The space
The building has been stripped back to reveal a spacious, light-filled interior. Designed by Melbourne architectural firm BKK Architects, construction is currently underway and on-track. In the new ACMI, emerging technologies and transformative architecture will combine to create a globally connected museum of the future.
Filled with warm and inviting public spaces, visitors entering from Fed Square plaza will be welcomed by a light-filled foyer that opens to a staircase leading up to the cinemas. The museum’s escalators have been replaced with a staircase – a comfortable dwell space that acts as both a meeting spot and the main connection between Fed Square and lower Flinders Street gallery levels.
The exhibition
The video also includes a look inside the new moving image exhibition currently being curated by ACMI staff and designed by experiential design studio Second Story. The free exhibition celebrates the moving image in all its forms, from the earliest days of film to mixed reality and beyond. The exhibition will entertain hundreds of thousands of local, national and international visitors each year.
A prominent feature of the new exhibition will be a tribute to the Australian road movie: a car that is half Mad Max Interceptor, half Bush Mechanics ingenuity. Created in Newcastle by Fury Road car designer, Cameron Manewell, the Interceptor highlights Mad Max director George Miller’s contribution to Australian film. In stark contrast, the stunning Bush Mechanics car, created by Melbourne based production house Rebel Films and painted on-site in the Northern Territory by Yuendumu artists Thomas Jangala Rice and Francis Jupurrula Kelly, represents the hit reality TV series of the same name. Together, the two opposing halves of the car contrast a dystopian fictional world with the ingenuity and creativity of Indigenous Australia and the reality of life in Aboriginal Central Australia.
The Lens
The new ACMI will debut the Lens, a world-first piece of technology that will provide a deeper level of engagement for visitors. The Lens is a portable device that visitors can use to collect information throughout the exhibition. Based on the classic Viewmaster design, the Lens also activates a large-scale digital activation within the exhibition called the Constellation.
Another key interactive moment is the Foley room, where visitors can create their own soundtrack and sound effects. Elsewhere in the building, the Media Preservation Lab will provide a window into ACMI’s previously unseen film and digital media preservation process, highlighting ACMI’s vast archive of film, videogames and digital art and allowing visitors to see the preservation team at work.
The video also previews the state-of-the-art Gandel Digital Future Labs, designed to increase digital literacy in a time of fake news and equip the next generation of moving image makers with hands-on learning experiences.
We can’t wait to reveal all.