200 Years of Storytelling
- State Library of New South Wales
Gadigal Land - 2026
Featuring over 250 stories from the collections, history and people that made the library what it is today, this interactive timeline celebrates 200 years of the State Library of New South Wales. Inspired by the card cataloguing system that underpins the library’s information infrastructure, the timeline is broken up into cards that represent important moments both for the building and the institution. Four touchscreens give visitors the ability to traverse the library’s timeline, exploring chronologically or by theme. The rhizome-like nature of the work allows for visitors to take unexpected and winding journeys through the Library’s history. At the same time, a seamless projection over three walls tracks and displays what visitors are exploring at any given time. This dual approach gives both active and passive viewers an insight into the many and multilayered narratives of Australia’s first State Library.
Technology
A series of locally hosted WebGL touchscreen app instances where users browse and select items of interest from the library collection and send them to a central computer via MQTT. The central computer runs its own WebGL app that then animates these items onto the timeline on the wall. There is also an online version of the touchscreen experience for mobile and desktop. Both onsite and online versions are updated via a client facing CMS, which keeps their content in sync.
4x 4K projectors are blended to form a single high resolution canvas for the wall timeline.
Credits
- Arantxa Uria, Art Direction
- Aristo Risi, Photography
- Claire Evans, Strategy Director
- Dusky Dots, Development
- Elena Matienko, Sound Artist
- Ella Douglas, Producer
- Evan Davies, Technical Lead (Hardware)
- Jarrod Lambert, Technical Coordinator
- Rene Christen, Technical Lead (Software)
- Shunji Davies, Project Director
- Sophie Penkethman-Young , Content Strategist
- Tobias Kappeler, UX Lead
- Tom Siddall, Creative Director