Warhol’s story made visible in
interactive digital and physical spaces.
The Andy Warhol Museum’s visitor research revealed that while almost everyone was familiar with his most famous artworks, very few knew much about his story or his role in 20th century art and culture. Gradient Labs was commissioned to create interactive online and gallery experiences to immerse visitors in Warhol’s world.
TIMEWEB
Explore the Timeweb >
VERSION 2 OF THE TIMEWEB IS IN THE DESIGN PHASE. EXPECT RICHER INTERACTIVE STORYTELLING, COMMUNITY FEATURES, AND A STATE-OF-THE-ART HTML5 APP FULLY OPTIMIZED FOR THE IPAD.
Given the objective of revealing Warhol’s connections to the culture and art of the 20th century, we developed a vision beyond the usual interactive linear timeline. A web of temporal relationships controlled by a unique zoomable timeline and rich multimedia content actively encourage exploration and create an entirely new kind of narrative.
Unique custom data structures, content management capabilities, and authoring tools were built to realize this vision.
With a large first floor gallery, unique access to Warhol’s archives, preliminary texts from the curators, and a limited budget we proposed a graphic multi-layered spatial narrative.
A mingling of images, texts, quotes, timelines and rotating artworks draw visitors around the gallery and into Warhol’s life and art.
This approach has proven to be very engaging, with visitors often spending 20+ minutes exploring the story on the gallery walls.
GALLERY TIMELINES 
To provide depth for visitors wanting more information, the Timeweb was quickly adapted for a prototype in-gallery touchstation.
While the ergonomics of this design have proven very successful, user observation has proven that different interactive strategies are required to satisfy most visitors. The exploration-driven nature of the Timeweb is well suited to the online environment, but less well to the gallery where people want to keep moving.
