Reptiles Alive!: Object Theater, Animated Floor Projections and Gallery Soundscapes
Temporary Exhibition | Field Museum
My Role
Creative Direction
Story Development
Media Production
Experience Design
Cross-disciplinary Collaboration
Overview
Reptiles Alive! introduces visitors to live reptiles from desert, forest, tropical, and coastal habitats through immersive environments that spark curiosity about their diversity and evolutionary history. As the Senior Multimedia Creative, I developed two complementary media experiences that expanded the exhibition beyond traditional animal displays: an Object Theater light show using fossil specimens from the Field Museum's herpetology collections and a series of animated floor projections that extended the habitats of the live reptiles into the gallery itself.
Creative Direction
The first experience was an original Object Theater light show that transformed fossil specimens from the Field Museum's herpetology collections into an immersive visual performance. Through theatrical lighting, projected animation, and narrated storytelling, the installation revealed the evolutionary history and unique adaptations of reptiles across deep time. By presenting fossils as active storytelling elements rather than static objects, the experience created a dialogue between extinct ancestors and the living reptiles displayed throughout the gallery.
I collaborated closely with the exhibit designer and production team to develop the creative direction for the theater's lighting system, conceptualizing how the lighting effects would synchronize with the voiceover narration and projected animation. I also selected the color palette for the theatrical lighting, using shifts in color, intensity, and timing to reinforce the emotional tone of each story beat and create a cohesive visual experience. Together, the lighting, media, and physical specimens worked in concert to guide visitors through the narrative.
Collaborating with illustrator Laetitia Auguste, I translated her illustrations into dynamic, habitat-specific animations featuring snakes, lizards, turtles, and other reptiles.
Visitor Experience
The combination of object theater and animated floor projections transformed Reptiles Alive! into a multi-sensory environment where visitors could experience reptiles through observation, storytelling, and play. Children followed animated reptiles across the floor, families gathered around the theatrical light show, and visitors encountered fossil specimens and live animals as interconnected parts of a shared evolutionary story.
