What to do with a room full of model boats in display cases? Play a 3D, to-scale version of Battleships of course.
One autumn in the late 1960’s the finest model ship builders were summoned to the Science Museum in London and put to work with tiny chisels and miniature rivets in pursuit of an exhibition of exquisite models to echo Britain’s naval prowess and glory, and long did they toil. But not quite as long as the exhibition has been on display.
Before the current multi-mediated, intimately interactive and well thought-out exhibitions, there was the display case. The window to the past, the incubator of time, the proud bearer of artifact. We’d push our faces against the glass turning the object round in the mind, imagining all it’s potential uses, all the possible and impossible situations it had survived, unable to tell whether it were real or no.
I was floundering in this nostalgia last week at the Science Museum’s Shipping Gallery, where we were designing Battleships : Ocean Apocalypse, a live, fully dimensional version of the classic vector thriller. Next year the thousand or so models, mini-engines and navigation equipment will be disappeared and replaced by something more current and exciting, so we’re taking this opportunity to inject a last bit of life into the hulks and the paddles and the turbines. This is the non-deleterious war the brittle liners have been dreaming of! Where ancient Northumbrian fishers can fight alongside Britain’s first nuclear submarine! Two teams will assemble a fleet from their favourite models and battle it out across the vast floor of the gallery. Miss! Miss! Hit!
Museums should activate the imagination and stimulate the mind and while most of the new generation of exhibitions are excellent, I reserve a place in my heart for the simple, static object who’s history can be whatever I imagine.
Battleships : Ocean Apocalypse takes this Saturday 1st and Sunday 2nd October from 11am to 3:30pm in the Shipping Gallery at the Science Museum, London. Games run every 30 mins (and take 15 – 20 mins).
