Case Study

Tibet's Secret Temple, Wellcome Collection, London

The exhibitions hosted in the Wellcome Trust's splendid Thirties' London building have won a major following for their art-rich, informative and thought-provoking treatments of serious topics exploring medicine and our understanding of the human condition. The house style is to use screens sparingly and judiciously. James Peto, senior curator at London's Wellcome Collection says: 'Technology isn't always necessary. You can engage people in other ways.'

A prime example, opening this month, is Tibet's Secret Temple: a rare look at non-Western medicine. The design, by Wellcome Trust regular Calum Storrie, is inspired by Buddhist traditions in form as well as content.

The exhibition's narrative spirals inwards in a clockwise fashion (following a Tibetan Buddhist principle for ritual journeys) and culminates in an architectural evocation of the chamber at the Lukhang temple in Tibet only used by Dalai Lamas for meditation and spiritual retreat. The temple is lined with instructive 17th-century murals, which are reproduced backlit, on lightbox slabs that replicate the camber's size. Says Storrie: 'This is intended as a quiet space. There is so much information in the preceding galleries...by the time you get here you can appreciate enough of the iconography. It can be a more contemplative experience.'

The preceding rooms feature scrolls, bronze statuary, musical instruments and costumes of ritual dances, and descriptions and clarifications of Buddhist deities and their hierarchy. Use of screens will be limited: just at the beginning and the end of the exhibition features a film room with documentaries commissioned from artist and filmmaker David Bickerstaff.

Client Wellcome Trust
Designer Calum Storrie

Case Study

The Seven Heads of Gog Magog, Cambridge

The age-yellowed skull of a ram fronts the home page of this sound-blog by fictional 'polymythstorian' EF Bausor, inviting viewers to download and experience seven 'oracular sound recordings... premonitory or prophetic emanations that seem to have issued from - or through - objects from museums in Cambridge.' Each MP3 file is accompanied by a semi-factual and highly entertaining speculation on the oracles and their origins, drawing on figures that have a strong resonance with Cambridge, the museums, or the items themselves, including the work of historian Jane Ellen Harrison, the myth of Orpheus, the music of Syd Barrett, and the dialogue from Tales from the Riverbank. The blog advises listeners to download the recording and take it to the museum in question. Weird when listened to out of context, the sound-files must be doubly so when experienced in front of the objects in question - including a drinking cup, a sarcophagus, a statue of the god Dionysus, and mouse bone fragments.

Photo:Fitzwilliam Museum, by Permission of The Master and Fellows of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge

The blog and sound-files were created by sound artist Paul Rooney, co-commissioned by the arts organisation Metal and the University of Cambridge Museums (including the Fitzwilliam, the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, and the Polar Museum). Rooney was invited to walk around the museums and select objects that inspired him, in order to create a narrative through them. David Scruton, documentation manager at Fitzwilliam, is interested in technology being used to 'engage people with the collections in a more emotional way. We think sound is a quite effective way of doing that.'

Client University of Cambridge Museums
Blog designer and sound artist Paul Rooney
Dates October - November 2014