Helen Storey | Neurogenesis Interactive Exhibition

0.1 Challenge - Marrying Neuroscience and Fashion

Working with sisters Kate and Helen Storey, Holition was asked to join their research exploration as a collaborator to produce an interactive exhibition that would convey how our nervous systems form. The overall aim of the installation was to provoke conversation around what happens when we can no longer make new nerve cells, or new memories, a process occurs in dementia, an issue close to the sisters hearts.

0.2 Solution - Creating A Meaningful Link

Holition deployed motion-tracking technology to establish and intimate relationship between the viewer and key steps that advance neurogenesis. Helen’s dress, in a continuing process of degeneration, was snagged across tree branches to form a stark shadow, which provided the backdrop for film projection.

Holition then projected a movie that was generated in Kate’s laboratory, unravelling the process of cells becoming neurons. Reliant on a human presence, the interactive installation used the viewer’s position as a trigger to activate the revealing of the next stage in neuron generation. The work’s responsiveness to the viewer’s presence then facilitated a greater understanding of the neural development process.