enjoy analogue?
I considered an audience who are naturally curious, disruptive and proactively challenge the status quo. Who share the same values as scientists, inventors and innovators and could be interested in artefacts within the archive.
I explored mad scientists in literature and the Victorian fear of science and technology in an era of rapid change, the Great Exhibition, retro futurism, steam punk, STEM challenges, The Cure, the art / science divide, sci-fi book design, weird science, time... I researched the dark side of science – drug company corruption, the thalidomide scandal, female hysteria treatments, germ warfare – the mistakes and tragedy caused by the pursuit of science. It was fascinating, but showed a dark side to science.
Solution:
Create an alternative interface for the archive which embraces the dark side of science, with curated collections by alternative celebrities and fictional characters to provide access points, as if they were meeting you at the door of the real museum and showing you around.
Darkhive celebrates strange and beautiful objects in the Science Museum archive, with audio commentary and a gothic sub-brand inspired by victorian scientists.
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Curated collections by famous creative/alternative thinkers eg Robert Smith, Tim Burton, Helena Bonham Carter, Nick Cave... to provide their own insights as an entry point for fans.
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Collections by fictional characters curated by fans.
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Audio features – audio recordings by guides, users and their own audio responses to objects creating a living growing archive for the future when the guides of today are no longer with us.
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Explore gothic, mysterious, hidden, tragic, strange beautiful and surprising objects.
I created some off-line promotional materials to draw visitors to Darkhive.
A postcard pack for sharing images without phones. I imagined Robert Smith discovering artefacts by looking at these by night in his garden by his fire.
Billboards around cities featuring individuals and their collections, encouraging viewers on their way to see gigs at music venues to 'Find Me'.
I reflected on off-line influencers. In the music industry, before the internet, there was only one way to make a statement... the simple t-shirt. I imagined Robert Smith in a Darkhive t-shirt and contemplated the thousands of Cure fans who would see it:
Robert Smith performs on tour. Photo © The Cure, 2024. Photoshopped by B Hartley, 2024. (He is not actually wearing this t-shirt!)
Conclusion
Can museums become a hive of new thinking and innovation through successfully digitizing their archives and artefacts? Years ago digital archives would have only been accessed in a library, do they belong on smart phones? Is access to everything actually helping us? The images in the archive have a creative commons license. This is a valuable resource with many potential applications, from creative projects to further research for unlocking the universe's secrets.
The concept of Darkhive would be enhanced by having real well known people (and fictional characters) identifying their own collections to share. Hearing them speak about the objects would be engaging and inspiring, particularly as an attractor for those who think 'science is not for me'. Maybe actors could be employed for the fictional characters? These famous, quirky and unique thinkers would provide an entry point to the archive through mainstream and alternative culture for a broad range of users who could be intrigued by the dark, strange and beautiful narratives of science, potentially attracting more people to STEM subjects and inspiring a new generation of innovators.
I've enjoyed creating this speculative pitch, unrestrained by a real client, using this opportunity to explore how design could solve a societal problem, beyond a typical brief. Of course this is purely hypothetical, neither the Science Museum nor Robert Smith know anything about this. However, looking at the problem through a design lens has resulted in some new and bold ideas to engage new visitors in the collections, raising the profile of scientific endeavour to new audiences.
The approach I took to develop this project could be applied to a wide range of tricky societal problems. By starting with the audience insight, and moving through design thinking to a solution, there is a world of possibilities to explore.
With thanks and apologies to the real Robert Smith whose fictionalised persona I have been inspired by in the pursuit of creative endeavour.
