03.19.10
webpick of the week
Museum, Consumer
Unveiled as part of the Speed Art Museum’s exhibition A Book of Prayers: The Medieval Bestseller, this site’s enchanting interfaces reveal, enhance and interpret the content of a 15th-century medieval masterpiece. With sixteen beautifully-rendered miniatures, every page is meticulously decorated with painted flowers or birds and curling ivy vines accented in gold leaf.
Through a unique astronomy-inspired interface, users can explore many of the pages of the book and zoom-in on every detail of the illuminated manuscript. Interpretive insight is displayed in the animated margins where visitors can link and learn about the artists, artwork, techniques and iconography of the book.
The site is also an interactive installation at the museum. Building a framework with Flash that supported the interactive to work well both online and on-site—with loading, resolutions and mouse inputs vs. onsite installations with immediacy (no loading), a defined resolution and touch input—was a challenge that was met without doing a double build.
• The navigation structure evokes the spirit of an historical book of time with all the gears and wheels coming to life through interactivity and motion.
• There are eighteen sections to the Book of Hours; each section contains four interactive modules.
• The site contains high-res images of 24 spreads from the Book of Hours.
www.secondstory.com