MS Wissenschaft 2019

Interactive exhibition on artificial intelligence

Artificial intelligence is on everyone’s lips at the moment: in politics, business, art. The Science Year 2019 was also dedicated to this topic and accordingly provided the content for 2019’s exhibition on the MS Wissenschaft, the exhibition ship of the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF). On behalf of Wissenschaft im Dialog, Archimedes conceived, designed and produced the exhibition.

The participatory exhibition of the floating Science Center showed in which areas of everyday life we already encounter AI, how the technology influences and will influence our everyday lives and what science and research contribute to the development of AI. All this was framed by the narrative and design concept by Archimedes, which focused on the human being. Along the so-called AI tape, which guided the visitor through the exhibition, the visitor first learned more about the human way of learning, which is a model for machine learning, and could then explore the areas Meet AI, Use AI and Shape AI. The scenography focused on bright, vibrant colors that contrasted the supposedly “cool” technique.

The majority of the interactive exhibits came directly from research, for example from institutes of the Fraunhofer Society, the Helmholtz Association, the Leibniz Association and the Max Planck Society, as well as from DFG-funded projects and university institutes. These stations were complemented by exhibits developed by Archimedes.

In a mix of analogue and digital, they interactively showed the facets of the AI. For example, the “Dat-o-mat” playfully illustrated that AIs depend on people feeding them with data. At other stations, visitors could program the facial expressions of robot head KIra, test their own pattern and image recognition skills or express their wishes, hopes or worries about AI.

Until autumn 2019, MS Wissenschaft toured almost 30 cities in Germany and Austria.