Samurai Museum Berlin - SMB

SMB opened its doors on May 2022. It is home for the largest collection of authentic Japanese and Samurai cultural artefacts in Europe assembled with love, respect and appreciation over multiple decades from private collector Peter Janssen. It covers an area of 1500 square meters and hosts a multitude of different artefacts ranging from masks and full body armours to swords, tsubas and other elements of that era, paired with interactive stations and installations that the visitors can use in order to delve more in depth on the subject. I worked as an external partner with Ars Electronica Solutions on the concept and implementation of two installations for this project, namely the Japan and Sword tables.

The Japan Table installation is a mix of screens / projections application covering a large area of the entrance of the museum. It spawns a UI screen area of three times 4k and two 4K projection areas where a separate application takes care to visualise various elements of the history of Japan and Samurai culture. The projection area directly in front of the user is an actual CNC’d elevation model of Japan where various real-time and pre-rendered visuals are displayed. The second projection area is a flat surface and directly opposite from the user, acting as a canvas for displaying worldwide related content of the specific era of human history.

The Sword Table is located on the first floor of the museum and its aim is to illustrate the craftsmanship and meticulous process of Samurai sword making. Five stations positioned next to each other representing the different stages of the sword making process can be independently activated when a visitor is passing or standing in front of them. The moment a visitor approaches one of the stations a light box activates that holds actual artefacts from that specific part of the process. In parallel visuals are projected and mapped on different 3D printed elements representing the various stages of Samurai swordmaking and completing the storytelling with a mix of realtime particle systems and pre-rendered footage.

In terrms of development, I had the sole responsibility for both installations. The applications were developed with Cinder ( C++ / OpenGL ) under Linux - I wrote a custom curl-based noise transform feedback system, with various controllable parameters, to handle both the sea in the Japan Table but also the fire particles in the Sword Table in order to save some development time. The Japan Table is in reality two different applications, one for the UI part and one for the elevation model and the wall projections, communicating between them through OSC. The Japan Table UI app utilizes Box2D in order to render the content bubbles as physics particles that collide and react to each other but also affect the curl-based particle system running in parallel. Both UI and projection apps, share a rather complicated backend CMS structure for defining events that could trigger on the elevation model at different points in time - these events could be of different media types or real-time effects providing one with the ability to build a time-based loop of narrative story telling that could be adapted or enhanced on the fly..

Image & Video Credits: My Trinh Müller-Gardiner & AES