Eric Welch

The scope of the Your Brain project was to develop and design a deeply immersive 8,500 square foot exhibition on neuroscience and the brain packed with hands on experiences. Our primary goal was to get people to think about their own brains and have them directly experience and understand all the amazing things their brain does every day. We decided to break the story up into seven separate gallery which visitors explore linearly. 

The intro gallery welcomes visitors with bold graphics and simple and modern cabinetry addressing basic questions: What is the Brain? how does it work? what does it feel like? The interactive are simple and direct highlighted with large colorful graphics.  

The following three gallery take the visitor deep within the brain. Leaving the Into section visitors find themselves in the “neural climb” a 18’ tall climbing structure made of steel and glass panels etched with neuron patters. A light show that responds to visitors motions a creates a feeling of electrical activity. The next galleries focus on the neuron and the pathways within the brain. 

The fallowing sections takes the visitor back into the real world which starts with a dramatic entrance onto a city street with store fronts filled with hidden illusion. Everything looks normal at first, but take a close look and your Brain might be playing tricks on you. following the street seen is section called real life. The design intent is to create a series of vignettes where visitors can experience when their brain is doing amazing things in everyday life.  

The final section, the future, ask visitors to discuss the future and ethics of brain science. If there was a smart pill would you take it? If you could erase a memory would you?  

2014 AAM Excellence in Exhibition Award

The scope of the Sports Zone project was to reimagine and redesign the 15 year old Sports Challenge exhibit at the Franklin Institute. Sports Challenge was one of the most post popular exhibits due to its full body active experiences, something we wanted to hold onto and improve. 

The exhibit is split into the three sections Ready, Set and GO. Ready covers nutrition, hydration and size shape proportion. Set covers equipment, safety, gear ratios and materials. GO is all about technique. How can physics and science help you analyze your performance and improve your performance. 

The Design intent was to Split the exhibit in half thematically using large field house structure. Ready and set are inside using wood flooring and a slat wood wall which houses monitors and hold graphics. The GO! is outside using astroturf, large graphics and taking advantage of the natural light from five huge windows. 

The goal of the ARIEL (augmented reality for interpretive and experiential learning) project is to augment classic science center interactive devices using digital tools to make the invisible visible. 

This device take this classic museum device, the gravity well, which simulates orbit with a ball traveling down a parabolic well, and uses computer vision to track the ball. The balls path is then project back on the surface of the well as the ball makes its way to the center of the well. 

Credits: 

Eric welch: Expereince manager

Kyle stets: Digital media developer

Brian Kelly: Technical designer   

The goal of the ARIEL (augmented reality for interpretive and experiential learning) project is to augment classic science center interactive devices using digital tools to make the invisible visible. 

This device take this classic museum device, the Bernoulli blower, which uses Bernoulli's principal to keep a ball floating in a stream of air and augments it using blob tracking. A web cam captures a view of the ball floating and on screen a model of how the air current moves over ball is added in real time.   

Credits: 

Eric welch: Expereince manager

Kyle stets: Digital media developer

Brian Kelly: Technical designer

Lie to me was a device developed for the Real Life section of the Franklin Institutes Your Brain Exhibit. The goal of the exhibit was to have visitors learn about and experiment with their own micro expressions.

The devices is set up with two visitors facing each other at a desk. The both have touch screen. One is promoted to be the interrogator and the other is promoted to be the liar. The device then gides them through a serious of question with all responses from the liar being recored by a web cam. At the end of the activity the Interrogator can analyze the footage in slow motion trying to identify the micro expressions of the liar. 

Credits: 

Eric Welch- Experience & Exhibit design 

Benjamin Afrasyab Farahmand - Technical design

Art Guild - Fabrication

Unified Field - Media Fabrication

Think Music is a project currently in development. It will be a 5,000sq ft to 7,000sq ft traveling exhibition about music and the brain. The centerpiece of this exhibit will be 15’ tall interactive sculpture that is reminiscent of neuron shapes. The sculpture with create music through visitor interaction. The more visitors touching the sculpture the more connections made the more complex and full the musical composition becomes. 

The rest of the gallery is full of devices that crate sound so we are developing a system of modular acoustic environments for visitors to explore.

This kinetic sculpture was designed, engineered and fabricated for CUSP (Climate and Urban Systems Partnership) as an entry in the 2015 Kensington Kinetic Sculpture Derby.

A well used surrey bicycle found on craigslist was used as the foundation for the project. As the riders pedal the surrey forward the a canopy of eighteen umbrellas open and close driven by a system of chains, gears and pulleys connected to the surrey's drive train. The umbrellas can be set up to open and close and a verity of different patterns. The sculpture functions as a conversational piece, addressing the fact that climate change will continue to transform the city into a "hotter and wetter" environment. 

The sculpture recived the "Best Engineering" award at the 2015 Kensington Kinetic Sculpture Derby

Credits:

Designed enginerd and build by Eric Welch and Brian Kelly 

Snowboarding is aging and so are it's riders. The Archive is board graphic created in colaboration with Burton Snowboard's archive department. The goal of the graphic is to thank the pioneers of snowboarding who shaped the boards and the culture of sport. The graphic captures the evolution of snowboarding by compiling a time line of board shapes. It's away for a seasoned rider to stand on every board they have ever ridden and look back at the sport they helped to create. 

The 2008 University of the Arts senior industrial design show presented 20 design focused projects to address the ever chaining relationship between objects and people as they age. The exhibition took place in an empty lot on Broad street Philadelphia. The design solutions ranged from a urine based hydroponic system and a radical three-wheeler tilting bicycle to bottle ergonomics and mobility aids. 

The exhibition was organized into three categories Body, Home, and Community each in its own separate shipping container.

This was a solo two week student project done in spring of 2007. The prompt was to design a product to improve safety in the work place. The most common injury in the shop involves a box cutter or razor blade. My theory was that people become complacent of the danger which leads to operator error. Most offerings on the market try to shield the user from the blade which furthers operator complacency. My goal was to develop a tool that changes the experence to a more contemplative and careful one there for making the whole process safer.  

With the goal of getting the user as close to the danger as possible I crated a very quick prof of concept prototype to start some use testing. I tested with 30 people on thee different materials comparing a standard box cutter and the prototype. The result was people took more time and were less likely to cut past the material. One user said “its like the difference between a fork and chopsticks”. 

After prof of concepts I moved forward doing some form studies in blue foam. Then moved to 3D modeling. The final product would be made using a single material, sintered zirconium oxide ceramic, which is often used in high end kitchen knives and harder and sharper then steel. 

When does an object become an heirloom?

Wear was developed of the fourteenth annual Philadelphia Museum of arts Collab's Student Design Competition, The Intelligent Ornament. The competition was part of a week-long series of events celebrating Collab's 2006 Design Excellence Award recipient, Georg Jensen and Georg Jensen, Inc. It posed the question: If Jensen were alive today, what objects might he be moved to create?

Wear is an experiment in the life of an object and how damage can become ornament. Wear is simple silver band housed in 316 stainless steel ring. Over time the silver will yellow, accumulate scratches and eventually break loose from the stainless steel and start to spin. These changes will be emphasized by the stainless steel which will age on a very different timeline. Wear recived an honerable mention.

The MIO for target exhibition was a showcase of MIO's line of sustainable garden tools and accessories for target. The graphic panels are larger than life versions of the tags found on the products. The graphic panels also function as pinup boards for sketches created during the design process.