Mandala Lab: Touch Screen Interactives

At the Rubin Museum’s new Mandala Lab visitors engage in thought-provoking, playful experiences – smelling scents, ringing gongs, responding to light, watching videos, engaging with touchscreen interactives – that guide them along an inner journey focused on self-awareness and awareness of others.

Our Approach

In close collaboration with the Rubin team, we crafted the language, navigation and sequence of actions that gently guide visitors through these touch screen experiences. Then we designed and developed the applications.

Exploring the Connection between Emotions and Senses

On the west side of the Lab visitors explore the relationship of smells, emotions and attachment at six touchscreen interactives. Six artists chose a smell and created a short video about the emotional memories they attach to that scent. At each station, a visitor can smell that scent, enter their own emotional response to it, and then watch the artist’s video, gaining an appreciation for how different people’s interpretations can be to the same experience.

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‍Exploring Insights about Your Emotions

On the south side of the Lab, visitors complete their journey around the Mandala. On the touch screens here they have the opportunity to choose one of the five emotions or states they’ve experienced as they walked: pride, envy, anger, attachment and ignorance. They can receive a “teaching,” that offers advice or insight about a practice to help them transform that tendency.

These teachings come from many sources, from the Dalai Lama to Bruce Springsteen, from Audre Lorde to Pixar’s film, The Good Dinosaur!

Visitors can email their teaching to themselves and access the website where they can contribute their own insights, which may be shared with future participants.