EXHIBITION DESIGN PROCESS BOOK
12.9.13 | by Maria Ellen Boehling | GD400 with Meredith Davis
THE BLACK PLAGUE EXHIBITION | PROCESS BOOK
The objective of this project was to explore the design of a learning experience in exhibition form. For my topic I chose The Black Plague pandemic which ravaged across Europe in between the years of 1348 – 1351. My “content universe” is contained within the book When Plague Strikes – The Black Death, Small Pox, and Aids by James Cross Giblin and supplemented by information and visuals outside this book. The Black Plague Exhibition would hypothetically be installed in NC State’s Allred Gallery, located in Kamphoefner Hall on the College of Design Campus. I wanted the exhibition to be reminiscent of a medieval church because the Catholic Church ruled all aspects of life in the middle ages, and was also drastically impacted from The Black Death. I created stained glass windows that not only draw a visitor to enter the exhibition, but also creates a reflection on the exhibition’s white floor. As you enter you follow the two time-lines on the floor. The time-line of the pandemic continues throughout the exhibition, and the time-line of an infected person ends quickly – right in the foyer. Wooden columns and beams with glass interactive panels between them create a path for a visitor to follow which leads them to the exit. As a visitor goes deeper towards the end of the exhibition, the stained glass windows allow for the lighting to get dimmer, reminiscent of the destruction and absurd death rate of the plague. At the end of the exhibition there is a wooden wall, with an alter-esque table holding an oversized blank book with projected content helps explain how the world changed after The Black Death. My deliverables for this exhibition include: + Floor Plan + Graphic Elements + Graphic Elevations + A model of the exhibition with a 1” = 1’ scale + Photographs of the exhibition model creating an ‘exhibition walk-through’ + This process book
THE BLACK PLAGUE EXHIBITION | PROCESS BOOK
1
The Black Death arrived in Sicily in October. Although the sailors were commanded to stay in the port it was too late – the actual carriers had already scurried onto land. The plague struck Venice in December.
By that time Europe’s population had been reduced by nearly fifty percent. The incredibly high death toll was just one of the plague’s consequences. Like a revolution or a world war, the Black Death ha da profound and lasting effect on every area of human activity.
At the peak of the plauge, the death rate in Paris was reported to be 800 a day. When the graveyards were filled the bodies of the dead had to be dumped into the Rhône River, which flowed through the heart of the city . By the time the epidemic had run its course in 1349, over 50,000 Parisians had died – half of the city’s population. Venice city leaders decreed that no one could leave an incoming ship for quaranta giorni – 40 days and nights – the length of time Christ was said to have suffered in the widerness. From this decree comes the word ‘quarantine’. Eighteen months later, half of the population of Venice died from ‘the pestilence”.
Meanwhile, the Black Death had crossed the English Channel and was wreakig fresh havoc in the British Isles. Nearly ninety percent of the English population lived in countryside villages with less than 500 people. So few servents and laborers were healthy so the crops where left to rot in the fields and the population was left starving.
An unusually virulent strain of plague inflicts eastern Asia and China. Rats carried infected fleas into the Black Sea ports.
After the disease seemed to have run its course, Pope Clement’s agents calculated that 23,840,000 people had died from it – almost thirty-two percent of the population. None of the later epidemics was as widespread as the first, and when the disease ran out of fresh vicims it finally eased up its grip in the eary 1400s.
A
The Italians take to their ships, south through the Black Sea and home to Europe. Inevitably they take with them the plague.
27.6 feet The Black Death swept over France, entering via Marseilles and other southern ports. Before long it traveled inland and reaced the city of Avignon, where the Pope lived. The visitors paying their respects to the Pope, brought the pestilence with them.
36.6 feet THE BLACK PLAGUE EXHIBITION | PROCESS BOOK
2
The pandemic finally dies out. It came in many smaller epidemics at least once every ten years until the end of the century. This marks the end of the first, and worst, wave of pestilence. The flagellants, where a group of Germans that carried self-blame to its furthest extreme by roaming central Europe for years, seeking God’s forgivess of the plague by beating and punishing themselves for their sins. By the Pope’s decree in 1949, the movement had been wiped out in by 1350.
The jewish population where considered as scapegoats for the plague. On February 14, 1939, several weeks before the first cases of the plague where reported in Germany, two thousand Jews were killed in the city of Strassburg because they were rumored to be responsible for the Black Death.
FLOOR TIMELINES
An unusually virulent strain of plague inflicts eastern Asia and China. Rats carried infected fleas into the Black Sea ports. The Italians take to their ships, south through the Black Sea and home to Europe. Inevitably they take with them the plague.
2 feet
The Black Death arrived in Sicily in October. Although the sailors were commanded to stay in the port it was too late – the actual carriers had already scurried onto land. The plague struck Venice in December.
The Black Death swept over France, entering via Marseilles and other southern ports. Before long it traveled inland and reaced the city of Avignon, where the Pope lived. The visitors paying their respects to the Pope, brought the pestilence with them.
At the peak of the plauge, the death rate in Paris was reported to be 800 a day. When the graveyards were filled the bodies of the dead had to be dumped into the Rhône River, which flowed through the heart of the city . By the time the epidemic had run its course in 1349, over 50,000 Parisians had died – half of the city’s population.
You develop an awful headache.
The lymph nodes in your groin, and occasionally in your armpits start to swell. Soon they will reach the size of eggs.
Your heart beats wildly as it tries to pump blood through your swollen tissues in your oozing buboes. The jewish population where considered as scapegoats for the plague. On February 14, 1939, several weeks before the first cases of the plague where reported in Germany, two thousand Jews were killed in the city of Strassburg because they were rumored to be responsible for the Black Death.
The flagellants, where a group of Germans that carried self-blame to its furthest extreme by roaming central Europe for years, seeking God’s forgivess of the plague by beating and punishing themselves for their sins. By the Pope’s decree in 1949, the movement had been wiped out in by 1350.
As death nears, the mouth gaped open and the skin blackened from internal bleeding.
You notice that you now stagger while you walk.
These are Buboes, from the Greek word for groin , ‘buobon’. They give the disease its offical name: The Bubonic Plague.
9 feet
Meanwhile, the Black Death had crossed the English Channel and was wreakig fresh havoc in the British Isles. Nearly ninety percent of the English population lived in countryside villages with less than 500 people. So few servents and laborers were healthy so the crops where left to rot in the fields and the population was left starving.
Venice city leaders decreed that no one could leave an incoming ship for quaranta giorni – 40 days and nights – the length of time Christ was said to have suffered in the widerness. From this decree comes the word ‘quarantine’. Eighteen months later, half of the population of Venice died from ‘the pestilence”.
The nervous system begins to collapse, causing horrible pain and bizzare movements in your arms and legs.
The end usually came on the fifth day.
The pandemic finally dies out. It came in many smaller epidemics at least once every ten years until the end of the century. This marks the end of the first, and worst, wave of pestilence.
After the disease seemed to have run its course, Pope Clement’s agents calculated that 23,840,000 people had died from it – almost thirty-two percent of the population. None of the later epidemics was as widespread as the first, and when the disease ran out of fresh vicims it finally eased up its grip in the eary 1400s.
By that time Europe’s population had been reduced by nearly fifty percent. The incredibly high death toll was just one of the plague’s consequences. Like a revolution or a world war, the Black Death ha da profound and lasting effect on every area of human activity.
THE BLACK PLAGUE EXHIBITION | PROCESS BOOK
3
FRONT GLASS INTERACTIVE PANEL
8 feet
Hippocrates believed the body contained four basic liquids, which he called humors: blood, which came from the heart; phlegm, from the brain; choler, or yellow bile from the liver; and black bile from the spleen. If these humors where in balance, Hipporates wrote, a person would enjoy good health. But if one of them became more important thatn the others, the person was likely to feel pain and fall victim to a disease. Another Greek physician, Galen, took these ideas a step farther. He stated that the four humors in the body reflected the four emlements of life: earth air, fire, and water. Blood was hot and moist, like the air in the summer. Phlegm was cold and moist, like water. Yellow bile was hot and dry, like fire, and black bile was cold and dry, like earth.
1.25 feet
8.5 feet
1.25 feet
THE BLACK PLAGUE EXHIBITION | PROCESS BOOK
4
FRONT GLASS INTERACTIVE PANEL USER PATH
Hippocrates believed the body contained four basic liquids, which he called humors: blood, which came from the heart; phlegm, from the brain; choler, or yellow bile from the liver; and black bile from the spleen. If these humors where in balance, Hipporates wrote, a person would enjoy good health. But if one of them became more important thatn the others, the person was likely to feel pain and fall victim to a disease. Another Greek physician, Galen, took these ideas a step farther. He stated that the four humors in the body reflected the four emlements of life: earth air, fire, and water. Blood was hot and moist, like the air in the summer. Phlegm was cold and moist, like water. Yellow bile was hot and dry, like fire, and black bile was cold and dry, like earth.
Hippocrates believed the body contained four basic liquids, which he called humors: blood, which came from the heart; phlegm, from the brain; choler, or yellow bile from the liver; and black bile from the spleen. If these humors where in balance, Hipporates wrote, a person would enjoy good health. But if one of them became more important thatn the others, the person was likely to feel pain and fall victim to a disease. Another Greek physician, Galen, took these ideas a step farther. He stated that the four humors in the body reflected the four emlements of life: earth air, fire, and water. Blood was hot and moist, like the air in the summer. Phlegm was cold and moist, like water. Yellow bile was hot and dry, like fire, and black bile was cold and dry, like earth.
Phlebotomy (blood-letting) was considered by medieval medicine to be a form of surgery. This view was based on the belief that each organ within a human body had its own organ of origin and, therefore, letting the blood from a specific vein would affect a particular organ. "It was not enough that a patient be bled, he must be bled from a proper vessel. There was a theory that various internal organs were connected with various superficial veins, so that bleeding from these veins drew noxious humours from organs which could not otherwise be reached" Because the internal organs were to be in a way worked on, phlebotomy became a surgical procedure. Blood-letting allowed for the control of humors in a particular part of the body.
1
Home Screen (shown as user approaches panel). The text slides up and down, explaining Hippocrates and Galen’s theories on the four humors, which served the basis of medieval medicine.
4
Hippocrates believed the body contained four basic liquids, which he called humors: blood, which came from the heart; phlegm, from the brain; choler, or yellow bile from the liver; and black bile from the spleen. If these humors where in balance, Hipporates wrote, a person would enjoy good health. But if one of them became more important thatn the others, the person was likely to feel pain and fall victim to a disease. Another Greek physician, Galen, took these ideas a step farther. He stated that the four humors in the body reflected the four emlements of life: earth air, fire, and water. Blood was hot and moist, like the air in the summer. Phlegm was cold and moist, like water. Yellow bile was hot and dry, like fire, and black bile was cold and dry, like earth.
2
User touches one of the four humors (blood), revealing Galen’s addition.
User touches one of the four humors (phlegm), revealing Galen’s addition.
7
Hippocrates believed the body contained four basic liquids, which he called humors: blood, which came from the heart; phlegm, from the brain; choler, or yellow bile from the liver; and black bile from the spleen. If these humors where in balance, Hipporates wrote, a person would enjoy good health. But if one of them became more important thatn the others, the person was likely to feel pain and fall victim to a disease. Another Greek physician, Galen, took these ideas a step farther. He stated that the four humors in the body reflected the four emlements of life: earth air, fire, and water. Blood was hot and moist, like the air in the summer. Phlegm was cold and moist, like water. Yellow bile was hot and dry, like fire, and black bile was cold and dry, like earth.
5
Hippocrates believed the body contained four basic liquids, which he called humors: blood, which came from the heart; phlegm, from the brain; choler, or yellow bile from the liver; and black bile from the spleen. If these humors where in balance, Hipporates wrote, a person would enjoy good health. But if one of them became more important thatn the others, the person was likely to feel pain and fall victim to a disease. Another Greek physician, Galen, took these ideas a step farther. He stated that the four humors in the body reflected the four emlements of life: earth air, fire, and water. Blood was hot and moist, like the air in the summer. Phlegm was cold and moist, like water. Yellow bile was hot and dry, like fire, and black bile was cold and dry, like earth.
User touches the last of the four humors (melancholy), revealing Galen’s addition.
Phlebotomy (blood-letting) was considered by medieval medicine to be a form of surgery. This view was based on the belief that each organ within a human body had its own organ of origin and, therefore, letting the blood from a specific vein would affect a particular organ. "It was not enough that a patient be bled, he must be bled from a proper vessel. There was a theory that various internal organs were connected with various superficial veins, so that bleeding from these veins drew noxious humours from organs which could not otherwise be reached" Because the internal organs were to be in a way worked on, phlebotomy became a surgical procedure.
User touches one of the four humors (choler), revealing Galen’s addition.
8
Phlebotomy (blood-letting) was considered by medieval medicine to be a form of surgery. This view was based on the belief that each organ within a human body had its own organ of origin and, therefore, letting the blood from a specific vein would affect a particular organ. "It was not enough that a patient be bled, he must be bled from a proper vessel. There was a theory that various internal organs were connected with various superficial veins, so that bleeding from these veins drew noxious humours from organs which could not otherwise be reached" (Cameron 165). Because the internal organs were to be in a way worked on, phlebotomy became a surgical procedure.
6
User touches the blood again, revealing an animation swiping down to the left.
BLOODLETTING – The most common method of cure for the plague was bloodletting. The doctors thought they could drain the plague out of the people by cutting a vein and letting it bleed. They sometimes cut open the festering buboes directley.
Blood-letting allowed for the control of humors in a particular part of the body.
User touches the key word (blood-letting), revealing a further explaination of the key word.
Hippocrates believed the body contained four basic liquids, which he called humors: blood, which came from the heart; phlegm, from the brain; choler, or yellow bile from the liver; and black bile from the spleen. If these humors where in balance, Hipporates wrote, a person would enjoy good health. But if one of them became more important thatn the others, the person was likely to feel pain and fall victim to a disease. Another Greek physician, Galen, took these ideas a step farther. He stated that the four humors in the body reflected the four emlements of life: earth air, fire, and water. Blood was hot and moist, like the air in the summer. Phlegm was cold and moist, like water. Yellow bile was hot and dry, like fire, and black bile was cold and dry, like earth.
Blood-letting allowed for the control of
3
User touches the key word (blood-letting), revealing an animation swiping rising from the bottom, button’s that allow the user to jump to the different humors are also added.
9
User touches the back button, which brings back up the home screen (now in its active state).
THE BLACK PLAGUE EXHIBITION | PROCESS BOOK
5
BACK GLASS INTERACTIVE PANEL
8 feet
The so-called plague doctor or Medico della Peste were often little more than paid hacks and secondrate physicians hired by desperate municipalities. These eerily clad public servants would become an iconic symbol of the plague that we easily recognize to this very day... harbingers of doom in a very dark chapter in the history of human suffering. Presumably, their principal task of the plague doctors was to help treat and cure plague victims, and some did give it their best shot. In actual fact, however, the plague doctors’ duties were far more actuarial than medical. Most did a lot more counting than curing, keeping track of the number of casualties and recorded the deaths in log books.
scan your bracelet to unlock your fate
Plague doctors were sometimes requested to take part in autopsies, and were often called upon to testify and witness wills and other important documents for the
1.25 feet
8.5 feet
1.25 feet
THE BLACK PLAGUE EXHIBITION | PROCESS BOOK
6
BACK GLASS INTERACTIVE PANEL USER PATH
1
Home Screen (shown as user approaches panel). The text slides up and down, expounding upon the barber-surgeon doctors role during the plague. You can click on the left graphic to further explain the science and transmission of the Black Death, or click the purple circle to explain the doctor’s creepy costume. However, this user decides to scan her bracelet (given upon entry of exhibit), to reveal ‘her/her fate’ (her treatment based on his/her given place in the medieval feudual caste system and whether or not he/she survives the plague.)
3
This user discovers that he/she has survived the plague! Information is also given explaining the outlook and consequences that specific caste system faced after The Black Death waned in medieval Europe.
2
The finds out after scanning her bracelet over the yellow circle that he/she is a peasant, the user may read about her caste and what the doctor ‘orders’ him/her to do. The user will now want to scan her bracelet again on the red circle to find out if she survives The Black Death.
4
The user may now choose to leave the screen or figure out more about the different caste systems (different than the one scanned by his/her bracelet), go back to the home screen, or still learn about the science behind the plague. This user decides to check out what would happen if he/she was considered a noble during the black plague.
THE BLACK PLAGUE EXHIBITION | PROCESS BOOK
7
BOOK PROJECTION TABLE
PROJECTED BOOK + This book is an over-sized interactive blank book which explains the how the world was
A
changed by The Black Death. This book works by an installed overhead projector that
2.8 feet
tracks the user’s movements. When the user flips a page (revealing another blank page), the content will change and reveal more information.
3.5 feet
8 feet
PROJECTION
5f
eet
3.5 feet
7.5 feet 27.6 feet
THE BLACK PLAGUE EXHIBITION | PROCESS BOOK
8
WINDOWS
STAINED GLASS WINDOWS + These windows depict different illustrations of “The Dance of the Dead” a macabre movement that developed because of the plague. Usually artists would draw holy entities,
8 feet
but after The Black Death, with their faith shaken, they turned to a more dark subject.
27.6 feet
THE BLACK PLAGUE EXHIBITION | PROCESS BOOK
9
8 feet
WINDOWS
8 feet
36.6 feet
36.6 feet
THE BLACK PLAGUE EXHIBITION | PROCESS BOOK
10
THE BLACK PLAGUE EXHIBITION | PROCESS BOOK
11
THE BLACK PLAGUE EXHIBITION | PROCESS BOOK
12
THE BLACK PLAGUE EXHIBITION | PROCESS BOOK
13
THE BLACK PLAGUE EXHIBITION | PROCESS BOOK
14
THE BLACK PLAGUE EXHIBITION | PROCESS BOOK
15
TYPE TREATMENT
Atreyu Regular
Goudy Text MT Regular Goudy Text MT Lombardic Capitals
Tr a d e G o t h i c C o n d e n s e d N o . 1 8 Tr a d e G o t h i c C o n d e n s e d N o . 1 8 O b l i q u e
Tr a d e G o t h i c C o n d e n s e d N o . 2 0 Tr a d e G o t h i c C o n d e n s e d N o . 2 0 O b l i q u e
THE BLACK PLAGUE EXHIBITION | PROCESS BOOK
16