museum of brisbane 2003

Opened to the public in December 2003, the Museum of Brisbane was an innovative social history facility created by the Brisbane City Council.

Located in the 1930’s Brisbane Town Hall building on King George Square in the city center, it comprised a large changing exhibitions space for social history, another group of spaces for contemporary art and craft, the Memory Theatre project, a museum shop and coffee shop.

I developed and produced the Memory Theatre project with BCC staff and worked with the MoB architectural and program teams on the development and technical specification of the space.

Memory Theatre
The Museum of Brisbane Memory Theatre was a unique self-contained architectural space designed for multiple use, including public program presentations, artist projects, activities for kids and permanent exhibition of two commissioned multimedia exhibits I was commissioned to create for the space.

The visual focus of the Memory Theatre was three 50″ plasma screens inset into beautifully crafted hoop pine walls including integrated bench seating opposite the screens. A multi-speaker sound system provided spatialised audio.

Each plasma screen displayed 1280 x 768 resolution media delivered directly from three synchronised computers. The high resolution created a striking photo-quality effect. The proprietary software FIRE, developed by Clinic Design and New Media, Adelaide, was used to create two unique media programs.

A 45 minute program explored various perspectives on Brisbane through video interviews with 20 Brisbane residents, composited against illustrative backgrounds combining archival media, personal photo albums, maps, audio and photography.

The other program was a 20 minute visual history of Brisbane tracing from pre-contact time to 1901 using drawings, maps, watercolours and early photography. The programs alternated throughout the day.

gary warner 2012